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What is Twitter's stance toward abuse?
What is Twitter's stance toward abuse? That is, when does Twitter take action to remove or freeze accounts and why?
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Some clarifications may be helpful here.
1) Track is a feature that allows you to receive (via sms or im) all Twitter updates matching certain search terms. A common use is to track one's own name. This is useful to find replies directed at you from people you don't follow.
More info is here : http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=...
2) Currently, this feature does not respect the block list. That means that if you block a given user and they create an update with a phrase you track, it will still be delivered to you.
3) We consider this a bug not a feature. It is our intention to change the track behavior such that it respects the block list. I don't have a specific timeline for implementation; it's not an easy change, technically. But if we could will it to be so, track would respect the block list.
4) Hi. My name is Jason. I'm the product manager here at Twitter. We're a 16 person company so lots of people get a say in what our features should do and what our policies should be. In the case of the policy statement that started this post and our view about how track should work, it reflects the position of the company as a whole.
Of course, we're also keen to know what our users think. Which is why we hang out here. And we want to be able to change our minds if we find out we've made a mistake.
But, respectfully, even informed by the discussion in this thread we still think that the way block works now is wrong. Folks should be able to choose not to have content from specific users delivered to them.
5 people say
this answers the question
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Twitter is a recipient-driven communication utility; you choose what appears in your timeline. To this end, we offer tools designed to give you more control over your experience using Twitter. For example, with the block tool, you have the option of preventing your content from being delivered to other people's timelines.
There are areas where we can improve our tools. For example, the track feature does not currently obey the block list, but it should. And we're actively working to prevent abuse by spammers of the "new follower" email notices.
Our goal is to provide tools that allow people to enjoy the Twitter service in the way that makes sense to them. To achieve this goal, we need to curtail abuses that impair our ability to provide this service.
Content and Abuse
As a communication utility, Twitter does not get involved in disputes between users over issues of content except in very specific situations. Twitter is a provider of information, not a mediator. Specific physical threats, certain legal obligations, privacy breaches of specific types of information (e.g. SSN, credit cards), and misleading impersonation are some cases where we may become involved and potentially terminate an account.
Overall, we hold ourselves responsible for building tools that allow our users to control their own experience. Twitter is not a judge for resolving disputes over most content issues—our focus is on service.
Technical Abuse and SPAM
While our policy regarding content is mostly hands-off, we are strictly intolerant toward those who would subvert our intention to provide a utility for recipient-driven communication. Twitter will terminate accounts for a variety of technical abuse violations.
That includes the above-mentioned follower spam problem as well as other means that degrade our service. For example, our service is degraded through the cross-posting of updates from multiple accounts as a way to get around the block and unfollow tools.
Note: We have been paying close attention to these issues and as a result we are in the process of reviewing our Terms of Service. Our goal is to align our Terms of Service with the concerns of our users with an eye towards what we intend to enforce. We are also working to make this process more transparent.
The company and 11 other people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Twitter is a recipient-driven communication utility; you choose what appears in your timeline. To this end, we offer tools designed to give you more control over your experience using Twitter. For example, with the block tool, you have the option of preventing your content from being delivered to other people's timelines.
There are areas where we can improve our tools. For example, the track feature does not currently obey the block list, but it should. And we're actively working to prevent abuse by spammers of the "new follower" email notices.
Our goal is to provide tools that allow people to enjoy the Twitter service in the way that makes sense to them. To achieve this goal, we need to curtail abuses that impair our ability to provide this service.
Content and Abuse
As a communication utility, Twitter does not get involved in disputes between users over issues of content except in very specific situations. Twitter is a provider of information, not a mediator. Specific physical threats, certain legal obligations, privacy breaches of specific types of information (e.g. SSN, credit cards), and misleading impersonation are some cases where we may become involved and potentially terminate an account.
Overall, we hold ourselves responsible for building tools that allow our users to control their own experience. Twitter is not a judge for resolving disputes over most content issues—our focus is on service.
Technical Abuse and SPAM
While our policy regarding content is mostly hands-off, we are strictly intolerant toward those who would subvert our intention to provide a utility for recipient-driven communication. Twitter will terminate accounts for a variety of technical abuse violations.
That includes the above-mentioned follower spam problem as well as other means that degrade our service. For example, our service is degraded through the cross-posting of updates from multiple accounts as a way to get around the block and unfollow tools.
Note: We have been paying close attention to these issues and as a result we are in the process of reviewing our Terms of Service. Our goal is to align our Terms of Service with the concerns of our users with an eye towards what we intend to enforce. We are also working to make this process more transparent.
The company and 11 other people say
this answers the question
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This answers the question
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Thanks! We all appreciate the update. -
Ack... I should have read this before I made my comment on the other thread... you are already addressing the issue I mentioned! Thanks! sbj
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Thank you so much for your attention to this matter. I think it is safe to say we all enjoy twitter and only want to see the service improve.
As for the the track feature, It would be great to have the option to choose if you want it to obey the block list or not. In our most recent TOS report case, if it had ignored the block list we may not have known that the abuse had continued for weeks on end. It's important for companies ot have the ability to track and monitor certain topics. So an option would be great! -
"Twitter is not a judge for resolving disputes over most content issues—our focus is on service."
Then you need to rewrite your terms of service, which presently outlaw "abuse and harassment". -
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Inappropriate?Thanks for sharing the Twitter position. I do not want to stifle free speech (ala @Foulbastard) and appreciate seeing your position.
Thank you for weighing in on the topic.
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Inappropriate?Re: "For example, the track feature does not currently obey the block list, but it should"
No, it shouldn't. You need to review this, and think about the system-wide ramifications:
o panicky, viral and hysterical spread of blocks on hitlists
o mistaken judgements leading to block of people who are merely re-tweeting innocently stuff they find interesting
o ultimately the problem of news aggregators not seeing people that have something to say merely because they could be acting on false block tips or irritated at criticism
There are serious issues at stake here, and if you truly don't mean to become involved in user disputes or content, then don't. People can just not track their own names as a vanity feed if they are upset at those talking back. They can then use your existing tools to adjust the experience.2 Comments Add a comment
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What if Twitter gave us a configuration to include or exclude blocked users from Track results? That way people can decide for themselves. Most people will probably choose to see the bad with the good but at least this way people would be able to turn off the noise if it becomes abusive or excessive. The only debate on this should be around what the default setting is.
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That's slightly a better proposition but it still leaves open the problem of system wide insularity in which is supposed to be a tolerant conversation.
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Inappropriate?Thank you for clarifying the position.
I know this solution will make some people unhappy - prokofy has already voiced her disappointment with this above - and will probably leave others with the feeling that it perhaps didn't go far enough.
Either way, it's nice to at least have an official position from the company at this point.
Thanks for letting us know what the company's position is at this point. It will be interesting to see what actions are taken (or not) as a result of this.
I’m satisfied
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This answers the question
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I hate fake peace-making crap that basically is just a cover for a gloat and a belief that one side has "won". In this case, losing is winning, because the justness of the proposition stands more starkly.
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I don't think either "side" has won anything.
You know as well as I do that Noah isn't going to stop messing with those he sees as worthy of his wrath... he just won't be doing it using the panopticons reposting feed.
I think you have some very valid points about the difference between violating TOS and violating someone else's comfort level.
My objections are only the ones I've stated in the other thread - it seemed as if what he was doing - in particular instances - violated the TOS.
Either Twitter needed to respond to the violation if there was one - or say that there wasn't - or say that the TOS needed rewriting.
At this point it would seem that the determination was "in some instances, some of the accounts violated the TOS and will be dealt with accordingly" (although how is yet to be mentioned I note) and that some do not and therefore there isn't any action that needs to be taken.
I already know from above that you disagree with the first part - and I knew from the other thread that there will be people who don't think it goes far enough.
The touchstone of a good compromise is often that all parties feel equally unsatisfied with the result... (and I suspect you know the source I'm paraphrasing there based on previous interaction with you.)
If you think I'm gloating? It would be ill-conceived gloating - as I had nothing to either win or lose personally. I'm neither the 'victim' of any of this, nor the perpetrator of any of it.
I really do believe it's nice to have an official position. It was getting just a bit silly over in the other thread rehashing the same points over and over when the only real position that mattered was that of those in power to enforce a judgment.
Hope that makes sense to you.
I don't think anyone "wins" in a case like this... the sad part is that the entire incident caused everyone to lose something.
And honestly? Yeah, I'm kind of angry at Noah for putting us all in a position to lose what we did. This sort of drama-fest should never have gotten to this point... and I do find his actions those of an instigator, not just a participant.
Sad, because if he hadn't done it, neither you nor I would be here writing any of this. -
There's nothing inherently good about compromise, and nothing inherently good about the mods making a ruling on TOS language that is already vague and overbroad. And that's why I say I hate fake peace-making.
Pantopticons would have been tossed in the bulk mail file along with the viagra adds and utterly ignored in email: the ONLY way he could ever come to any live 24/7 attention is because he leveraged people's vanity. Their need to follow themselves yet keep the vanity reflection positive and comfortable. And perhaps that was indeed worth tweaking. Regardless of the forms it then took of creepy stalking/vulgarity, etc. the problem stands: why do thin-skinned neuralgics upset about the pricking of their vanity balloon get to dictate the levels of public discourse?
I checked loudmouthman's feed for the last few days in Tweetscan. And I marvelled at what the hell all the fuss could be about. Out of 150 or so tweets, about 50 came from this Panopticons -- and they came because he kept grousing about it and grousing to others, and feeding it. Because there's a readily identifiable avatar, it was easy to scroll past the offensive Viagra ads and just read the signalled content. I had about 8 of these panopticons in my feed because I never contacted the guy or complained about him and just scrolled past him like I did other posts that were worse even, directly vulgar and hateful to me.
So louthmouthman can disrupt the entire viral and social nature of finding other people of interest because he has some Viagra ads in his mail box he can't scroll past?! I mean, come on, grow up!
You can't keep ceding power to mobs in social media, and ceding power to devs and coders of social media who haven't grown up yet enough to realize the sacredness of the public trust like the old media achieved. Frankly, more and more, the public, Congress, the FCC will be taking a look at why these claustrophobic, abusive private corporations that run millions of people's attention economy get to go on behaving like smarmy and exclusive private clubs when in fact they are common carriers sustaining the public commons.
There's nothing set in stone about a situation where a few disgruntled customers and fanboyz of the devs, and the devs themselves, get to ride herd over everybody else. This will be changing more and more. In fact, proof of that is the indifference that Twitter management met these constant angry demands to "enforce the TOS," as if the public at large should a) enforce its TOS and b) enforce it against the wider public interest.
It's silly to blaim panopticons for this track issue: you could blame Steve Gillmor just as much as he hs used a far wider bully pulpit to rail against it and demand the devs ad block-within-traffic as a feature. What is to blame is people's vanity. "Don't blame the mirror if you have a crooked face." -
No Geek Mommy... I mean Nazi Mommy... I will not be using Panopticons anymore. just a bunch of other people will. you might not hate them like me... but twitter is going like MySpace and with the exponential growth you will be dealing with a thousand Panopticons all of which will be a reminder of your pathetic hysteria
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Noah, Noah, Noah.
I'm so not sure what you're trying to do here.
Is calling me names - unwarranted ones at that - going to fix whatever YOU see at the problem?
In my experience - that never achieved any goal other than to piss off those who cared about your opinion of them.
I don't know you from Adam - you are, often times, annoying - but intentionally. I just have yet to figure out what you think will result from that behavior... If there's anyone who has been employing "NazI" tactics, I'm afraid that would be you. I've done nothing to you whatsoever, yet you are now attacking me.
That's not only bizarre, it's useless.
And I'm not at all hysterical - you're a pale shadow of those who used to troll Usenet threatening others with doom and despair regularly...
And yes, I'm sure you'll be "upping" your efforts due to the fact that I pointed that out.
Sadly, I'm afraid you have nothing better to do. -
Inappropriate?Thank you Goldtoe.
The refeeding of my and other peoples content into another account has been poisoning the rss feeds and metrics which I was using to locate conversations. This is not just about "has loudmouthman been mentioned" its been about how many times a word has been used. Since the accounts are recopying content verbatim I was seeing a reduction in the usefulness and validity of the scoring. As the account holder in question has not been a constructive and contributing member of the community I would like to see steps taken to reduce the impact on the positive and useful contributions of other members.
Thank you for opening the thread and I look forward to a response from twitter in the near future.
I’m hoping for a result
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This answers the question
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glad I could be a part in improving your life instead of the usual lemming behavior of most people on twitter who are afraid to rock the boat.
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the next panopticons will be on friendfeed and will not be in conflict with what is being talked about here. I look forward to reading your tweets.
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Inappropriate?Loudmouthman, this is merely your subjective and narrow opinion, and you merely succeeded in gaming the system loudly much like the target of your wrath, injecting many biased and personal evaluations of this issue, regardless of whatever narrow merits it has as an information management stream issue.
My RSS feed hasn't been "poisoned" by these creeps -- I ignore them. The angst about them is all out of proportion to the problem, and there's been no willingness to contemplate the implications system-wide of this much insularity and track-blocking crazyness.
I hate the idea that a few people can decide what is "constructive and contributing". That's death. That's Soviet. I refuse to let *you* or mods dictate that.
What YOU need to hear is that no, you didn't get your way, and any gloating you're doing is totally premature. Listen to what what said:
"As a communication utility, Twitter does not get involved in disputes between users over issues of content except in very specific situations"
That means that you can't hijack the mods of Twitter and convince them who is "constructive" or "contributing" in the manner only you and your posse imagine.
"Twitter is not a judge for resolving disputes over most content issues—our focus is on service."
That means you do not get to decide what is positive and enforce it on others -- it is a public service, your level of tolerance for criticism and dissent or annoyances simply cannot be allowed to lower the whole common denominator of Twitter for all.
Here's the operative paragraph from this mod's ruling, and it's a narrower construct that you might imagine -- that is, it does not allow YOU to dictate who is " contributing" or "constructive" it merely deals with some very specifically defined behaviours that it judges as actions, not content:
"While our policy regarding content is mostly hands-off, we are strictly intolerant toward those who would subvert our intention to provide a utility for recipient-driven communication. Twitter will terminate accounts for a variety of technical abuse violations.
That includes the above-mentioned follower spam problem as well as other means that degrade our service. For example, our service is degraded through the cross-posting of updates from multiple accounts as a way to get around the block and unfollow tools."
It's important to understand the real crime here. It's not being "negative". It's not twitting people's vanity and calling out their hypocrisy. It's not making smart or even vulgar remarks.
This is the crime -- *hampering the ability of the service provider to provide the service. This is the crime: By creating numerous alts and cross-posting from multiple accounts, panopticons began to interfere with the functions of the service itself. Making an alt to get around a block of your direct Twitter feed is a classic griefing case that seems appropriately dealt with.
When you mention "metrics which I was using to locate conversations," I can only stress the feeling many of us have about marketers and researchers and SEO scrapers on Twitter: the service is for public conversation; it's not merely to be minded for your own profit. -
Inappropriate?Is *repeatedly* sending the same update from 15 differrent accounts (within mere seconds) in any way "contributing" or "constructive"?
I think not, but in any case I really need the option of blocking these from my track. It's causing so much noise it's hard to find the human tweets in-between.
Blocking was my first action - only to find it didn't work.
I’m driven to distraction
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This answers the question
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Here they come AGAIN - another 15 copies of the same tweet. AAARGGHHH
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yes it has been... because it points to some serious issues obviously. GLAD I COULD HELP!
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Inappropriate?Marjolein, stop tracking yourself, and read in summize.com or tweetscan.com and scroll past the re-tweets. Once you stop tracking your own name, this problem will end for you. If you are not willing to do that, then don't expect it to end.
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Inappropriate?Prokofy,
What on earth gave you the idea that I'm tracking *myself*? That would hardly be useful would it now? I'm quite willing to "stop" doing that, but I can't because I haven't even started (and I won't). Thanks for your friendly and helpful suggestion anyway.
I am tracking a single word: 'accessibility'.
Here's a sample of the semi-spam I'm getting as a result (I've had several occurrences of a batch like this) even *after* I've blocked all of these users - note the timing:
[09:34:06] <twitter> (onlineschool): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:21] <twitter> (homebasededu): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:22] <twitter> (distancelearn): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:22] <twitter> (educationprogra): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:22] <twitter> (distancecourses): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:22] <twitter> (degreeprogram): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:22] <twitter> (online_degree): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:23] <twitter> (freecollegeinfo): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:23] <twitter> (homebasedschool): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:23] <twitter> (fromhomeedu): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:23] <twitter> (homeschooledu): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:23] <twitter> (distanceschool): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:24] <twitter> (learningdistanc): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:24] <twitter> (schoolexpress): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
[09:34:24] <twitter> (homeeducation): Cal State System Raises Accessibility Concerns over Blackboard Online Learning Management System.
THIS is what I want to get rid of by being able to tell Twitter to apply 'block' to a track as well.
</twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter></twitter>
I’m wishing people would READ before replying
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This answers the question
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that repetition of </twitter> at the end is not what I typed but generated by this system...
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Holymoly! - the "home school bot cloud" is at it again, sending (still!) the SAME tweet, 14 times - within 18 seconds. As if everyone who was following one of these bots wouldn't know by now. Really, this is spam.
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Someone else has reported the same bot-cloud. Also, Twitter support has replied to my 'spam report.' See http://gsfn.us/t/ik0 for more.
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