Twitter Is Working On Anti-Harassment Keyword Filtering Tool, Says Report (bloomberg.com)
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has made it a top priority for company to limit hateful conduct. In late December 2015, for example, the company changed its rules to explicitly ban "hateful conduct" for the first time. A new report says Twitter is working to further curb the rise of hateful conduct as it is "working on a keyword-based tool that will let people filter the posts they see, giving users a more effective way to block out harassing and offensive tweets." Bloomberg reports: "The San Francisco-based company has been discussing how to implement the tool for about a year as it seeks to stem abuse on the site, said the people [familiar with the matter], who asked not to be identified because the initiative isn't public. By using keywords, users could block swear words or racial slurs, for example, to screen out offenders. The filtering tool could eventually become a moderator for any kind of content, the people said. For example, users could block a hashtag about an event they don't care to read about."
If we can't see it it means it doesn't exist.
Twitter is about to become my safe space.
I bet all the keywords will be carefully chosen to avoid hitting political allies like the social justice nutters.
The problem for Twitter is there just aren't enough Feminists/SJWs out there to keep a dying social media platform alive.
What ever happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me?" If someone offends you, ignore them. If you can't bear to do that, a Block option has been on Twitter forever, use that. If you're still getting triggered, maybe you should step away from the computer for awhile.
Not a typo. It's sad how long it's taking social media to even get to what we had in the Usenet days.
Rob
Let me guess, insults that are thrown out willy-nilly, such as "racist" won't be blocked, right?
Well? Does it?
We need a new poll. Now that Twitter is just about done, where should I go? I jumped on Twitter years ago as my news "firehouse". Over the years it's morphed - my feed that is - into a pretty narrow view of the world. Time to move on because this isn't healthy!
Twatter is circling the drain. Hopefully it'll go the way of gawker.com.
at first I thought this was a Phantom Tollbooth reference but now I see it's something about #right-alt #left-ctrl #shift-meta-esc must be an emacs-versus-vi thing.
...goin' to the shitter
Facebook provides an example of how these filters will work:
http://www.naturalnews.com/055...
For example, if I follow Bob, then I (and everyone else who follows Bob) would receive Bob's tweets. If EvilJerk also follows Bob, he can be as outraged and tweet about it as much as he wants -- nobody except those who opted-in to follow EvilJerk would get his tweets.
Problem solved.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
They just now thought of this? Amazing, Twitter please filter this: "You fucking suck."
As has been said before, "Twitter is the confetti of the internet".
I'm too long-winded to use Twitter; it takes me more than 140 characters to say "Good morning". :)
Frankly, the vast majority of what I've seen on Twitter is self-referential "look at me!" stuff.
It's not micro-blogging, it's micro-bragging. "Look at my amazing coffee/breakfast/sandwich/shoes/tattoo"....etc etc etc.
It's not for me, but if people want to use it, then great- have at it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
nuff said
What happened to free speech? Why has the bar for "hate" been dropped so low? Why is no one defending this "right"? Why does the tail always wag the dog these days? Americans if you don't defend these "small" erosions of your freedoms you'll eventually lose them all!
It won't work, because https://www.google.com/maps/pl...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No longer "the free speech wing of the free speech party" then, right?
if they ever were...
They were for "free speech" when they thought they could make piles of money with that position, but now that they think they are losing a chance at some "lost opportunity dollars" by the presence of bad words they have decided they can make piles of money blocking "free speech".
So... really.... they're just like the executives at all the other money-stuffed "good" and "liberal" silicon valley firms: bastards who will do anything while wearing a good guy mask to fool the masses into idiotically worshipping them, using their products like drug addicts, and making them richer. They probably also have offshore headquarters or businees divisions to shelter their money from taxes while encouraging all the good littleliberals to follow them in calling for higher taxes "on the rich". There's simply NOTHING new in this tired hypocritical playbook.
Otherwise, besides the obvious politics stuff, i can see funny things like for example AMD,ARM and PEPSI becoming "racial slurs".
Maybe it is expensive to live near the beach?
Phallocrat!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Blocking all conservative tweets and pushing their liberal/socialist/communist agenda.
FTFY.
So they'll be banning any speech that talks about banning speech? Because that kind of speech is hateful towards those of us who believe in the concept of Freedom of Speech (which is not to be confused with the 1st Amendment's Freedom of Speech, so any replies of "Freedom of Speech only applies to government censorship" will just make you look like a moron who cannot read).
Automatic filtering based on 'bad words' are doomed to fail. Completely.
1. Many 'bad words' commonly used in insults, also have serious uses. There are appropriate uses for the names of body parts for example - even those parts between our legs. Medical discussions - or even serious discussions about sex. So you can't block "cunt" - it is not offensive in every use. The same goes for a lot of milder words as well. Also, substrings like sCUNThorpe, ANALogy, . . .
2. A nasty word in your language may overlap with a normal word in mine. Discussions may happen in several languages.
3. Even the worst slurs have their place - for example a discussion about their history or about who still uses them. Lets say Trump uses the n-word - shouldn't we be able to criticise that on twitter?
4. While word filters have nasty side effects, they always fail their primary objective. (To stop uses of some words.) People get around them with substitutions like "Pr0n" and "F*ck". Or use some of those greek/cyrillic letters that look the same as latin letters. If I want to offend with explicit swearwords and slurs - I can do that in any wordlist-regulated forums. Everybody will see what I mean - and take offense as intended.
No, let people block who they don't like - or file complaints. When someone gets a lots of protests/blocks, have a human moderator look into whether it is some troublemaker best removed - or merely someone who disagrees with a fringe group.
Welcome to the brave new world, where computers decide what you can and can't say. 20 years from now, when all the Twitter hackers have retired or moved back to India, no one will even know what the algorithms are that decide what you can say or look at. Similar algorithms will filter all college lectures for trigger points, and all lectures will be delivered via VR which filters out any "offensive" components, such as use of the words "nude" or "leg." All text messaging will be filtered by your carrier so that offensive text cannot be transferred to others. Same with email. All phone calls will be filtered through speech understanding systems. Criticizing the phone carrier will not pass the filter. Welcome, welcome, welcome!
Do not use Twitter, and fuck any US company that censors speech in any way at all.
First Amendment is protected by Second Amendment, neither are negotiable.
When you see stories about Ed Snowden said X______ on Twitter, it is not fucking Ed. It is the US government behind Twitter.
Putin didn't say Hi Ed, thanks for coming to Russia after ratting out the US government. Please use Twitter to contact them and the American people.
Just fucking nope. Wake up.
Twitter is on the way out, so let's make it more restrictive and less useful than ever before.
all the fun people go to other social media for their fun.
If every creative word gets instant corrected or another new word suggested are you really free anymore?
When even using the basic text input interface of a site gets dragged into a mess of guidelines policy, why stay?
Under new rules censorship flourishes...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Killfiles don't work if a harasser can summon an army of meat puppets.