Twitter Adds "Report Dox" Option

AmiMoJo writes Twitter announced that its abuse-report system, which was recently refined to simplify and shorten the reporting process, has now expanded to allow users to report content such as self-harm incidents and "the sharing of private and confidential information" (aka doxing). The announcement, posted by Twitter Vice President of User Services Tina Bhatnagar, explained that December's report-process update was met with a "tripling" of the site's abuse support staff, which has led to a quintupling of abuse report processing. Chat logs recently revealed how Twitter is used by small groups to create vast harassment campaigns, thanks to sock puppet account and relative anonymity.

Comments

Report Bots

[retech]

... would be a nice feature to add as well. And click/bait follows.

Re:Twitter is a powerful tool

[ArchieBunker]

Twitter is more annoying than anything. I don't care what names celebrities are calling each other and I don't want to see inane comments while trying to watch a tv show.

Soshill Justus

[Anonymous Coward]

Chat logs recently revealed how Twitter is used by small groups to create vast harassment campaigns

Yeah, it's funny how a small group of people can create a vast harassment campaign on an entire customer base and perpetuate it through shitty sites with no integrity.

Re:Soshill Justus

[AmiMoJo]

Go have a read of the chat logs. Anonymous kindly published the entire, uncensored log just in case you think that the quotes are cherry picked.

It's clear what GamerGate was now. A small group of people on 4chan, and later 8chan, organising a campaign based on hatred of women. They are quite explicit about that when they think no-one else is listening. All the things they accuse their victims of are the things they themselves were doing. False flag operations, doxxing, sock puppet accounts, attempts to manipulate the media.

It's all there, go read it for yourself.

Re:Soshill Justus

[Anonymous Coward]

It is when the harassment campaign organizes blacklists, doxxes you, and spreads lies to try and get you fired. Though yeah, I'm not sure why the anti-gg side can't just step away from twitter and free themselves from what they claim is harassment.

Re:Soshill Justus

[hairyfeet]

I'll just leave this here, but feel free to go back to Kotaku, which came out and actually BRAGGED about how corrupt they were, ignore the chat logs of GameJournoPro, where they literally got together to formulate a response when they got caught accepting both monetary and sexual favors (which is why no less than 13 different websites all printed the EXACT SAME ARTICLE about how "gamers are dead" within an 18 minute span of each other) and listen to AS who is literally a living breathing sockpuppet of the guy who runs feminist theory (she literally retweeted entire articles word for word he wrote nearly a decade ago as her own, when nobody would listen to a "CIS male" saying his crap he found her shilling real estate and hired her, funny shit) but that is the thing about people living a political narrative, they ignore any and all reality that doesn't fit their political agenda.

I find it funny how many of the radical feminists identify as social marxists, as they do seem to be stealing whole cloth from classical communist media manipulation, especially the old And you are lynching Negroes tactic of derailing a conversation from where they are weak (such as corruption and free speech) to some place where they believe they can control the narrative. I guess those that forget their history are doomed to use failed policies of the past over and over.

Re:Soshill Justus

[Anonymous Coward]

And Brianna Wu, Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, Leigh Megaphone-Alexander, Ben Kuchera, Full McIntosh, etc. etc... they're all guilty of it.

Re:Twitter is a powerful tool

[solios]

I'm fine with twitter being a self-contained thing. "News" "reports" that consist of screen after screen of embedded tweets with "analysis" along the lines of "he said.... she said.... OH NO THEY DIDN'T!" is a waste of clock cycles, electricity, photons, and calories.

Re:Not Nearly Enough

[DiamondGeezer]

Dear AC,

Thank you for posting your concerns.

But perhaps you'd like to tell us what a "harasser" is, because at the moment this appears to be "anyone who doesn't agree with me, mocks me or quotes facts which contradict my beliefs"

Yours sincerely

The rest of the Internet

Re:Twitter is a powerful tool

[operator_error]

Or you could just use RSS and not have to sign up for anything, and be watched and mined by the central Twitter overlord. Yes, RSS even works with Twitter, (and we are on slashdot).

Re:Twitter is a powerful tool

[jones_supa]

Much more websites offer Twitter feeds than RSS feeds these days.

Ars Technica and #Gamergate

[Dekonega]

First I want to say that Twitter has done a good job improving its reporting system. So thanks for them for that.

But I'd like to point out that the articles produced by Ars Technica cannot be trusted as a source in this matter. For example this Slashdot news item links to an article full of errors about the reasons Twitter has done this. The "vast harassment campaign" they're talking about is #Gamergate which is a reaction on behalf of gamers (aka. people who play computer and video games regularly) to a corrupt games journalism and other problems in games industry such as collusion, and censorship,.. not to mention the favoritism, cronyism and nepotism related issues.

Ars Technica writer Ben Kutchera has been accused of some really unethical things by the people who support #Gamergate. Kutchera for example is known to have taken part in journalistic collusion (Google GameJournoPro mailing list). He is also known for trying to tone police writers from other news outlets to write stuff from the same perspective as their clique did. And pressuring head of Escapist Magazine to censorship conversation about certain issues and especially things they didn't like. Like for example, people who criticise Anita Sarkeesian's extremist views. Mr. Kutchera was paying money for a developer through Patreon, and presumably was expecting this developer to give him exclusive interviews and stuff like that. Resulting both getting money and fame. And the proof of him doing all this is out there. And he is not the only one doing these things.

http://wiki.gamergate.me/index...
http://wiki.gamergate.me/index...

Trying to avoid the talk about the corruption and GameJournoPro list, writers like Mr. Kuchera and the rest of the accused people from Polygon, Kotaku, Gamasutra, Ars, RPS, etc. have been opposing #Gamergate. They've actively been trying to derail the conversation by accusing pro-#GamerGate of some of the most depressing stuff I've ever read on-line. Ars Technica as a whole has either failed to understand everything related to the social phenomenon currently on-going (which they should understand, if I may add), or they know exactly what is going on and they're playing fools on purpose.

The "Chat Logs" in question were released by person who happens to be one of the people accused of cronyism and being professional victim by pro-#GamerGate people. And the evidence supporting these claims this is also out there if you Google it. Those pieces make a stronger case than the cherry-picked or out of context "Chat Logs" that support the other point of view in this matter.

It just blows my mind when person (or people this person knows), visit anonymous image boards (without understanding how they work), write bad stuff about themselves (which can be traced back to themselves), and then go to their Twitter accounts and blogs with the screenshots they just took of their own messages, and shout "Look! Here's evidence of how bad these people on this board are". And that's even more mind boggling is how journalistic outlets like Ars Technica without verifying person's story or listening to both parties in question, write articles about the person as the harassed underdog who is desperately in need of some more Patreon money or Kickstarter funding.

#GamerGate is just a hash tag like any other. Any one can go on-line and take part in it. Any one can go and do what they want with it. I'm sure that harassment has happened, release of private information has happened, and some other bad stuff has happened. And both the anti-#GamerGate, the trolls, and pro-#GamerGate have done it. And it's good that Twitter offers better tools for people to combat against this bad behaviour. And I also hope that they have a system in place against people who are abusing the report system.

However it is wrong for Ars Technica to make an article were they commit multiple logical fallacies, u

Re:Ars Technica and #Gamergate

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with your claims are that they are all based on extremely shakey evidence. Blog posts referencing other blog posts referencing twitter. Youtube videos full of memes and ranting.

Compare that to the IRC logs. Direct evidence from the source. The same logs captured and released by multiple people on both sides of the argument, so their authenticity can't be denied. The content is damming. In fact there is extensive discussion of doing exactly what you have just done. Try to control the narrative. Stick to the message with some pre-packaged links. Try to make it about ethics in journalism. Accuse the victims of all the things GamerGate is doing to them. The logs are complete and the full context can be seen.

If you really want to argue the point then quote and refute the logs directly. Explain why we shouldn't take them at face value, or why the actions of those in the logs are somehow excusable.

Re:Not Nearly Enough

[Dekonega]

The statistics don't agree with what you're claiming. Both men and women receive about just as much harassment on social media. The claims American journalists did few months ago were not based on reality.

Please watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Privacy is becoming a complicated mess

[spectrum-]

I welcome these steps because it is shocking how little people realise that they have shared unknowingly. Or worse that others have shared on their behalf.
How often do you encounter family or friends or colleagues who proudly boast that they don't have a social media account therefore they have nothing to fear. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Not having an account just makes you ignorant to what has been posted about you or your children or other privacy concerns.

With the advent of smartphones, public cloud storage and various dubious smartphone malware dressed as popular apps, we've all become custodians of each others data to some extent. But few are aware or understand the implications.

I wonder should they be teaching more data security and privacy to kids instead of concentrating their efforts on teaching them all how to be coders.