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A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds (fastcompany.com)
That shocking statistic comes from a study conducted by Amnesty International and AI software startup Element AI. From a report: In the study, called Troll Patrol, Amnesty International and Element AI looked at data from 288,000 tweets sent to 778 female politicians and journalists in the U.S. and U.K. in 2017. Using machine learning on the data, the group then extrapolated just how wide-ranging abuse toward women is on Twitter. The result: 1.1 million abusive or problematic tweets were sent to the women in the study during the year -- that's one abusive or problematic tweet every 30 seconds. And it's even worse for women of color -- and especially black women -- who were targeted more frequently than white women.
that criticism is trolling.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
How many men are abused or sent problematic tweets on twitter.
Why limit research to one segment to create a self confirming headline?
Without a meaningful baseline to compare against, what does the stat mean? (from what I've read, they didn't bother measuring the abuse frequency against male tweeters - sort of the same as when it's mentioned the appalling statistic that 10,000 women committed suicide in 2016 whilst deliberately neglecting to mention that 35,000 men committed suicide the same year)
Not a peep about how many abusive tweets were sent to men, using the same criteria.
Why would that be, exactly? Is it because women are the weaker sex, and hence need to be protected from this sort of thing, whereas men are stronger and hence don't need such protection?
Or is it that nobody gives a shit about men, whether they are stronger or not?
Or maybe men get WAY MORE abuse on twitter, but pointing that out won't substantiate the desired narrative?
Typical "intersectional" reporting. What is the base rate of abuse? Always be suspicious of people who quote absolute statistics. If you look at the research on this, you find that men are abused more than women, and that when a woman receives abuse, it is more likely to be from another woman. But the facts don't suit the narrative of the poor innocent woman being persecuted by the evil mens. PATHETIC.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Does the female version of the app come with rockem sockem robots attached? You're on a public platform where people's thoughts are brought to you unfiltered. I am surprised that only 1 in every 125000 messages is mean to a woman.
How about you ignore that 1 message and read the other 124999. Or like me, read none.
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Do the 280 characters or less reach out and pull their hair and choke them?
And what constitutes "abused"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Table-ized A.I.
I just looked at the published methodology.
I detect some issues with their methodology. Definitions of what constitute "abusive" or "problematic" tweets are explained in Appendix E.
Their explanations of the categories do not seem very precise. They are vague enough to include lots of edge-cases. Their examples are clear enough, but a clear example does not exonerate a vague criterion. (Hypothetical example: "I am going to murder you tomorrow" is certainly an example of abusive and threatening speech... but what else is in included as threating and abusive speech? Counterexamples are also necessary, else "I hate that rabbit in the field behind your house" might also be considered abusive.)
But more to the point, a full 55% of the tweets they flag as "abusive content" fall under the category of "other"... and that's a huge red flag.
They describe "other" thus: There will be some tweets that fall under the âother categoryâ(TM) that are problematic and/or abusive. For example, statements that target a userâ(TM)s disability, be it physical or mental, or content that attacks a womanâ(TM)s nationality, health status, legal status, employment, etc.
Uh... yeah. "Some" is 55%. And not only is this one the majority, it is a particularly vague definition. For example, if someone replies to an irate tweet, "Calm down! I know the Irish are famous for temper, but cool down a little!" is that "targeting a woman's nationality"? According to their description, it could be.
But here is the biggest problem with this study:
Nowhere did they compare this to any other groups. They singled out famous women and women in politics, but they didn't compare against famous men and men in politics.
And since there is no such comparison, it's all pretty much meaningless.
What if famous men and men in politics are "abused" on Twitter every 31 seconds? Or every 28 seconds?
Without that knowledge, does the study really say anything other than "the subset of people we chose got 'abused' at this rate?"
So what? Nothing to compare it to makes it pretty much useless knowledge.
While what they say may be true,
if you believe the extrapolation they did with their AI. (Why AI instead of simple arithmetic?)
It seems like they trained it to distinguish abusive from non-abusive tweets, using a relatively small dataset. Then they sent the AI out to classify at a much larger set of tweets on the internet.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The disturbing part isn't that somebody published this absolutely idiotic study. (I won't go into why it is idiotic, since literally every other post has pointed out one or more serious flaws in the study-- rarely have I ever seen anything ripped to shreds quite this thoroughly). No, the disturbing part is that Amnesty International was involved. THIS is what Amnesty International is doing these days?
I mean I'm not an expert, but I always thought Amnesty International was one of the most respected of all human-rights organizations-- the sort of organization I would donate money to. Not any more.
And what constitutes "abused"
Saying anything I don’t like.
I guess women either shouldn't use Twitter or limit their sessions to 29 seconds to avoid being abused.
#DeleteFacebook
A Woman on Twitter is Abused Every 30 Seconds
And a Trump voter ever 30 milliseconds. So what else is new?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
No, the whole story is an obvious troll. Let's just move on.
...I can't believe she hasn't closed her account yet...
How is it even possible to be "abused on twitter"??? What the fuck happened to sticks and stones and all that? I swear, this is the most delicate generation in history that written on words on social media now constitute "abuse"... and an honest disservice to all the victims of actual abuse in the real world that their suffering is being coopted by snowflakes on social media who get hurt by words.
How much abuse was from other women?
They explain their methodology and there is actually a textbox you can put your own test tweets into and it will give you an analysis and "problematic" score. It's right near the bottom of the page.
As for a the GP's question, they are not comparing to anything external. The study isn't making the claim that it's worse for women, merely that women get a now quantified amount of abuse and that it affects certain sub-groups more than others (women of colour, women with left leaning views/politics).
As a general point if men were getting as much or even more abuse, it wouldn't make any difference. Also studying how it affects women is helpful for men being abused too, as often the solutions are similar for both.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
More importantly, how many of those abusive posts were written by women?
(and how many abusive posts did men receive?)
No sig today...
It also very much depends on how you define attack. I would rather like to see the precise definition before rushing to any judgement.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Where exactly did this idea, that being offended by insulting language is abuse, come from? It's nonsense and we need to get away from it.
Ever play Call of Duty on public servers with voice chat enabled?
I get called a "motherfucking faggot" around once per second by random 12 year olds there, does that count as 'abuse'?
-Styopa
This. Without any baseline to compare against the statistic quoted is meaningless.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It also very much depends on how you define attack. I would rather like to see the precise definition before rushing to any judgement.
I think you'll find that opinions run the gamut from actual abuse, to disagreement.
These claims often trend to the silly. My wife is asked out all the time on line. In today's world, that is sexual harassment. She just giggles and tells the guy he's not man enough, but many women need intensive counselling for the grave damage done.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Emotional pain is self inflicted, for it to have any effect you have to actually care about whoever's saying stuff about you...
People online can say anything they like about me, i don't care and it's not going to cause me any pain. If close friends or family said something it might hurt. You certainly won't be able to hurt me with your words, but you're more than welcome to try.
If care that much what random anonymous commenters on the internet say about you then you should seek some help from a psychiatrist.
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