Prokofy's dashboard

Mike, I don't *care* if there are 10,000 Moms serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's irrelevant to pump up emotional issues like that to decide a public issue -- it's emotional blackmail.

And no, I won't help *that way* and *you don't get to dictate that this is help*. It's not. It's a huge distraction from the painful costs of the war for *everybody*.

There are many more thousands of moms in Iraq and Afghanistan crying due to the war, and the fatuous misuse of campaigns like mailourmilitary merely show up Americans to be selfish and short-sighted, and looking for emotional quick-fixes they can perform while chatting and eating potato chips in front of their computers.

Rather than vapidly supporting troops and never looking at their mission, you should zoom out some more and read up on the subject possibly somewhere *in addition* to silly Internet blogs, and email *your Congressmen* or *your local newspaper letter to the editors* about finding ways to *end* these drawn-out conflicts so that you wouldn't need silly mailourmilitary services -- which are merely being exploited by anti-war movements who can't get elected or formulate an anti-war platform free of sectarianism.

Threats to switch to other applications which we can all make are likely to be uninteresting to the mods. Your claim that you can speak for military moms is also downright creepy. You can't.

Sad little man though he may be, part of what this creepy stalker is getting at is right: your inanity in expecting to read your vanity track feed without some static about your sillyness.

When I pressed on the template here to pull up names of products, nothing came up *shrugs*.

Plus, while technically a Get Satisfaction discussion, it's really how this impacts the meta Twitter discussion.

Eric,

Here, let me try to summarize these many comments for you. and also note that having some of the comments in threads mash together all in one paragraph, and some space out, is an insidious coder formatting that falsely drives the discussion -- very annoying and troublesome as a larger issue.

Of course you're "entitled" to dismiss any dissenting viewpoint you like as "irrelevant" or "off topic" (although you'd be wrong about this lol) but...it is important at least to understand the *ramifications* of what is being proposed here by having block functions in track. Let me summarize:

o a system where block-within-track as a behaviour pattern and individual user decision replicates and spreads, creating many small circles that won't see content they judge "too critical"

o snap decisions about some people merely retweeting or following and talking back due to genuine interest, not some sort of "trolling" or "stalking" and a crippling of an important social expansion and viral feature of Twitter

o spreading of hitlists by both the parochial and thin-skinned provincials and by the sophisticated A-listers of people track-blocked in the belief this is a "public service" to "warn everybody about trolls and spammers"

o for those top influencers running shows like NewsGang reliant on being able to capture the Twitter zeitgeist and follow the feedback of the public on controversial issues of the day (Yahoo/Microsoft, U.S. elections, world food crisis, etc.), their ability to block out from their own view any dissent or critical talk-back

o a spread of hitlists to other services like FriendFeed

o As blocked/dissent-muted system spreads this behaviour tendency, a growing irrelevancy of Twitter as a platform, and public urge to go elsewhere, where A-listers and individual thin-skinned types are not able to so control discourse

o an end to your account and your job – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 14:40

Er, I don't feel "slighted" -- apparently you're thinking in terms of some of the thin-skinned types on this thread. I don't have a "different discussion in mind than what most people want to talk about," I have a *disagreement with what a few Twitterers are advocating here, which is to incorporate blocking functions inside track*. It sounds like you have trouble conceiving of a *debate* as anything but a "jumble of disagreement" and that you conceive of a forum as merely a place for a few to shout down dissenters and corral them into a false "consensus".

But this thread isn't representative of all Twitter users; it's an advocacy by a few who are annoyed at what they see in their vanity feeds, and the counter arguments being mustered to urge them not to nerf Twitter around their own particular needs.

May I also, suggest, Eric, that this sort of faux-conciliatory condescending tone you're taking here -- assuming someone is "irrelevant" or "off-topic" or "needing to make a new thread" because they disagree with the OP is what makes forums like this and moderators like you irrelevant to any sort of free public discourse. Of course, as a hired moderator to a proprietary site, you can persist in this sort of cultural dynamic, but it doesn't serve the needs of the modern age, and you are becoming outmoded. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 14:23

The productive solution is clear, in favour of keeping Twitter as open as possible to cross talk, back chat, talk bat, critical discussion: do not enable the blocking of names in track, i.e. vanity feeds. Don't do it. You don't need to. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 07:19

Eric, I think you're failing to see that a "productive outcome" is stepping on some very basic principles of free speech that you need not step on, even representing the interests of a proprietary company with a TOS. It's really up to you to set the bar as to how you define this. And blocking names out of track in vanity feeds has real repercussions. That's not a 'rant' that's merely a merited point of view that you or others may push away now, but it will really come down to haunt you later. The idea that *your* solution or the solutions of Nervous Nellies at the Gate are "actual answers" but somebody disagreeing with them is "a rant" is hugely problematic.

I marvel at the trajector you have made as an individual from mainstream journalism...to commercial tech journalism...to...this. And I do feel that...function...is something like the Fly amalgam with teleporter plastic. Managed democracy is always going to make me squeamish. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 07:17

>I have not asked that his accounts be deleted. I suggest you re-read my original post.

You want the power to delete his @ to you out of your feed. Yes, that's deleting him from your view. That has serious repercussions.

>He's not following me. He has not sent me @replies, nor has he responded to anything I've written. He is retweeting what other people wrote, with no intent to solicit a reply from me. Therefore your point is moot.

No, you didn't get my point. I said that your followers *whom you follow* are accepted by you when you communicate. What's at stake here, however, is that those who follow you *but who you do not follow* talk back. And you are wanting to filter out any backchat that doesn't fit your toleration level. If somebody retweets like that, it's to prove the point that you are reading vanity feeds, that's all.

>Again, you're not reading what I've written. None of his accounts above are blocked by me. He is free to follow my account. There is no need for him to use Twitterfeed to retweet what I say to get access to it, because it is publicly accessible.

Again, you are not getting the point. People retweet innocently -- and it's a good thing -- when they want their own circle of followers to hear there. That's because many people aren't compulsively checking vanity feeds, they're just chatting in their circle.

This guy has figured out that if he retweets, he can get you to get irritated as you are either tracking your name or going to tweetscan.com to see what @s are at you. And he's figured out how to annoy you in the course of your vanity perusals. See it for what it is; move on.

>I haven't asked anyone to block him. Again, I suggest you read what I wrote.

Again YOU are still not getting it. You don't have to press "block" on this guy (although will somewhat alleviate the problem of your original feed view). By begging for a feature to block him out of track, you're setting up a cascade of behaviour. And for sure, people will start making blacklists. Astoundingly, one was made and filled with 300 people within a day already.

>If you could kindly re-read what I wrote, you'll see that my objection is to the automated and multiple retweeting of content that shows up in my sms Track feed and therefore consumes my limited sms allocation.

Once again, for the 10th time. I read what you said, and I do not find you persuasive, and I don't think you're getting my point, either. STOP TRACKING. That's the point. The track of your name is just your vanity feed. Stop it, if it takes up your sms allocation and if re-tweets bother you. Untrack your name. Once you untrack your own name, this problem will go away! Worried about missing some @? Go on tweetscan.com later. But no, you want real-life obsessive vanity-tracking! So, these are the consequences!

>I talk about the sms limit because the continuous retweeting by his accounts consumes that limited quota and therefore impairs my ability to use Twitter in the way I want to.

Solution: stop tracking your name.

Re: I simply want to receive @replies via sms in a manner that makes the best use of the limited sms credits I have. His automated retweeting wastes my sms credits. Therefore, I would like a mechanism that lets me block accounts that echo tweets that I already receive in the first place.

You receive them in the first place when they come to you normally. It's your *tracking of your own name* that has gotten you into this jam. Untrack your own name.

Re: "I don't see why that's hard to understand. Nor do I see why it's necessary for me to justify asking for such a feature."

You're still not getting the top-level ramifications of this.

Yes, I realize you are in San Francisco : )

Eric, you're making an utterly false "resolution" here, summarizing the situation falsely. People objecting to single cases being extrapolated to make bad policy aren't "off topic". Bad cases make bad law -- overly restrictive interpretations of a few thin-skinned Twitterers about somebody twitting them make for overly-broad interpretation of your TOS.

I disagree that we have to fit into some strange MMORPGy geeky straight-jacket called "not resorting to personal attacks" or "political disagreements". What...people can't have political disagreements? And who is to judge what a personal attack is, when you can see the kinds of hysterics you have here?

Mdy did not hit on anything of the kind. Users of Twitter are not polled. Like any forums, this is the 1-2 percent of fanbois and those trying to argue them out of trying to take control. Don't conclude that you have some kind of consensus -- you don't! And this "purely technical" mechanical fix of making it possible for people to censor others out of their vanity fees *has huge repercussions you are not hearing*.

Suddenly, it's "productive" to suppress out all dissent and not even poll people about this? Suddenly, we have to accept *yet again* that a private corporation operating social media is enabled to shirk any notion of implementing constitutional norms, especially now that mainstream media is dying?!

To question this isn't to be in a morass; what's scary is that *you* are squarely inside of the morass if you believe that blocking objectionable people out of *vanity feeds* for Christ's sake is somehow "progress" and "consensus" and "merely a technical matter"/

I'm very disappointed in you; I had thought better of Twitter so far. Very discouraging that the Valley blogger A-listers can take you out behind the woodshed and beat you into submission.

Waiting for a Better Twitter to come along... – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 06:16

Oh, call it beneath my intelligence if you wish, but I'm fairly certain that the problem for most people bitching about this is that they track their names (like Steve Gillmor) but they hate seeing the results. And once someone detects that they get so riled, they may deliberately rile them -- like this panopticons is doing. Sure, there may be valid reasons. But most people sound like nuts making long explanations of why they need a prescription for medical marijuana for their slipped disc *cough* when really they just want a toke. I'm just not buying their story. I don't see that the Twitter people should be railroaded into enforcing the TOS over this; it doesn't rise to the test. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 03:41

I'm not an A-lister. You're right -- @techcrunch has bunches of followers but only follows a few back. So what if somebody decided to police *that*? I think there could easily be reasons for people who follow a lot of others, but only have a few following them back. I think you have to remain agnostic about this in the early days of social media or you preclude keeping it open. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 03:39

Uh, do look again, as nowhere have I said people can't hold opinions; are not entitled to opinions or can't express them and keep to them. Indeed, I expect that same set of rights myself, so any tribalist conformity bids will be rejected resolutely. I don't think you can be so passive about the Twitter people shaping this or that policy; you should feel ownership of it more than you did. The control freaks obviously do! And if they are anything like Second Life, which has been a microcosm of these things, why, they will shout loud and hard and pretty soon the Twitter makers will say "oh, the community asked for it" and shrug as if they had to do their bidding. I'm hoping they won't do that. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 03:37

Hehe I love how you control freaks use the royal "we" all the time. You are nobody! Nobody made you a "we" ROFL. I am not a troll; that is, I really have to reject the usage of this term as it is nearly always used merely to suppress criticism people don't like. We don't need more blocks -- just do some scrolling. I certainly DO have a problem with types like you -- anonymous! Apparently not very well educated or thoughtful! -- deciding where the line should be drawn. Do you REALLY think someone named 01000101 like Room 101 should decide where to draw the line???? Criticism doesn't get to be dictated as "constructive" or not by you lol. I'll tell you where you stand: on the wrong side of the First Amendment. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 03:34

Valley is a state of mind and network, not always literal. And I guess you were on QueenofSpain's show just now because you're just Jane Q Public ROLF. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 03:32

If I am in your twitter feed, it must be due to you having a vanity feed where you look up your name all the name and see people talking about you. I have no need to "have the last word," I don't plan and calculate, I just respond normally. I think you have to put this stuff into perspective. You sound like you don't get out on the Internet much. Have you ever been on a public forum before? I don't "sponsor" this freak's actions -- I don't at all support the idea of somebody making multiple accounts to keep bothering people -- but I see a larger issue here of what it means when little busybodies start blocking people right and left. I also have this guy on my tail too and I merely ignore him and scroll past him in the vanity check of my name. I'm going to be a First Amendment purest here precisely because we all have to worry where the First Amendment will be practiced as old newspapers and radio die! And I'll take a stand right here, and I don't see "incitement to imment action" or "deliberate malice" here so it just sounds like objectionable, but legal speech to me. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 03:30

Um, he's not using Twitter "inboxes" -- among other things, because this isn't email. You want email with protected abilities to filter spam and see only your friends' mail? Go to email. This isn't your email.

You seem to have a demonstrable need to cull, filter, and groom the public timeline -- you wish for people to "keep it clean and honest". Can you grasp that this is an entirely subjective and highly abusable concept?!

Twitter isn't a personal space. Your idea that this is personal space is very much crippling your understanding. In fact, there is no law establishing that this IS personal space given that it is a PUBLIC INTERNET FORUM.

You seem understandably confused. It's new media. It has new aspects to it. And if someone had the ability to creep into your personal email box on Yahoo and rant at you, and you couldn't put them in the "block address," that might be upsetting and would be a legitimate issue.

But try to see -- that's not what is operative here. This is about not an inbox, but making a vanity observer to go and see what other people are saying about you -- and then not liking what you see. It's as if you could tap into all the phone lines around you and pull out everybody's conversation about you and see it coming into your inbox.

And sorry, you dont' get to dictate by default that I have to a) be discouraged from talking about you and following you and talking back to you by b) insisting that I be invisible and rendered null and void to top analyzers of the system. It means those in power can never hear dissent.

This guy isn't circumventing a block. He hasn't hacked into the tools. He's just using "a social hack," i.e. taking advantage of people's obsessive need to see themselves in track.

Try to understand that you are just incorrect about this. This isn't at all about picking a lock: it's about these neuralgic types obsessively wanting to read the @theirname feed above and beyond what their followed friends send to them, and see what others say about them, ostensibly so as not to "miss" anything they might have missed lol. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 02:07

If you use track and see these re-tweets, you have a vanity feed 01000101. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 02:00

People who insist on google-stalking and bringing in my RL name, when I've stated a preference to use my SL pen name, are abusive themselves. And I often find curiously, without even especially being some feminist or gender-obsessed nutter, that it's male geeky types doing that. Stop it! I don't have any chip on my shoulder. I just don't want smarmy little police informants running the public space. You're not the only one in this public commons, Try to acquire a sense of yourself. I'm not having any heart attack. I do not require any meds, I'm not bitter, and I'm uh, not reaching for guns or religion in any particular way. I'm fine : )

You on the other hand are truly riled and obsessed in the worse kind of macho way about somebody talking smack to your gilfriend. Get over it? Move on yourself, dear. – Prokofy, on May 05, 2008 02:00