Twitter CEO: "We Suck" At Dealing With Trolls, Vows To Kick Them Out

AmiMoJo writes "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we've sucked at it for years," wrote Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in a leaked internal post. "We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day." Gamergate is only the latest and loudest example of harassment. Robin Williams' daughter, Zelda Williams, left the service last August because of the disturbing images and attacks she received after her father's suicide. Advocates have offered numerous suggestions for fixing the problem, including improving responsiveness to reports and better blocking tools.

Comments

slashdot?

[monkeyzoo]

I suppose they should copy the slashdot moderation system. =)

Re:slashdot?

[buchner.johannes]

Slashdot moderation isn't web scale ;)

Re:slashdot?

[plover]

Slashdot moderation isn't web scale ;)

It's a damn sight better than the nothing that exists today.

Re:slashdot?

[Himmy32]

Yes, but no one can actually read that tripe. Anyone who clicked on that just wanted to get to the comment section to read all the responses pleading for the crappy blog posts to stop.

Re:slashdot?

[Megane]

Seriously, the slashdot moderation system works well for what it moderates: a bunch of threads which each get a couple of hundred replies that you see mostly at the same time.

Those who actually read articles accumulate points that let them moderate up to 5 or 15 posts in a 3-day period every month or so, and (something I would implement if I set up a blog, because of all the "thanks for your post!" spammers) all threads are closed after two weeks. It's not trivial to get mod points on multiple accounts, and you also don't know exactly when you'll get points.

Meta-moderation is a good idea too, but it's been fucked since they changed it from Agree/Disagree to +/- about five or so years ago without ever updating the FAQ to say whether +/- means Agree/Disagree or Good post/Bad post. Actually it was fucked much, much earlier than that when there was a bug that prevented the "Have you meta-moderated today?" from ever showing up on certain accounts (like mine) and the only way to meta-moderate was to go to metamod.pl manually.

Twitter is basically just a bunch of random posts (like "Hey, I just pooped!") that are loosely linked with # and @ characters in free-form text. It's like in the old BBS days when you would post a message to "All", with nothing like a "thread" with a root post. You just poop out your "hashtag BowelMovement" into the Twitter-space, where you might get as few as zero readers. Try to crowd-moderate that. Frankly, I'm surprised Twitter ended up as popular as it is for having basically no structure other than "fits in an SMS message" and "# and @ mean something". Really, the only significant thing added beyond that original idea is attaching an image.

Re:slashdot?

[Ravaldy]

I agree except opinions often get moded up/down. I've been an offender and the offended. I've recently moded up a number of posts moded down due to disagreeing opinions even if the opinion was worth a read (positive comments towards MS or Apple often get moded down). There's a difference between disagreeing and actually having an invalid, inaccurate or flaming comment.

Be careful how you define Troll

[Drethon]

After they get rid of all those Christian, Muslim, Athiest, Gay, whatever trolls and all you hear is crickets. Yeah I'm being extreme but I'd rather a few trolls slip through rather than a lot of good posts getting pulled.

Re:Be careful how you define Troll

[plover]

I'd rather lose those few (allegedly) "good" posts than read any more trolls. If it's too hard tell the difference between an semi-literate rant over "how angles save my sole" and a troll, the world isn't any worse off for not having the rant.

Despite the apparent similarities, Twitter is not a legally protected soap box in the public square. It's a private service, and they can censor anyone they want for any reason. Trolls can run off and join trolltalk.com if they want their own voice.

Re:Be careful how you define Troll

[Ol Olsoc]

After they get rid of all those Christian, Muslim, Athiest, Gay, whatever trolls and all you hear is crickets. Yeah I'm being extreme but I'd rather a few trolls slip through rather than a lot of good posts getting pulled.

There is a whole lot to that.

Because different people have different definitions, and because the people with the least ability to put up with trolls will not be happe unless all we hear is those crickets.

Some examples to my point

Quite a few years ago, AOL (it figures) had a spam reporting system that blacklisted addresses that sent spam. Problem was, a lot of users decided that anyone who disagreed with them was spamming them. Results? chaos, as the most intolerant ended up blocking completely legit emails and group activity.

A year or so back, in the commentary section of a Yahoo news story, a Devout Christian turned in everyone who disagreed with his posts as a TOS violation.

I am a moderator of a usenet newsgroup. I had a policy of letting posts go through unless they were really nasty. "Fuck off and Die!" would get rejected, but as long as things were on topic I was pretty lenient. Nothing wrong with spirited discussion in my book.

But I haven't been moderating much lately, as a less tolerant group has taken over. It would appear that spirited discussion is not allowed, and many one time posters just stopped. Now it's a collection of links to reddit and some blogs.

And now even the linkfarms are getting heavy scrutiny and many rejections.

And there is the rub. AFAIAC, the group has been destroyed. Others may find that system just wonderful. Like a nicely manicured lawn with snipers keeping the kids off of it.

It all boils down to the inescapable fact that whatever you try to do, it will not appease the most sensitive and intolerant, who will continue to be outraged by the "trolls". Which to them means any disagreement. Or profanity. Or even humor. Defined them of course.

So good luck with that, trollstoppers. Success means no postings.

Re:Be careful how you define Troll

[bmajik]

I went to trolltalk.com just now and was disappointed.

I actually very much like the idea of the internet being a place, or, at least having places, where there is no authority, no oversight, and no rule makers. Where if you say something that upsets people, you are mercilessly attacked -- with speech.

I think of my very early days on IRC - and all of the new ideas I was exposed to.. all of the people who said extremely offensive things... and there was nobody to do anything about it (except perhaps encourage it)... I had to learn to adapt, and I had to learn that other people's words were just that - words -- and that there wasn't any fairy angel to come and save me from not having to hear things I didn't like.

Society needs places like that.

You are correct that what twitter does is twitter's choice. I don't use or care about twitter, because very few people have the talent to say anything at all, much less say it well in 100 characters.

It seems that people are endeavouring to make the internet like the "real world" - where speech codes exist, where stupid people flourish, and where idiots expect others to put up with their idiocy.

I was hoping that the real world would become a bit more like the internet - where there are no rulers, no more identity than one wishes to have, and people come and where they please as they please.

I prefer the online company of intelligent people who are purposefully offensive much more than I prefer idiots who are purposefully offended.

Re:Be careful how you define Troll

[ilsaloving]

Obviously it hasn't occurred to you that there would be a lot more 'good posts' if there weren't so many trolls around.

The only thing I use twitter for is as an RSS feed for certain companies I want to pay attention to. I sure as hell have no interest in posting random thoughts on there and waiting to become a target.

Please no more censorship.

[Anonymous Coward]

The web doesn't need more heavily censored platforms. One persons troll is another persons dissident.

Re:Please no more censorship.

[OakDragon]

The web doesn't need more heavily censored platforms. One persons troll is another persons dissident.

I agree in principle, but what happened to Zelda Williams was not "dissent."

Re:Please no more censorship.

[Jason Levine]

My problem with block are the users who keep making new accounts to get around blocks (or in response to being kicked off).

I, and a bunch of other people, were harassed by this individual on Twitter who thought herself a prophetess of god. She claimed that god told her that we were criminals and so she was determined to report us - or at the very least make our lives as hellish as possible. Arguing that she was wrong was pointless. Her source was god and you can't argue with that logic. (Seriously, there's no way to argue against someone who sincerely believes "God told me so." You're just wasting effort if you try.)

She would get reported for harassing behavior, get banned, and then re-appear under a new username. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes several times a day. Of course, when she came back under a new username, our previous blocks were useless and we needed to block her new account. Twitter seemed either powerless to stop her or not interested in stopping her.

Re:Please no more censorship.

[argStyopa]

Some might call it 'millenial cognitive dissonance' because they don't seem to understand that you own your public identity, for better or worse.

Every time you put your opinions out into the world, some people are going to disagree with you. Like me posting this.

Some people are going to strongly disagree with you. The bigger or more controversial your opinion, the bigger the reaction. Hell, I get hatemail because I dare to dispute all sorts of conventional wisdoms.

And a certain percentage of the populace are crazy assholes.

Now, if you're a narcissist, and YOU complete the circle by putting your real identity out there, don't you bear some of the blame if a shitstorm falls on you? It's the old public-figure libel issue: if you are a public figure, the CONSEQUENCE of that is that you are voluntarily giving up some protections to which private citizens are otherwise entitled.

That used to be why we used avatars. But I truly believe for the current generation, that doesn't provide the attention and adulation that putting their real selves out there does.

I'm not exonerating her harassers, btw. Being a public-figure doesn't give people a blank check to threaten you. But at a certain point, we have to live in the world as it IS, not as we wish it was.

Color me surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought trolls WERE Twitter's core users.

Bots

[retech]

You suck worse at dealing with bots. And worse still about dealing with follow-bait advert accounts managed by media agencies.

If you removed all of these two types of accounts, I have no doubt twitter's "user base" would drop by 80%. It's functionally useless IMHO.

Re:Bots

[Zocalo]

Might as well mention Twitter's URL shortening service, "t.co", too since that's another area of the business riddled with abuse that they just don't seem to care about. Spammers and malware pushers have been using Twitter's "t.co" links for ages to link to sites, malware and so on, yet Twitter simply doesn't care. Send an abuse report to most other link shortening services and the malicious link is usually dead within a couple of days, and more often within a few hours, yet "t.co" links seem to be inspired by De Beers and last forever so presumably the abuse reports are simply /dev/null'd. On the plus side, you can pretty much guarantee any email with a "t.co" link is spam and score it accordingly (or just reject them outright since the FP rate is so low), but it would be nice if they did something about that too.

Re:Bots

[Anonymous Coward]

I consulted for a company that had permission from twitter to create accounts in mass to blast out advertising. Hell, Twitter had a department for it at the time. They didn't care how many fake followers there were, the just wanted numbers to report to the press. They've known for a long, long time that their users were mostly fake and that the vast majority of truly active users were spammers or advertisers--all blessed with their permission.

Downvotes

[Roodvlees]

They should allow downvotes.
6000 downvotes might not make you happy, but it's better than personal threats.
That would allow people to vent their emotions. Or show that they are the only person who has a certain opinion.
It's not a silver bullet, but would make me personally very happy :)

Re:Downvotes

[Megane]

The problem with up-votes/down-votes is that if you want that, just go to Digg (remember them?) or Reddit already. Being able to up/down vote any and every message with no limit, even when you're a brand new user, just breeds circle-jerking and sock-puppetry.

Re:Hang on

[oodaloop]

Absolutely not!

They should be 140 characters or fewer.

So Twitter's finally going to ban the SJWs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean Twitter's finally going to ban the SJWs? I mean, they've done a ton of damage to legitimate businesses by getting accounts banned for disagreeing with them in the name of "harassment". Look at what's happened to Rogue Star Games.

Oh, wait, I forgot, getting "little people" fired from their jobs by harassing their employers is A-OK as long as SJWs do it. Getting small companies banned from social media is A-OK as long as it's the companies the SJWs don't like. It's the people complaining about the people causing real economic damage on Twitter that are the "trolls". My bad!

Re:The only people who consider GG as trolls are..

[Oligonicella]

Watched quite a few because I find them amusing. The documentation is very cherry-picked. As for reasoned, that only works if you accept their rather agenda driven premises.

The "fix" for Twitter

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I'm totally serious on this. Do what I do. I've never been on Twitter. I never will be on Twitter. End of story.

The problem with Twitter is that people think it's valuable. It's not valuable at all. The press is forced to pretend its valuable because their jobs require them to have Twitter accounts. So this had led to the situation where people in the press quote random users on controversial subjects as if their opinions are really important just because they were said on Twitter.

All Twitter is is a way to behave like an ass and say stupid things, sometimes with consequences, sometimes with no consequences. The greatest trick Twitter pulled is convincing people that it's actually important and worth caring about and paying attention to. I still firmly believe that in a not too distant future it will be about as meaningful as My Space is today and future generations will be absolutely baffled that anybody actually thought Twitter was important or useful in the past.

From TFA

[argStyopa]

Dear Twitter CEO:
If you don't understand the difference between trolling and cyberbullying, you already fail.

Trolling: "Global warming is bullshit"
Cyberbullying: "I'm going to chain you to the radiator and grape you in the mouth for decades and decades.*

*I recognize that I'm out of the norm by having a pretty high standard here limited to libel or actual threats, which ARE illegal already; I have very mixed feelings about the whole American societal thing about bullying in general today (of which "cyber" bullying is just an element). But that's tangential to my point here.

Re:Troll = Anyone who disagrees with our groupthin

[ckatko]

You realize the SJW side of Gamergate has an equal, if not worse, record of doxxing people, right?

So where's their equal, if not worse, condemnation?

Karma to burn?

[ckatko]

You're a perfect example of a SJW. You wrap everything up in emotion and oppression to make yourself look like a martyr. ("I've got karma to burn.") And then when people stop taking you seriously because of your outbursts, you complain people are just indoctrinated slaves of the system. ("I'll take a sweepstake on whether I get troll or flamebait.")

It took all of 30 seconds to find that Slade Villena of RogueStar Games leaked sensitive financial records from Polytron and IFG as retaliation for some form of SJW infighting.

So they point he's getting at, while not perfectly written, is not some intentional deception. Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance. The point he's getting at is that the SJW-side of Gamergate is using fascist tactics against their enemies. And everyone is afraid to stop them for fear of being their next victim. It's domestic terrorism, and it's gotten so vehement that they're starting to do what all terrorists do... fight each other over who is a bigger martyr. And now they're beginning to use their own despicable tactics of doxxing, shame, getting people fired from their jobs, and emotional outbursts against each other.

The SJW movement will be remembered as a terrorist wing that delayed the feminism movement. And everyone is keeping their heads in the sand lest they be the next victim of a career-killing bomb.

Re:Karma to burn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure thing. I don't, nor do I want to live in a world where social justice is considered a bad thing, notwithstanding the efforts of a loud minority to redefine social justice as a rando collection of things they hate on the internet.

The thing is that SJWs don't care about social justice. They care about being outraged about social justice. Being outraged is the goal, not any sort of promotion of any kind of social justice agenda.

When did you last participate in a real protest? Write your senator? Do anything that might actually promote real, actual "social justice" in this world?

Or do you just posted smug comments on Slashdot, feeling wonderful about how you're showing how much more you care than those silly gamer trolls, while accomplishing nothing but trolling people?

The reason SJW is an insult is because SJWs are people who do nothing but troll, trying to find a way to show how outraged they are. They're no different than the "free software" trolls who try and prove how ideologically "pure" they are when it comes to open source software and troll about licenses and freedom or the pro-Apple trolls who talk about how amazing Apple's design is compared to everyone else. They're just a specific variety of troll. Enjoy your pride in being a useless troll.

The only thing you really need to know about Rogue Star Games is that it's a game studio that's currently trying to get a game greenlit on Steam that SJWs have constantly gotten banned from Twitter. When you're a company trying to get a game published, having SJWs mod bomb you can greatly harm your ability to communicate with your fans and cause real financial damage.

Re:Hang on

[plcurechax]

They should be 140 characters or fewer.

Er. No, not quite.

Reference: http://www.oxforddictionaries....

Less is also used with numbers when they are on their own and with expressions of measurement or time,