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Twitter Launches Trust and Safety Council To Help Put End To Trolling (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter has announced a new trust and safety council to stamp out bullying and trolling on the microblogging site. The Twitter Trust & Safety Council will initially be formed of around 40 bodies, including the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, ICT Watch, NetSafe, and Samaritans. These organisations, along with safety experts, academics and security researchers, will work to ensure a safe and secure platform for users to express themselves freely and safely. The Council's main focus will be to protect minors, encourage 'greater compassion and empathy on the internet,' and promote efforts in media literacy and digital citizenship. Community groups will also participate to help prevent online 'abuse, harassment, and bullying,' as well as mental health problems and suicide.
While I dislike trolling, when you attempt to put controls onto a system, you end up destroying that system.
Twitter Launches Church Of We Don't Like Your Opinion So We're Going To Brand You A Troll Council to Help Put End To Hurt Feelings
So you are free express yourself, as long as you express yourself in a way approved by these organizations?
What fucking hypocritical bullshit.
So Twitter's solution to their unfettered harassment problem is a 40 person committee?
Basically, this is a nice way of saying they won't be doing anything, but perhaps paying protection money into some industry groups so that they won't complain any more.
They can completely change the concept of a feed, and throw out the character limit that has been the defining feature of the service since its inception. But actual tools to allow users to manage asshats on the service (like even /. has had for nearly 20 frigging years)? Ohhh, that's too radical. How about we appoint a committee ...
safe and secure platform for users to express themselves freely and safely
As long as your free expression doesn't piss off any of the 40 busybody groups, of course.
God, I'm so stupid. Here I've been hanging out on the internet for decades now, and I never once realized in all that time that all we had to do to make everyone nice to each other all the time was to institute draconian levels of censorship based on arbitrary rules decided upon by the most hypersensitive and litigious subgroups in the community.
The only way to get rid of trolling is to teach people not to give a flying fuck what other people think about them.
Only then will it just not matter what other people say, and they will either stop saying stuff, or just be ignored.
encourage 'greater compassion and empathy on the internet'
Why am I envisioning King Canute commanding the tide?
Translation: Complete freedom to agree with the left just as much as you like.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Translation: Complete freedom to agree with the left just as much as you like.
Yeah there's definitely a bias. Unfortunately that means for a lot of users will not be using twitter much which seems to be the plan. It's all puppies and rainbows on Twitter
#FuckThat
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Wait, maybe some of the mods might be biased... I know, how about also implementing meta-moderation?
Need to stop patent / trademark trolling as well
This hypocritical attitude is getting to be a problem all over the place. It's not just Twitter.
For example, just look at the Rust programming language project. They have a very bureaucratic and tyrannical code of conduct. Beyond that, they even have a moderation team that will go after anyone deemed to have "violated" the code of conduct!
What I think we're seeing in cases like this are autists of one degree or another trying to "script" social interaction.
What I mean by that is that they're people who are used to working with software, and not so used to dealing with people. They wrongly expect that it's possible to control social interaction as strictly as one controls a computer.
It's like their codes of conduct are meant to be computer programs that a person executes whenever they want to participate in any sort of a community discussion. The codes of conduct try to take away the human aspect of communication, and replace it with something much more automated in nature.
Of course, social interaction is far too nuanced to be something that can be automated away like they seem to want to do.
I think the hypocrisy arises because they're unable to realize how inherently contradictory, and thus impossible, their goals are. You can't have free expression when people have to follow a script in order to communicate. You can't have a free exchange of ideas if anyone who deviates even slightly from the prescribed method of discussion is eliminated (by banning or moderation).
What makes it even stranger is that the Rust contributors are overwhelmingly white males. For all their talk about how important diversity is, they have one of the most uniform communities around!
I think that their extensive code of conduct has only served to make the Rust community less diverse. I think it may have helped drive away anyone who is different from the Rust norm, leading to the monoculture we see today.
Obligatory
Are trolls and spamsters a problem on Twitter?
Sure.
Are moronic 12 yo boys and the adult males that act like that and harass women on Twitter a problem?
Sure.
Will this work?
Nope.
Only public shaming works.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That was the Monday night meeting of the men's rights movement.
You are welcome on my lawn.
#RIPTwitter #SJWCancerRules #SafeSpaces #MyFeelings
Both Twitter and Wired seem to want to self destruct.
More power to them!
ensure that only approved trolling and bullying can be done on their web site.
If Twitter mattered, it might be disturbing. But since, if you have something you can say in 140 characters, you have nothing to say, who cares?
People familiar with Twitter might notice that, much like the plans to increase the length of a tweet to 10,000 characters, this basically removes the entire point of the service.
Twitter is, and has always been, completely pointless bullshit.
It's all part of the Silicon Valley Scam. A company that has never made a profit, loses hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and yet has a market cap of over $9 Billion.
I am continually amazed at just how bad the tech industry is at basic concepts of governance.
Hey we created this platform where everyone who wants to shout can be heard by everyone .. now what type of behaviors would one guess this would tend to reinforce? Try not to think too hard about it.
You can't police fundamentally deleterious structures away.. sure you can try.. you can always attempt to beat people into compliance but eventually the unsurprising outcome is a failed police state.
If you really want to solve the problem you have to fundamentally change the underlying incentive structure such that people conclude on their own that they WANT to do something constructive.
Of course doing so may well not be in Twitters best financial interests. I suspect strongly they know that and are just trying to have it both ways by pretending to give a shit.
Yes. The meeting was held in Roosh V's mom's basement. She made rice krispy squares.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So you are free express yourself, as long as you express yourself in a way approved by these organizations?
What fucking hypocritical bullshit.
You are also free to take your expression to another platform that better suits your sensibilities. Or start your own.
Twitter Launches Trust and Safety Council To Help Put End To Trolling
They already failed. What's next, the Orwellian Council of Freethinkers?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Internet trolls have not been able to control their urges to hurt random innocent people. Make no mistake about it. The rape and death threats, the bulling, really do hurt people.
Twitter has finally gotten enough feed back from their customer base that trolling, bulling and other forms of online harassment are unacceptable. I am please that they are trying to do something about it. They will probably make some missteps. But they will make twitter better for most people and immensely better for a few people who are the target of the attacks.
If you don't like twitter trying to mildly enforce some simple rules of social decency and common courtesy, then go find some other free service and spew your vitriol there. That way the larger community can ignore you.
I have no sympathy because my adult daughter received her first rape threat when she was 11 when she posted a comment to a gamer forum. Just call me a California liberal but social decency and common courtesy make the world a better palace to live despite what Trump spews.
RLH
For those who think a lot of the comments are paranoid conspiracy theory, lets take a look at who's on this council:
https://about.twitter.com/safe...
Doing a quick scan, I recognized Anita Sarkeesian (search for "feminist frequency").
That's definitely a neutral unbiased third party who hasn't made controversial videos and never claimed that disagreement with her opinions were trolling and abuse.
The PC thought police, while good intentioned, are MORE THAN HAPPY, *FREQUENTLY* to very harshly label people who disagree or question them, in almost any capacity. They have no problem in having you doxxed, shamed, fired, etc and furthermore, even if it WAS right to harass someone like that, they frequently jump to conclusions or vastly exaggerate. They'll then go on to claim that you're the harasser for defending yourself or 'harassment is bad' in one breath "let's get this asshole fired!!!" in the next.
The (hardcore) SJW brigade are fucking loonies and many of the moderate ones seem to pretend they don't exist, performing exactly the same bad actions if not worse - but it's ok, they are targeting 'the bad guys'
There's obviously some nasty trolls online, they say such stupid ridiculous shit, abusive, hateful and mean they throw insults at people often. I used to be kind of* one. However the 'other guys' will lie about you, exaggerate, they'll investigate and 'uncover the actual truth'. While one can be very easily dismissed as a complete idiot saying "dumb cunt woman, you look like a dog" they'll play far smarter and arguably, more evil by suggesting perhaps you were trying to rape her (mentioning her cunt!) you've been stalking (you knew she had a dog!) you threatened violence (what?) etc
* Some people use black humour or sarcasm, perhaps they stir the pot, it doesn't mean it's an attack. Many of the SJW types don't seem to 'get' old English humour in the slightest.
People should stop being dicks to one and other online really.
I nearly posted this with my normal account, I thought I might be skirting the line of being able to be critical without pushing someones buttons, but at any time you don't know if an angry SJW ready to defend the clan is ready to fire up google and ruin your life.
Twitter is a free service. Don't use it if you don't like their policies.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Taking a looking at the list of censorship bodies *cough* I mean rights organizations, I'm guessing I wont be able to say anything on twitter that offends anyone about anything at all without being banned!
Scary days with thought police being deployed under the label of trust and safety.
I'm actually pretty upset about this move as all dissenting views will be shutout from the new clean and family friendly twitter.
Honestly the only way to deal with issues is to let everyone have their opinion and you as the user decide who the crazies are, not the twitter stasi patrols
Heavy days, Heavy days for the Internet's freedoms.
I guess I'll have to change my username soon too.
Some people are too sensitive, so they want to stop other people from saying things that offend them. But instead of dealing with it themselves, they appeal to some authority to fight the “problem” on their behalf. Because not only are they super-sensitive, but they’re also LAZY.
At a university, we certainly cannot condone physical violence. And patterns of sustained harrassment are also not acceptable. However, college is a place where people need to be CHALLENGED, socially, intellectually, and ideologically. You can no longer live in the little shell that your parents and no-cussing high school used to provide for you. If you REALLY need a break from all the noise, you can go to your doom room and put in some ear plugs.
Twitter is a different matter. They run a business, and that business requires people to actively engage in sharing of news and information. Trolling minorities can created a disproportionate amount of noise. If we tell the nice people to “go somewhere else,” they will, and that means they stop using twitter. After a while, Twitter devolves into a community of nothing but trolls trolling each other. The trolling continues to escalate to the point that it becomes undeniably illegal, and the whole system is crushed under its own weight. Twitter cannot allow that, along with those of us who find value in that as a communication medium. Sometimes there’s a fine line between “freedom of speech” and “abuse of speech.” We want to trust individuals to make that choice, but there are too damn many people who cannot be trusted with that responsibility that we end up being forced to insitute rules that sadly do restrict some valid messages. This is why we can’t have nice things. A few assholes ruin things for everyone else. And so forth.
So let’s consider a valid point that would get most people in trouble for saying:
- Gay men have a substantially increased risk of transmitting STI’s. This is a consequence of the way the body works. Unfortunately, condom use is not taken for granted within the gay community, and there’s a great deal of promiscuity. This puts more gay men at excessive risk of disease, along with many people in the rest of the population. The solution is for gay men to adopt condoms and monogamy as standards and to shame those who do not. And the best way the rest of us can facilitate monogamy among gay men is to strongly encourage gay marriage. This requires that everyone grow up and recognize homosexual relationships as being as valid as any other. Being in a gay relationship does not make you a sinful person, opening the door for “worse" behavior. Gay men need to have standards, and other people should stop getting in the way of them adopting standards. Sexual relationships are both a right and a responsibility.
Now, if I were to blog about this, I’d get a lot of shit for what I just said:
- The right would tell me that I’m terrible for encouraging sinful homosexual behavior.
- The left would tell me that I’m terrible for singling out gay men and discouraging them from certain irresponsible behaviors.
It seems like if you want to make a point based on math and science (the disease transmission rates among gay men are quite clear), everybody will hate you for saying something counter to their political agenda. What we have is one group handing down rules from ancient literature and another group saying that people should be allowed to act however they want without considering the consequences.
I'm pretty sure this is about the seventh time in as many months that Twitter has announced they're making Big Changes in the way deal with trolling, with the help of a giant list of Concerned Parties that always includes Feminist Frequency.
I am also pretty sure that such announcements will be a regular occurrence for as long as they appear to have some effect on investor confidence.
Subject says it all. We all laugh at the Slashdot trolls such as APK!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The quote was meant to be Satya Nadella about you, not you about Satya. I assume that AC meant it as a joke.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Leftist = rightist = centrist = totalitarian. That old terminology is obsolete.
In this case, you could probably substitute "establishment" or "nomenklatura" in place of "left".
TBH, the rice krispy squares sucked.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They only wanted to give the biggest trolls more power....heck nobody trolls like that lying manipulative Anita Sarkeesian