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Stopping Trolls Is 'Now Life and Death For Twitter', Argues Backchannel (backchannel.com)
"This is the year that Twitter's future will be determined," argues Backchannel's editorial director, noting that Twitter's revenue growth is slowing, and "None of the features that cofounder Jack Dorsey has introduced since he returned to the company as CEO last year have succeeded in attracting new users." But Backchannel suggests it's because the trolls "are winning," discouraging new sign-ups and driving existing customers to leave. "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we've sucked at it for years," Twitter's CEO wrote in an internal memo in 2015. Backchannel argues bluntly that Twitter "has a hate problem." New submitter mirandakatz writes: It's been exactly three years since Twitter first promised to solve its harassment problem. In those three years, the company has made countless such promises, introducing dozens of new "fixes" and even going so far as to ban notorious troll Milo Yiannopoulos last month. But still, abuse on Twitter continues, and stopping it is now critical to the platform's future success...
"Twitter did an excellent job of inventing a digital platform for realtime idea exchange, but it has yet to create the feature that allows the community itself to ferret out the abusers..." writes Backchannel. "And if it cannot figure out how to eradicate the harassers, Twitter's other challenges will remain intractable."
"Twitter did an excellent job of inventing a digital platform for realtime idea exchange, but it has yet to create the feature that allows the community itself to ferret out the abusers..." writes Backchannel. "And if it cannot figure out how to eradicate the harassers, Twitter's other challenges will remain intractable."
Yet another "SJWs are the good guys, conservatives are the bad guys" story.
those "trolls" disagree with Jack.
If a troll or harasser happens to have the same political views as Jack, he doesn't care.
While trolls suck, they always had them. What they haven't had is inconsistent and overreaching policies for fighting these 'trolls'. We've seen in again and again, certain groups get free passes to say whatever they want, other groups say stuff even slightly, through a distorted lens, might look kinda trollish, banned. Get your current policies straight and consistent!
You basically have two types of trolls these days, there is the spammers and people spewing all sorts of predictable BS (like here on Slashdot you have the GNAA and Goatse). They are easy to block with Bayesian filtering or even plain blacklists. Then there are the more modern 3rd wave feminist trolls, they behave like they have a valid point and may even get a following of people agreeing with them, yet they make a community toxic by designating pretty much all dissent as "personal attacks". I've seen it happen recently in an otherwise healthy 20yo community, in less than 3 years it was destroyed by leadership trying to make the organization a "safe place" and more than half the membership left mostly voluntarily after key members were forced out.
I think Twitter has more of the second problem: trying to make a platform available that is "safe" for everyone meaning it will only ever be good for a single person because any dissent will be viewed as unacceptable speech.
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Haven't you heard? It's impossible for an SJW to be a troll or harasser, since "troll" and "harasser" implies a power relationship, it's impossible for an SJW to be one (since they don't have any power on the social media platforms they now completely control). So the powerless SJW's who now have all the power on all social media CAN'T harass or troll. Only the powerful conservatives and liberal dissenters who have no power on any social media platforms have the power on social media to be trolls/racists/sexists/abusers.
Also, it's very important that we protect LGBT rights and the rights of Muslims who support killing LGBT's.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Backchannel is just trolling for clicks. Twitter sign up rates have slowed down for the same reason Facebook has - there's only a limited number of people interested in that shit on a day to day basis, and churn (people leaving because they have better things to do with their time) is now a problem. Besides, what the hell is Twitter good for anyway? Even Twitter doesn't know, or they would be doing it instead of copying other's ideas.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The real reason for the flack twitter gets is lack of honesty. If they only want progressive views expressed, they need to make it a policy/part of the TOS. Then everyone will know where they stand. No more passive-aggressive moderation of users who express contrarian political views. They'll be banned outright for TOS violation.
There are two problems with your idea. First, trolling and disagreement aren't the same thing. The only reality trolls reveal is that there are a lot of horrible people online who don't care about any standards of civilized behavior.
Also, the trolled can just leave twitter. Eventually it will just be trolls trolling trolls.
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Twitter should die. It is just a source for rumors and unsubstantiated drivel. It no longer has any redeeming value.
When people played by the rules, it sort of worked. No longer. The dark side of humanity has found an outlet for their hate, and loves it.
Spew hatred and untruth to hundreds of thousand, and millions, of people, with just a #hashtag and a click.
Twitter is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. He could not have done what he did without Twitter.
Twitter is responsible for the rise of DAESH/ISIL/ISIS. They could not have rose to the prominence they have without Twitter.
Twitter must die.
Oh sure, all those "blacklivesmatter" tweets are really civilised.
He was removed because Twitter could only choose between pissing off the SJW crowd or the crowd following him. There was no middle ground for them Twitter could not win in this. They choose to side with the SJWs for the sole reason because they already know what kind of batshit insane shitstorm they're able and willing to cause.
It's a bit like how schools side with the schoolyard bully in the hope that whoever he beats up will stay silent and the bully is happy as long as he can continue bullying. Their problem is now that they're facing two bullies hell bent on kicking each other's ass.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Can someone explain to this ol' fogey why anyone wants to own Twitter at $18/share?
A cursory look at the company's recent financials shows it's still losing money. The number of shares outstanding is also increasing, so even if the company manages to generate (real) free cash at some point, you're entitled to a smaller share of it. The entire thing is bizarre -- it's not like Twitter's in a capital-intensive business like aluminum or shipbuilding.
I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter is sold in the not-too-distant future. I suspect a grown-up management team could probably make Twitter profitably generate cash.
Odd that you never heard about SJWs doxing and harrassing people, and I know of one case where they even tried to get someone fired for making counter arguments to their bullshit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He was removed because Twitter could only choose between pissing off the SJW crowd or the crowd following him. There was no middle ground for them Twitter could not win in this.
It's simply not true and you are on a site which proves it. The middle ground is to moderate them both down. Basically, any troll posts should be allowed, but should be very hard for people to find. Twitter is failing to do something which Slashdot has succeeded in doing for years. This is a clear sign of failure.
"Twitter did an excellent job of inventing a digital platform for realtime idea exchange, but it has yet to create the feature that allows the community itself to ferret out the abusers..." writes Backchannel. "And if it cannot figure out how to eradicate the harassers, Twitter's other challenges will remain intractable."
In other words, Backchannel wants a SOCJUS-friendly echochamber.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's not about whether he was offensive. Twitter LOVES offensive. But only when it's in the service of their CEO's political orientation. It really is that simple. If you're offensive on his team, then there's no friction. If you're offensive on the team he hates, then you're evil and must be banned. It's the very definition of the SJW phony selective faux outrage strategy.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Mod parent up. Regardless if you're an SJW, or a homosexual conservative, twitter has obviously created a double standard, and the problem isn't with what direction they've chosen (mobs from SJWs okay, mobs of conservatives not okay), but the fact that they chose a direction at all. The arbitrary nature of their actions should be a wakeup call to *anyone*, because tomorrow, it could be you.
What they should do is create "twitterleft.com" and "twitterright.com", and capture both audiences in their own spaces. Instead, they've at the very least disenchanted the people they censor plus a fair number of those who they don't censor but still care about censorship.
Leslie Jones got called a gorilla and left Twitter. I think she handled that pretty well. Twitter's problem was, should they let this guy keep driving users away from their platform? Believe me, they would have much preferred that Jones stuck around to send the hate back-and-forth for as long as possible.
Twitter doesn't care about hate, they care about their bottom line, and losing users like Jones hurts their bottom line.
As opposed to the GamerGaters who tried to get several web sites shut down or made bankrupt by convincing their advertisers to drop them? There are asshats on both sides, but it tends to be the anti-SJWs that are more organized about it. Fortunately their movement is largely discredited in the mainstream media, so their plans rarely work for longer than it takes the target to google them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Every instance I've ever seen has been harassment of some kind.
Yeah because you conveniently choose to interpret it as such.
Simple outright racism or other bigotry never gets a ban.
Sure it does... whether it is or not, as long as the user is a white/male criticizing someone who's not.
https://i.sli.mg/fNAcRy.jpg
Of course when someone like Jones makes racist statements about whites, it's ignored. She was part of a movie that was deliberately designed to be sexist towards men as part of its comedic artistry (sexism is apparently ok as long as the targets are men). The movie turned out to be shit on multiple fronts, and when she played victim for the flack she got for it online, she got more of it. No shock there.
If twitter wants to take sides and become the social media DailyKos that's up to them. They should just make it clear in their TOS. I would prefer they stayed neutral, but if not, at least be up front and honest about their expectations.
Give people the ability to filter. One of the main purposes of Free Speech is to promote thought. Listening to other opinions is how we hone and change our own. Forcing everyone to live in a bubble results in what we have now in the College Snowflake (AKA SJW) class of people. Not only does this class of people live in an echo chamber, but they lash out at anyone telling them something not in their chamber. Ben Shapiro being banned from speaking at a campus instead of banning the people who don't want to hear him is insanity, not College.
Any time I hear speech I dislike I can walk away. Don't blame trolls for sites that make you see them, Slashdot for example allows browsing while ignoring them for the most part.
As for Twitter, they should have died long ago. Any company that bans and censors things they dislike while allowing death threats to the same people they claim are bad shows the hypocrisy their leadership. As an easy example, Milo receives death threats from all kinds of people who don't get banned from Twitter, yet he gets banned for mostly being obnoxious while defending his review of a movie. That was the last, not only, time he was punished by Twitter for having an opinion they didn't like. (Don't listen to the fabricated narrative, do the research and read his posts.)
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You forgot about her whole punching down campaign in response, including trying to get her followers to harass some of her harassers (still a violation of Twitter rules, something Milo did not do): http://www.breitbart.com/big-h...
There are assholes online, and if you are a celeb you are probably going to get more than your fair share of them. It sucks, and after she stomped off after her own bullying, she returned.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Yet of course you can easily see how if that tweet had made reference to killing black people or Muslims, by a white christian, they would have been removed from the platform immediately.
I think my case is pretty strong actually.
And you just demonstrated that you're no different by stating "that is why many, many people think that those spouting off about SJW are idiots."
Thanks for serving as a self-referential example.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Basically, any troll posts should be allowed, but should be very hard for people to find. Twitter is failing to do something which Slashdot has succeeded in doing for years.
Not really, most of the Slashdot old guard has abandoned moderation and the trolls have taken over duties.
The best way to view Slashdot today would be to make invisible anything which has an equal number of +1 and -1 votes. If one troll faction hates it and the other troll faction loves it, it's probably not worth reading.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
The best way to view Slashdot today would be to make invisible anything which has an equal number of +1 and -1 votes. If one troll faction hates it and the other troll faction loves it, it's probably not worth reading.
That touches on the problem of thumb-up/thumb-down moderation often turning into agree/disagree. Slashdot tried to avoid this by naming the different downmods. But this may becoming less effective as newer users moderate as thumbs.
The same media that parrots that the ISIS member doing ISIS tactics on significant occasions, that visited ISIS territories and has their acts claimed by ISIS...was only saying 'alu ackbar' for unknown reasons, probably was mentally ill? THAT mainstream media? Or do you not mean Fox/CNN/'BC/etc?
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If I could +1 Insightful, I would. But I can't, so I'll just "Like".
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
She was somewhat unprepared and didn't handle the situation perfectly, like people who have been getting harassment from Milo for years do. But Milo can't make the same excuse. He knows what he is doing, he faked screenshots rather blatantly (forgetting to edit out the delete button, I never said he was competent) to encourage his mob. It says a lot that he had to do that, such as the restraint that his victim showed towards him and his followers.
Making one or even a few mistakes don't put anyone on the level of someone like Milo, a professional troll and victim who uses his manufactured Twitter persecution to further his own career.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If twitter isn't willing to take assertive action to win these battles, they will lose their current exalted position. If you let haters drive people off, those people have left, and the haters are still there to rinse and repeat.
Same in other forums. You either have a system that can counteract it, or you completely lose majority demographics.
The whole reason I use the term "SJW" is because of the judgements I've made over years and years of observing many of these people, people who self-identify as "social justice warriors".
Uh huh. Well, I've been called an "SJW" numerous times (as an insult, I presume, though accusing someone of fighting for social justice is about on the same level as cursing someone by wishing them to earn a lot of money).
I judge people not on what they say but on what they do.
Saying is not passive. I'm gonna judge the daily stormer types for saying they want to kill all the Jews even if they never get round to atually murdering any Jews. Frankly I think it's petty silly to ignore people's opinions as part of your judgement of them.
Also, by your logic, you can make literally no judgement of me because you've never seen me do anything that's not just saying stuff.
Some people are hard of hearing, but you, serviscope_minor, you're hard of thinking.
Oh huh, looks like you ARE judging me based on whay I said. didn't you just say:
I judge people not on what they say but on what they do.
It appears you're mistaken about your own mind.
SJW n. One who posts facts.