Twitter is seeking to stamp out the anonymous bullies and trolls
So their entire userbase is at risk then?
Twitter is seeking to stamp out the anonymous bullies and trolls who blight the social media site. Today the company announced the Twitter Trust & Safety Council, comprising more than 40 organisations and outside experts. In a statement today, Twitter’s policy boss Patricia Cartes said the council was a "new and foundational …
I always recommend The Register to people looking for decent tech news, but I see even you guys aren't about gamedropping and perpetuating the lies about GamerGate. Disappointing to say the least.
Incidentally, twitter have been removing the gg tag and any others related to it from the tag auto-complete suggestions for months, they've also redirected searches on the tag to diferent search terms entirely ('beach' and 'wine'...), and are more than happy to have mass blocklists enabled based on guilt by association.
And if they're doing that to a group of people that just want to talk about shitty games journalism, who else are they dicking around at the behest of their chums?
It's no wonder Topsy has gone, with Twitter making any analytics unreliable and pointless with their behaviour.
What did you think it was about? If it's a movement of misogynists, why are there so many women involved via #notyourshield? If it's not actually about journos accepting bribes and favors, what suddenly prompted the FCC to update its disclosure guidelines?
There are two sides to pretty much everything, but when you add in the media bias from the gawker/polygon clique, the politics involved, and the dozens of smaller factions with their own agendas (SA's Goons, for example, or 8ch), it's nearly impossible to decipher what's happening. Why on earth would you only accept a single narrative?
As a sidenote, why IS El Reg namedropping gamergate so much lately? It gets obnoxious.
It's the man covered in shit routine, you can have the best intention and arguement in the world, but when the man covered in shit stands up and goes "I'm with this person" you're stuffed.
And it's just so easy for people to be part of an "internet thing" almost all of them have plenty of people covered in shit involved.
As to gamergate dropping - I assume it's to prove they're progressive. I mean, just wait until El Reg does a line of article on how "IT Professionals are Dead" and how they should all just stop being in IT because they're scum and are useless sad people who should live in bins. That tends to be the next stage in proving you're progressive for a web rag.
Surely this should be pretty easy, through giving feedback system to users. Allow users to tag tweets as trolling / spam etc. Apply random audits, particularly of contentious feedback. Use the feedback, and the results of the random audits, to give a weighting to tweeters.
By default, only tweets from users with a >0 rating would be shown, but users (particularly for example high profile users) could set their feeds to only receive/display tweets from users with a higher rating.
On top of ratings, if your tweet is reported by enough people, it would get flagged, you would be notified, and it wouldn't be shown any more. You could appeal this, which would send it into some sort of audit system (presumably this could largely be automated).
Obviously there would be false troll reports, but a combination of clever algorithms and a small percentage of manual auditing should be able to sort that out, and false reporting could either lower the reporter's own rating, or remove their future ability to report.
What you are describing is simply a popularity contest. That's not what should be expected. There will always be timid twerps who can't take comment or criticism of any kind thus any "real life" conversation will always be tagged. We have already propagated far too many children with unreasonable Disneyland expectations of life. The world does not need to breed anymore pantywaists who breakdown and run to their safe space at the mere hint of derogatory language nor does it need to give them any more tools to avoid reality.
Did you see my bit about audits, and penalties for people who abuse the system? Maybe not, as it was only about half of the words I typed.
I'm not describing a Reddit (or even Reg) style voting system, but a "report this post as Trolling" system, where users would be under no illusion that reports are serious, and false reports will penalise them, not the person they are reporting.
@AndyS if it were actually left up to the people most of these whiners crying wolf over 'abuse' would be the ones having their tweets flagged. For the most part they are the ones trying to suppress others from voicing opinions that don't agree with them by screaming 'bully' every time, while in fact being the actual bullies themselves. Since the author mentions #gamegate have a look back at who the most vicious bullies were the so called paragons of feminist gamer journalism.
The big problem that Twitter has, is that the definition of trolling has changed over the years and it now means "that person said something that I don't like/agree with". Is calling someone an idiot bullying or trolling? It's a very blurred line.
I'm concerned that Twitter will become (even more of) a hard left-wing platform where anything that doesn't reflect a certain point of view will be flagged as trolling / bullying and the whole thing will turn into a massive echo chamber of little benefit...
@Cosmo, and that is why their stock is tanking and desperation is setting in, when they alienate half their user base with heavy handed tactics (like unverifying Milo Yiannopoulos with no reason at all - well we all know the reason he annoyed some feminists with the truth of their hypocrisy) its not going to go well. This thing will be another exercise in 'protecting' the actual bullies, the loud abusive feminists and such, from people they don't agree with. GG twitter.
I wouldn't be surprised if their stock tanking was at least partly due to them making the platform (and information within) utterly useless to all the people and companies out there that make money analysing trends and the data produced by the users of twitter.
Why would Apple buy up Topsy and leave it going for a couple of years and then axe it coincidentally around the time Twitter starts messing around with tweet and hashtag visibility (and apparently making api changes that affect such services)? Did they not have a use for the staff behind the site at the time they bought up the company?
Their stock is not tanking because they are cracking down on trolls etc. Their stock is tanking because they cannot make money while maggots like #gamergate and their fellow-travellers infest the site. No major company in the twentieth century will risk any sort of association with GG's approach to "debate". Like it or not, Twitter has become known for (putting it politely) tolerating unsavoury people and they are only just realising that this can have a major effect on the business.
"like unverifying Milo Yiannopoulos with no reason at all - well we all know the reason he annoyed some feminists with the truth of their hypocrisy" everyone is by being a provocative burke
Fixed that for you.
Milo likes to pretend he's a iconoclast and a seeker of truth but a rampant egotist using the concept of freedom of speech as both a mechanism for his attention-seeking and a figleaf for his output is closer to the mark. That Breitbart employs him is a measure of his actual standing in the world.
I don't like his haircut either.
Twittter's faqs say
" establish authenticity of identities of key individuals and brands on Twitter"
So possibly they downgraded him from a key individual/brand
Also "Changing certain profile information (such as the @ username or protecting Tweets) "
So it can be a result of changing things
And finally
"An account may also lose its verified status if it violates the Twitter Rules or Terms of Service"
"Previously verified accounts may not be eligible to have their badges restored"
Which is what I heard. A sort of non-badge of shame. The last sentence can be read two ways- either once you've lost it you can't get it back, or just because you once had it - it doesn't mean you'll get it again.
They are a business and they operate all over the world. Their strategy HAS to be to ensure that people feel safe expressing their views on Twitter.
If you stand in my house insulting me and/or my family, it's not "censorship" if I throw you out. If you stand on the street and shout abuse at me and/or my family, it's not "censorship" if I ignore you or cross the road to get away from you. If you do that enough, it's not "censorship" if you get arrested and tried for disturbing the peace (or whatever).
But oh, wait, have you seen who they appointed?
Feminism is one thing, SJWs another, but the crowd they've brought in are genuine nasty pieces of work.
Suprised this article didn't include a little more detail on who is involved and their qualifications for the role. Any comment from the author?
(Beyond the snark we've had so far...)
This post has been deleted by its author
I don't give a shit about the trolls on Farcebook. However I DO worry about the number of trolls on El Reg. There aren't enough, and those that are here need to try harder.
What we need are lessons - or a training forum on "how to troll successfully and impress your fellow man". (Forget the women - they're no good at it due to genetic predisposition, too much adipose tissue rots the troll skills)
The real question is what will happen the first time they shut down a twitstorm attacking something genuinely offensive.
I mean, hopefully they'd have deleted that tweet about "Hope I don't get AIDS, only kidding I'm white" from a few years ago, but to make it stick they'd also have had to delete all the tweets tracking her flight and complaining about what a racist she was, because they perpetuated the offense.