Posts by Emma Hart
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Lilith __,
I assume suspension freezes the account, so the user can’t just delete the evidence?
Yes, it does. However. I raise my eyebrow very high indeed at Twitter's assertion that they can't see a deleted tweet. That's either a lie or an extraordinarily poor decision.
-
Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Lilith __,
Does anyone know what the process is for Twitter accounts reported for spam? I’m assuming there’s some checking done before deleting an account, but perhaps it’s fully automated?
Accounts are suspended on a purely automated basis. The account holder can then complain and get the suspension removed. So for instance I know of a couple of cases where "pro-lifers" organised "report for spam" campaigns against people who'd made pro-choice statements on Twitter
-
Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Russell Brown,
It’ll have to be very clear and focused on threat rather than language. I don’t think distant third-parties parsing abusive language is necessarily going to work out well.
Absolutely. The difference between abuse and the kind of conversation a lot of us might have with our closest friends is not vocabulary. And while I'm adamant Twitter should be adopting an active Let's Not Be a Whole Bag of Dicks policy, I'm also adamant that the bar for action should be high.
(Though also I am concerned about the other, probably more common, form of internet abuse, where each individual comment is below that threshold, but there are dozens of them, every day. A "report this tweet" button doesn't work so well for that.)
-
Also: Twitter already has a "report for spam" button. To which pretty much all those arguments would also apply.
-
Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Rich of Observationz,
But would terminating the abuser’s account have any effect – if people are that nasty, won’t they just recreate another one, and use an untraceable IP to boot?
Every hurdle you put up (so you block the account and the email it's attached to), a percentage of people fall at. It's not going to get rid of the worst of the worst, no, but it is going to thin the herd.
More importantly, it changes those messages Danielle and I were talking about. It actually sends a message that this behaviour isn't okay, which is the opposite of what Twitter is currently doing.
If they’ve done the latter, then even setting the law on them would have little effect – probably encourage them that the police are chasing around the world and can’t find them.
Well, except for in this case, where a couple of sad little twits have been arrested.
-
Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Danielle,
it sends the message that it’s not possible to change things and that being regularly threatened with rape and violence is kinda sorta acceptable
That's the message it sends to the people on the receiving end. The message it sends to the people who do it is even worse.
-
Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Bart Janssen,
But it’s worth noting that twitter doesn’t make a profit, employing a bunch of people to clean up the service they provide from the worst is yet another cost on a business that doesn’t turn a profit.
This, indeed, is absolutely true. And their volume of traffic is mind-numbing. I don’t expect them to be able to police everything, but I also think saying “We can’t get this perfect, so we’re not even going to try,” is Not Good Enough.
I saw one of the tweets that had been reported, and Twitter’s response to the report. It was a rape threat. I’m not going to reproduce it: take my word or go look. But there was no ‘open to interpretation’, it was just a bald threat of rape. Twitter said it didn’t breach their standards. That’s not a staffing problem, it’s an attitude problem.
Then perhaps it’s not a viable business.
It’s a free service that doesn’t have advertising.
I was… fairly unamused when some people’s response to having issues of staffing, multiple accounts, etc raised was that Twitter should become solely a paid service. Hello Middle-Class Western privilege, would you like to have a wee think about the Arab Spring?
-
Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Josh Addison,
Is this sort of behaviour really the result of entrenched privilege seeking to eliminate opinions that threaten it, or is it just the action of idiot bullies who see an easy target and aren’t interested in anything more than the immediate reaction?
Okay, in this case, we're talking about a group of men, co-ordinating rape threats against women because of their political position. This wasn't some casual trolling. It's not just more likely to happen to women, it's more likely to happen to feminists. I do think in cases like these, it is a silencing tactic.
In my 'more than I'm comfortable thinking about' years working in community moderation, I've seen women carry out some pretty appalling bullying, in one case including threats of theft and violence. But I've never seen a woman threaten sexual violence.
-
This is not, of course, just about depression. There is no drug that could even theoretically replace relationship counselling.
I have sat in a counsellor's office and been told, "Because you have said that, I can't let you leave until you've made a safety plan," while I protested that I was fine, really, everything was fine. Two weeks later, I had to use my safety plan. Counselling provided a safe place to talk, where I knew talking wouldn't escalate into an abusive shit-fight because someone was watching, and an impartial voice to say things we didn't want to hear. Like the word 'abuse'.
Relationship counselling can also save lives. Sometimes a 'successful outcome' is that the couple breaks up, and everyone is still alive afterwards.
-
The comment in the original article which pisses me off the most is this:
The country's biggest income protection insurer, Sovereign, says claims for depression have reached a crippling 40 per cent and the cost of counsellors it sends clients to "out of the goodness of our hearts" can't be sustained.
"Out of the goodness of [your] hearts"? It's your fucking JOB. You ask people about their history of depression when you accept their policies. Why does it seem such a surprise to insurers that their job includes paying out?