Blogger Incites Outcry Over Twitter Harassment

CNet is reporting that one blogger has started an outcry about harassment as it applies to Twitter. While their written stance appears to support the safeguarding of abuse, Twitter appears to be waffling on the issue when it comes to the hard line of enforcement. "The final response to Waldman's complaint from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone asserted that "Twitter is a communication utility, not a mediator of content," and that "Twitter recognizes that it is not skilled at judging content disputes between individuals. Determining the line between update and insult is not something that Twitter, nor a crowd, would do well. Stone added that Twitter's team would continue talking about which situations were appropriate for account banning."

Comments

Re:Sock puppets?

[Joe U]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say both Twitters have a roughly equal amount of 'suck', but one of them might actually amount to something one day. (Hint: It's not going to be the M$ one)

Overreaction

[ady1]

Its a free service after all. If you don't like it then don't use it. Their TOS from TFA seem to suggest the same that they have no obligation to remove anything.

Re:Sock puppets?

[erikina]

He will, if you keep giving him so much attention. He's a troll (and a damn successful one). Stop feeding him.

Re:Sock puppets?

[Joe U]

He seems like an asocial, obnoxious person who needs to be chewed out until he understands what he's doing wrong. Yeah, every popular site has one. Some of us even have em in real life. People like that are boat anchors on any site with user generated content, they slow the site down and get a lot of crap stirred up in the process.

Self absorbed gobshites 2.0

[Cathoderoytube]

When you're dealing with the level of stupid that feels the need to post updates of whatever mundane crap they're doing at every moment of the day you're going to have to expect to attract a large number of other stupids. I'll say that MAYBE twitter really isn't an integral part of the internet, or blogosphere or whatever so much as it is an exercise in self absorbed gobshittery. I guess that's what 'web 2.0' is supposed to be though.

Considering the individual in this case is a 'popular blogger' she should expect some bloody hate mail. I'm sure she gets plenty of lovey dovey crap from her followers as well, and they're all doing their very best to send her emails with smiley faces so she'll feel all good about having a blog and a twitter account.

I for one welcome hatred! That's why I'm not posting this anonymously :)

Re:Self absorbed gobshites 2.0

[UncleTogie]

Do you have to resort to personal attacks on someone whom you've never met, never read, and don't care about?

I have a question here....

If they've never met them, never read their work/read about them, and don't care about them....

...how is it "personal"? Jus' asking...

The problem is...

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

She's pissed that someone called her a crack-whore looking cunt.

Here's how I see it: She looks like a crack whore, and all this bitching about being called a name makes her a cunt. Meaning: She's a crack whore looking cunt.

She's an 'internet celebrity' (I guess) and decided to use her real information in her accounts. Next, she made her Flickr account known to all, and also posted skanky pictures in it. And when someone called her out on it, she cried.

She could easily stop using it, since it's just ego masturbation anyway. "Look at all the people who care that I'm brushing my teeth!"

Re:The problem is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Crack-whore cunt is an opinion and opinions are protected. If the guy was tracking her down and painting it on her car or her apartment walls in human blood, then we've got a problem. Crying because someone said you have pointy knees on the internet makes you a fucktard.

Like I mentioned above, she seems to be suffering what recent studies out of the university of North Carolina show - which is that women who are full of themselves (THINK they are more attractive) tend to also claim they are victims of bullying and harassment. So unless this guy is going above and beyond anything we've usually seen on the internet in his comments (and by that, I mean intimidating her as if he's going ot hunt her down or knows where she lives or something), then this chick just needs to shut up.

And why is it that it's always some woman running around crying about how the oh so mysoginistic masses of males are making her want to quit the internet and take her ball home with her, like that Java woman? What, like men aren't stalked and harassed online by fucking nutty cunts? I've personally been the victim of flat out stalking, intimidation, blackmail and threats online by both a male and a female at different times. But I don't go around making ridiculosu biased claims about one sex or the other because of it.

I guess my general feeling would be that there is usually little reasonable cause for making an internet wide call for pity on yourself and that except in rare cases of true harassment and stalking, people need to either deal with it or accept that they suck at intartubes and go home.

Re:who gives a shit?

[erikina]

I've heard of not reading the article, but perhaps you should read the summary. Hint: They're talking about the micro-blogging service.

Re:The comments that show she's lying.

[me at werk]

It proves that there's no proof of any of the statements that were supposed to be heinous enough to fully remove the account. An account, I might add, anyone can post to (it was a "confessional" much like grouphug). So, easily, and I'm not saying this WAS the case, but others have postulated it's likely: she could have made the posts, reported them, and they were "caught" by the person running the confessional as being bad before the people at Twitter had the chance to look at them.

It's like if I trolled myself as an AC...

Re:Important part of TOS

[UncleTogie]

OMG, Microsoft banned me because my gamertag seemed offensive, their ToS is stupid as!", then "OMG, Twitter won't enforce their ToS, that's stupid as!".

Ok, I'll bite... Stupid as what? ;)

wtf?

[acvh]

she's a "social-media insights consultant" here's an insight, free of charge: get a real life.

Re:Nothing massive here.

[causality]

I know because I have been playing the dreadfully easy, multiple account game.

It's about time you 'fessed up to that.

The bottom line is that you are worse than ineffective, you are counter productive. You are on the losing side the free software battle and making things worse for yourself. Insult and disruption are empty.

I have used Linux for nearly eleven years. Not once have I felt that there is a "battle" between Microsoft and Free Software. I agree that Microsoft makes shitty products; that's why I don't use them. It's such a simple thing: I don't like their products and I don't like their business practices so I contribute to neither. If someone does like their products and does use them, I will tell them that I think there are better alternatives if they are interested. If they are not, I wish them well and I celebrate their right (and obligation) to make their own choices and live with the consequences. If this results in their having a worse computing experience than me, it is unfortunate but it is also not my problem.

A big reason why I have so thoroughly enjoyed Linux is because I am not afraid of learning something new. I am always glad to expand my knowledge, especially when something interests me, because I greatly prefer this over ignorance. To me, there are many wonderous things in the world and there is an element of adventure in overcoming something I did not previously understand. So, when I encountered Linux in mid-1997, I read books, man pages, Internet forums, HOWTOs, and pretty much anything I could get my hands on. It absolutely fascinated me, both the elegant design of the system and the philosophy of freedom that was behind it. At the time I kept a Windows 98 partition to play a couple of Windows games; when I noticed that a year went by without me once booting up Windows, I formatted it with an ext2 filesystem and never looked back. I love the design, reliability, and feeling of control that Linux gives me. It does not get in my way. It does not assume that I'm an idiot. If something breaks, it broke for a good reason, it will stay broken until I fix it and when I fix it, it will stay fixed. Linux is easily one of the best things that ever could have happened to my computing experience and my general interest in technology.

However, I do not believe that the average person is going to appreciate these attributes. There is unfortunately a strong anti-intellectual, anti-learning culture, at least in the USA. There exists the idea that the path of least resistance is the secret to a good and happy life, and by extension there is the idea that learning something new is painful and too much work and should be avoided whenever possible. The fact that I believe this to be a lie is not relevant, no matter how much I wish it were. The average person is not going to enjoy the design of Linux or the love of freedom that is behind it. What I am talking about has very little to do with computing, despite the specific application about which I am speaking, but is a general attitude towards life. However much I may disagree with what I consider to be a dehumanizing form of laziness, I must respect that people need to live their own lives the way they see fit. A corporation like Microsoft that promises "it will just work with little to no effort -- now easier to use than EVER!" is always going to appeal to this culture. People who do not wish to expand their knowledge and enjoy the tools they use every day are going to buy into it. To them, it is "the way things are"; to me, they are making their choice and living with the consequences.

If you really think that what you are doing is battling a corporation because you dislike their products and their business practices, it is because you fail to consider and understand the foundation upon which it is built. Microsoft is not the cause of much of anything. In a manner of speaking, the things

Re:Nothing massive here.

[ScentCone]

It would not surprise me to learn that you work for M$ or some kind of PR firm under their hire

That's because it would really make you feel better if you could honestly discover that to be true. You want it to be true, because you're so invested in that fantasy that if you ever admit to yourself that it's a delusion, the psychic pain it will cause will really hurt you. Deep down, you rationally know that, but because you're afraid of the pain that will come with the shame of admitting you've been weaving a paranoid fantasy all this time, you just build up that house-of-cards narrative all the higher. Every comment you read about your own disconnected world view is just another card you're adding to the stack, because you find the habit of defending that broken world view to be - despite being actually badly damaged and damaging - just a case of inertia. You're so latched onto your fiction that your only constructive activity, now, is to add to it... and just make matters worse.

but it does not matter. No one here cares or listens, except to reflect, "Yeah, that's what M$ does to people who bad mouth them."

Except, that's not true, and you know it's not true. That's actually a lie. And you know it. And yet you repeat it, over and over again. I know you won't be able to actually address it such, and that's OK. You do, internally, know it. The only thing that's a shame is that someone who doesn't know better may actually have their reasoned understanding of a given situation on which you comment temporarily delayed, as they spend a little time dissecting your ramblings, and comparing them to reality. You've already decided to waste your life pretending that reality is different than it actually is. It's just unfortunate that your willingness to spend so much time at it - in a vain attempt to make it appear that you're sincere and being honest about it - may drag some other person, however briefly, into your unhappy relationship with reality. Ah, well.

Re:Nothing massive here.

[ResidntGeek]

I have been playing the dreadfully easy, multiple account game.

Incorrect. What you've been doing is demonstrating aptly how dreadfully easy the multiple account game isn't. You've had something like 10 sockpuppets which you've used in the clumsiest of fashions and which have been quickly called out as such. You've shown no ability at all to conceal your intentions, change your writing style, post with different temporal patterns with different accounts, post in separate threads with different accounts, or otherwise in any way avoid notice. You've even had several conversations (that I've seen) with yourself, containing blatant self-promotion despite the fact that several people were actively pointing out that you were conversing with yourself.

You, of all people, should realize how absurd it would be to think all these people responding negatively to your stupidities are the same person.

MOD PARENT UP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you are just yet another little fucktard who thinks they matter and that the world gives one shit about you in any way shape or form.

Thats the lesson for today kids. If you get upset over shit you dont have to read. On a screen you can turn off. you ARE a fucktard. please kill yourself so the general noise level of the universe will drop a tiny tiny tiny bit.

Re:Nothing massive here.

[Stanistani]

Twitter:

You lost me at M$.

That's how angsty thirteen-year-olds label Microsoft.

Just as anti-open source folks call it 'open sores' or label its propenents as filthy, stinking hippies.

You're a pimple on the face of free speech.

Meanwhile, to the other folks... do we need to drag this troll into every discussion of the microblogging software of the same name?