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Former Twitter Employees: 'Abuse Problem' Comes From Their Culture Of Free Speech (buzzfeed.com)
Twitter complained of "inaccuracies in the details and unfair portrayals" in an article which described their service as "a honeypot for assholes." Buzzfeed interviewed 10 "high-level" former employees who detailed a company "Fenced in by an abiding commitment to free speech above all else and a unique product that makes moderation difficult and trolling almost effortless". An anonymous Slashdot reader summarizes their report:
Twitter's commitment to free speech can be traced to employees at Google's Blogger platform who all went on to work at Twitter. They'd successfully fought for a company policy that "We don't get involved in adjudicating whether something is libel or slander... We'll do it if we believe we are required to by law." One former Twitter employee says "The Blogger brain trust's thinking was set in stone by the time they became Twitter Inc."
Twitter was praised for providing an uncensored voice during 2009 elections in Iran and the Arab Spring, and fought the secrecy of a government subpoena for information on their WikiLeaks account. The former of head of news at Twitter says "The whole 'free speech wing of the free speech party' thing -- that's not a slogan. That's deeply, deeply embedded in the DNA of the company... [Twitter executives] understand that this toxicity can kill them, but how do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line? I would actually challenge anyone to identify a perfect solution. But it feels to a certain extent that it's led to paralysis.
While Twitter now says they are working on the problem, Buzzfeed argues this "maximalist approach to free speech was integral to Twitter's rise, but quickly created the conditions for abuse... Twitter has made an ideology out of protecting its most objectionable users. That ethos also made it a beacon for the internet's most vitriolic personalities, who take particular delight in abusing those who use Twitter for their jobs."
Twitter was praised for providing an uncensored voice during 2009 elections in Iran and the Arab Spring, and fought the secrecy of a government subpoena for information on their WikiLeaks account. The former of head of news at Twitter says "The whole 'free speech wing of the free speech party' thing -- that's not a slogan. That's deeply, deeply embedded in the DNA of the company... [Twitter executives] understand that this toxicity can kill them, but how do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line? I would actually challenge anyone to identify a perfect solution. But it feels to a certain extent that it's led to paralysis.
While Twitter now says they are working on the problem, Buzzfeed argues this "maximalist approach to free speech was integral to Twitter's rise, but quickly created the conditions for abuse... Twitter has made an ideology out of protecting its most objectionable users. That ethos also made it a beacon for the internet's most vitriolic personalities, who take particular delight in abusing those who use Twitter for their jobs."
Slashdot has the best system I've seen so far. Reddit's just leads to bandwagoning. Slashdot is capped at -2:5.
Additionally if I only have 5 points I'll usually not waste them on 0, I normally just browse at +2. Back in the day you would have entire threads of +5s. I'll save them for someone that needs modded up, not waste it on someone that doesn't need to be heard.
Twitter provides a block feature, a mute feature, the ability to report harassment, and various features to control how public your tweets are. If someone is harassing you, why don't you block them? I'm not sure why we need to kill free speech to fix a problem that appears to be already solved...
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
"Free speech" doesn't mean anyone has to listen to you. Unfortunately the Twitter staff act like it does.
Twitter lacks effective ways for people not to listen to things. Users lack ways to filter the content they see, filter who can send to them, filter seeing third party mentions of them, and so on.
The asshole problem on twitter is that they can be effective assholes: twitter makes it hard, or impossible, for the targets of attack to block or filter out the messages, so the targets of abuse receive the messages, so the assholes succeed in abuse. "Not using twitter" is not a realistic option for many people who work in media, PR, or whose jobs and lives are about communication - so they end up in a situation where they are the targets of the assholes and cannot do much about it.
Twitter should care more about the recipient users, not the sender users - and they can do that without compromsing anyone's ability to speak.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
. . . perhaps if you have the correct POV. Anyone on the Right, however, seems to be subject to arbitrary and capricious censorship on the Twitter platform, without explanation or even appeal.
And it happens to targets large and small: the obvious large example is Milo Yiannopolous, but also lesser lights like SF author Brian Niemayer.
Add to that, the recently created Trust and Advisory Board which all comes from the same end of the political spectrum. Apparently, Twitter is all about Free Speech. . . only some Speech is More Free than others. . .
Slashdot has the best system I've seen so far. Reddit's just leads to bandwagoning. Slashdot is capped at -2:5.
Additionally if I only have 5 points I'll usually not waste them on 0, I normally just browse at +2. Back in the day you would have entire threads of +5s. I'll save them for someone that needs modded up, not waste it on someone that doesn't need to be heard.
Agreed. Slashdot has easily the single best method of moderating out of every major website, changing that would be foolish. Besides, moderators are surprisingly fair - I have gone against the grain plenty of times, and extremely often these reached +4 or +5. If you state your opinion reasonably and rationally, Slashdot is almost always interested in hearing it. Character attacks on unnamed moderators, with no examples or anything of substance at all, are not inside this category.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
When Twitter quits banning people who haven't broken their rules, we'll talk.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Either you believe in free speech or you don't.
Unfortunately even in today's modern world, unpopular opinions continue to need Voltaire's "defending to the death" because those in power are all too ready to mete it out (if they only could) - instead of countering it with their own opinion and civilized debate.
And it doesn't matter where in the political spectrum you fall, people everywhere pay lip service to "free speech" only when it suits them. To the contrary, those on the left are often the most intolerant of people saying something falling foul of the accepted orthodoxy.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Agreed. Slashdot has easily the single best method of moderating out of every major website
Kind of adorable that you think slashdot is still a "major website". 10-15 years ago slashdot kind of mattered. Someone posted a link and it would generate so much traffic it could crash the server (slashdotting). Not so much anymore. Comment volume has dropped substantially, a lot of the "celebrities" (for lack of a better word) that used to read and comment have long since moved on. Many of us (myself included) still find it amusing and fun but slashdot isn't the force in the geek community that it once was.
the obvious large example is Milo Yiannopolous
The guy was banned for organizing troll mobs. Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences, if you shout "fire!" in a theatre you will get banned regardless of your rights.
If anything he is proof that Twitter will give people every possible benefit of the doubt and every opportunity to remain on the service. The amount of racist crap he spewed out over the years was pretty awful, but Twitter tolerated it because they only ban over direct threats and mobbing, the former of which is a crime in their jurisdiction.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The problem are moderators who decide to moderate on topics they feel strongly about. Good moderators make sure the messages stay on topic, and valid discussion is occurring. Because it is too easy for a vocal group to take over the discussion and spam it with like ideas or just poor arguments. But if the moderator has an emotional attachment to a side, a different view is often felt as a personal attack, thus can get censored.
However message trolls can be just a detriment to free speech by spamming a good conversation with hate and nonsense changing the tone of topic from an insightful expression of ideas a bunch of idiotic ranting.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Have you thought about your usage pattern and how it relates to the whole?
You only see things that other people either value or agree with. You don't get the whole conversation (and in fact /. is weird and forces you to move the slider to see more; maybe getting an (undeleteable) account you can have that preference saved). Maybe you're okay with that -- I have no clue -- but if the goal is socializing and conversing, it seems to me that having the whole picture in an unbiased, threaded ranking (be it random, sort by time, whatever) is the best way to get the whole picture without having gatekeepers who control who gets to be heard (read).
A lot of these sites like to compare themselves with democracy, and they forget the fatal flaw: a majority can turn against a minority and tamp them out. That flaw flies in the face of any professed "freedom of speech" they assert.
Free speech means assholes. It means racists, Nazis, birthers, preppers, furries, Joe Normal®, Jane Normal®, feminists, conspiracy theorists, communists, and so on. If we decide they don't get to be heard because "reasons", who gets to decide the dialog for everyone? Why do they deserve that power? Why should that power exist in the first place? Strong ideas can withstand competition.
Some people confuse topicality or spam with free speech abuses. Interfering with the flow of conversation (e.g. posting the same thing dozens of times), or talking about something irrelevant to the conversation (Raging about the moon landing in a mosquito thread) is handled not to silence people, but to maintain the purpose and function of a given system.
The purpose and function of ranking systems like /. and reddit is to distill the submitted content to the ones who were modded up heavily, meaning popularity. People in general have a hard time separating popularity from quality. They rarely, if ever correlate.
Note I'm having to talk about the points instead of the nature of the conversations or the interfaces that may work best for such conversing. We get wrapped up in the irrelevant and taken in by tools that allow us to assist in silencing others. So by following score-based designs, any viewer is getting an incomplete conversation, skewed by what the most number of people like or dislike.
...an article which described their service as "a honeypot for assholes."
No, Twitter is only part of the internet.
Can I ask the people on the left, when did the left start to view free speech as being a bad thing?
It started when they got so offended by opposing viewpoints that they started condemning them as hate speech, then adopted the mantra "hate speech isn't free speech"
I think it is time to rethink how we classify, view, and regulate social media platforms. The fact is that these platforms have moved beyond the age where they existed simply to swap selfies and funny cat videos. Over a very short period of time, these platforms have transformed into essential networks where most of the free exchange of ideas take place. Couple this with the fact that many people might be unwilling or unlikely to seek out other platforms in which they can engage others in political discussion with others, and you will reach a frightening realization. Not only are people self-limiting themselves to getting much of their information from these networks, but the social media network owners are absolutely free to manipulate what data is presented to the users of said network. In effect, this gives these companies what might be considered a loose "monopoly" on what ideas people are "allowed" to view and interact with.
Now, naturally, people are absolutely free to seek out other sources of information, use other social media platforms, or avoid the internet entirely. However, the questions that I think we should engage with here are these.... Are they going to other sources? How viable are these other sources? How well traveled are these other sources? How well networked are they?
If people are not making use of these sources, or worse, are actively being encouraged to avoid them by the very same social media companies which keep people voluntarily "locked" into their networks (insofar as the fact that no one is going to use a social media platform that has no one on it, meaning that people really are "locked" into using the ones that have high rates of use), then one cannot consider these to be viable alternatives. Even more imporantly, if there are no viable alternatives to these major social networks, I would argue that a new form of monopoly has developed. This new monopoly, even if one can voluntarily disengage in it, is engaged in a widespread campaign of censorship, media, and information manipulation designed entirely to alter the political discourse of our societies. This places the majority of political discussion in the hands of a very select group of people who can now essentially control everything you are allowed to see, hear, read, watch, and discuss.
This is too much power for anyone, even if any association with these companies is technically voluntary. I would argue at this point that we need a new form of telecom legislation, along the line of the common carrier laws, which force social media companies to be completely neutral in regard to controlling what information will or will not be displayed.
We could bicker over the fact that these are private companies and that people can use other platforms, but I feel these are technicalities at this point. We've had no issue in the past reigning in the abusive and monopolistic practices of an entire spectrum of other industries when the public good was at stake, and I think it is time to bring the social media platforms to heel. The fact is that these networks now control what billions of people see and hear, and, whether we like it or not, people are going to continue to go solely to these platforms, because that is where their family and friends are also.
Our political discourse should not be in the hands of the elite.
Have you noticed lately how censorship enthusiasts always resort to ad-hominem attacks against unnamed crimethinkers? Their basic argument goes like this: "oh, they're just a bunch of assholes, they don't deserve free speech like me and my goodthinking buddies do."
...if they in ANY way moderate their content, then they're akin to a bbs provider or chat room provider and thus liable to the content itself. If someone is abused or stalked or whatever, then Twitter should be held liable. ...if they refuse to control content in any way, then I think they'd have the protected status of a common carrier like a telco. I can't sue the telco (with any reasonable chance of winning) if someone calls me up and tells me I'm an asshole (ok the truth may provide a defense there in any case...).
or
Of course, from my understanding they have been practicing filtering, some might say tendentiously, so IMO that should make them massively vulnerable to anyone suing them because of trolls, etc.
After all, we seem to have forgotten a few fundamental fact of Twitter: NOBODY *HAS* to look at the fucking thing. If you're uncomfortable with what's being said...stop reading it?
-Styopa
While I agree that Reddit is the nadir of the internet, I am not fond of Slashdot's system, as it also suppresses any dissent that is actually threatening to the narrative, while tolerating token dissent in a public show of how virtuous Slashdot is for tolerating such outre opinions.
I wish I could agree. I have seen too many quality posts get voted into the negatives to believe that. As to why, the answer is obvious: it is the same group of people voting here who are voting on Reddit. Ordinary people, in groups, make decisions based on emotions, fear and anger. They hide that behind a veneer of civility, called "liberalism" or sometimes SJW, but essentially, they are anti-realists who are posing at being open-minded while simultaneously striking out against anything that reveals the instability of their position.
Alternative Right.
Well, that's because right-wingers tend to be vindictive hateful assholes a majority of the time.
This differentiates them from left-wingers how exactly?
Why would Milo get banned and not the people making racist, homophobic and abusive messages to and about him?
Twitter's censorship policy may be equal in concept, but it's demonstrably flawed to hell in practice.
I noticed that death and rape wishes were conveniently left out of your comment on topicality. Nobody is leaving twitter because people talk about moon landings when they are trying to talk about mosquitos. They are leaving because entitled brats on twitter are telling them how much they hope they are beaten, raped, or killed just for expressing an opinion that they don't appreciate.
By following a design where people can run others off of twitter by flooding their mentions with graphic depictions of rape, murder, and other forms of violence against them, any viewer is getting an incomplete conversation, skewed by what the most number of people like or dislike.
The people on the left liked free speech when their speech was unpopular. They turned against it once they gained enough control of the culture to be the majority voice. As with most people they don't support free speech, only popular speech. They don't support liberty, only the idea that everyone should be free to live the way they themselves think people should live.
The ability to mod down kills dissent. Not saying this is always a bad thing, but it's not always a good thing either.
Imagine if Google allowed people to mod search results the way slashdot does. Now imagine 98% of people who search Google for a HDD formatting problem are Windows users, 2% are Linux users. The Windows users search for their problem (without specifying OS as lazy people are wont to do), and they get a page of search results, one of which happens to address how to solve the problem in Linux.
If just 2% (1 in 49) of the Windows users is a jerk and downvotes that Linux result (even though it was their own fault they got that search result since they didn't specify the OS), that's enough downvotes to cancel out all the upvotes if 100% of the Linux users searching upvote the result. The Linux site gets a negative rating even if it's the most helpful and most useful site on the Internet, because a tiny fraction of the majority Windows users are idiots and jerks.
Or in slashdot terms, because of the modding system a minority viewpoint has to be proportionately better-written in order to rise up to the same +4 or +5 as a majority viewpoint. This is why other sites have resisted adding the ability to downvote. The results aren't necessarily better or worse, just different.
As for which system is most fair, i suspect that falls under Arrow's impossibility theorem, where if you use "common sense" definitions of fairness, you find that it's mathematically impossible to come up with a single system which yields a "fair" result in all situations.
You must admit, your posts are often inflammatory and very, very inconsistent.
The actual source of Twitter's abuse problem is that it is all about identity and popularity, rather than content or discussion. You can't make much of an argument in 140 characters, but you can engage in social signalling and trolling. The most successful Twitter users are those with the most followers, and narcissists and minor celebrities want to increase that number; and the easiest way of increasing those number is through self-righteous indignation and trolling.
The solution to Twitter's problem is simple: discourage the use of real names. You'd find that most Twitter users with many followers would drop in popularity to nothing, and they would be discouraged from trolling people.
Agreed. Slashdot has easily the single best method of moderating out of every major website, changing that would be foolish.
And Twitter is finding out what Usenet found out. When you have 0 restraints, you do indeed become a honeypot for assholes. It's called the "Tragedy of the Commons". When completely unfettered, any common era sinks to the bottom, as productive people find out that the assholes have made the place completely unproductive. The term TofC came about from public parks with completely open access that ended up becoming grazing grounds as farmers brought livestock which of course chased out the people using it as a park. But hey! free access for all right?
A good example more akin to online sites is what happened to usenet. A small example is at one time, there was an electronics group called rec.radio.antenna. I was on the group for a number of years. It was a tremendous resource, with some highly respected professional designers, Amateurs who also made contributions to the SoA, and a lot of people there to learn from them.
It also had a few kooks, but not the jackass variety, just guys with strange theories. You could have a rational exchange with them, and often they served as a goad to make you think.
And a few weirdos - but they were manageable.
Then, as the entry requirements to the internet became lower, a new element snuck in. And they were strange to say the least. Some had definite psycho-sexual issues that would make the typical "haiku faggot" AC here in slashdot blush. And of course, they would get into flame wars with each other, and try to draw the rest of us in.
As well, there was the odd equalization issue. Some kid with mom and dad's computer could get in the group, and go after the experts. A group of people carrying on a real conversation, and here's the kid screeching about how the expert likes to fuck pigs, or even physical threats.
And Usenet was so big on allowing the folks with the severe issues to have their say, even if it was turning the group into literary porn, and allowing the expert to be hammered with insult and threats. Their answer? block them with your newsreader.
Then the kooks started opening up dozens, in one case thousands of new accounts to get around the blocks. It was so freaking weird, as they not only wanted their insane range war, they wanted the normal users to have to see it as well.
So one by one, the actual users of the group went away. First it was the experts, then the rest of us. Now? well, a few of the kooks are still there, and precious little else. Group after group went through the same assault. Usenet is dead for all practical purposes.
Tragedy of the commons.
And yeah, Twitter is going the same way. It is a honeypot for assholes, no matter what they might think.
Here in Slashdot, the moderation system is not perfect, but it is about as perfect as you can get in a world with both normal people and assholes.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
How often are opposing views labeled as "trolling" on Slashdot? I have submitted a thoughtful post without any inflators words and it was modded down.
So what? I've had posts marked as troll, and I don't get much butthurt about it. If you had the balls to post with even a pseudonym, you might see that sometimes mini range wars erupt over posts. I get email notifications of mods to my posts, and sometimes its a litany of a post getting modded insightful, then troll, then insightful, ant overrated, then informative, then flamebait. I consider that as showing I am onto something.
Then again, I don't have the bitched up idea that everyone has to agree with me. If I end up as Troll in the end, then maybe I was being an asshole. So what.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Well, first you have to consider that anyone can be a moderator. I don't have mod points right now, but I've had them within the last week, and I don't post that much on here any more.
Second, there is such a thing as meta-moderation. (Or at least there was. Not actually sure it's there any more.)
Third, Slashdot doesn't want their moderators harassed. You don't get to see who modded down your post, because they don't want you going to every post that moderator makes and revenge-modding them, or harassing them.
Fourth, if you are consistently being modded down (presumably under your Slashdot handle, rather than as an AC), then the problem isn't the mods, it's you. It is highly unlikely that one or more mods are specifically looking for your posts and going "HaHa! Time to mod him down again!" while twirling their mustaches. If you're being modded down while posting as an AC, how are the mods supposed to know it's you specifically? Not even mods see who is behind a particular AC post.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Bollocks.
Both the left and the right want free speech. The problem is the asshats on both sides.
There are some on the left who think that no-one should ever be offended ever and want safe spaces for everyone, because god forbid someone be exposed to a scary idea. Bunch of bullshit if you ask me.
And there are some on the right who think that they should be able to say whatever they want, consequence free, and if anyone is ever offended, and wants them banned from a forum or whatever, they HATE free speech. Also a bunch of bullshit, if you ask me.
Let's get something straight. In the U.S., freedom of speech stops the government from punishing you for exercising it. (There are certain limitations, though.)
Just the government.
Only the government.
If you post (for example), some racist screed on a private owned forum (such as Slashdot, or Twitter, or wherever), and they decide to ban you, it's not a violation of your first amendment rights, because Twitter isn't run by the government. (Although, going by their track record, Twitter will take a long time to ban you)
You're still free to say what you want. You just can't use that forum to broadcast it if they decide to ban you. You have a right to free speech. You don't have a right to use a private venue to voice those statements if the venue decides they don't want you there.
And you don't have a right to ignore the consequences of your speech. If you want to stand in your front yard and yell offensive things as the neighbors, you're free to do so. Just don't expect that magically, everyone will go "Oh, he's just exercising his freedom of speech." No, they're probably going to think you're an asshole. But the two are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to be exercising free speech AND be an asshole. Just don't be surprised that people don't want you around because you're being an asshole.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
you simply can't say that Slashdot doesn't matter anymore because it doesn't destroy >80% of the sites it links to.
True but there are plenty of reasons I can say Slashdot doesn't matter so much any more. The volume of comments is way down. 200-400 comments per story used to be the norm. Now it's often less than half that and sometimes doesn't even get to 100. There are far fewer well known geeks frequenting Slashdot. It used to be a premier destination and a place to hear what the best and brightest had to say. But years of neglect and bad management have slowly driven away a substantial portion of then user base that once set Slashdot apart from other news/discussion sites. I won't say it doesn't matter at all but it's not the place it once was. Perhaps the new management can fix that though I'm not holding my breath...
If you post (for example), some racist screed on a private owned forum (such as Slashdot, or Twitter, or wherever), and they decide to ban you, it's not a violation of your first amendment rights, because Twitter isn't run by the government
It's not a violation of first amendment rights, but it is a violation of free speech.
One of the reasons I like Slashdot is the commitment to free speech, and the use of alternate methods besides banning people.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Can I ask the people on the left, when did the left start to view free speech as being a bad thing?
It started when they got so offended by opposing viewpoints that they started condemning them as hate speech, then adopted the mantra "hate speech isn't free speech"
Then quickly added, "Hate speech is anything WE don't agree with."
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Sure, those websites/companies can ban comments/commenters that are racist or w/e but then they don't "have a culture of free speech" like TFA is saying.
Kind of hard to say "we have a culture of free speech and love free expression so much except when we don't like what you say." with a straight face.
Just like the government, there are acceptable limitations that could be put in placed (doxxing, threats, etc) but that is not what we are talking about, are we.