It's quite popular among some hacker circles. It's generally a useful service.
I'd say the majority of people aren't devoted fanatically to it like the fame-on-a-budget blogger2.0 crowd is. People like Arrington are so frantic about Twitter because it's become of their better platforms for building a user base. When it goes down, their business actually suffers, crazy as that seems.
For me, it's just a sidechannel to organize meetings (like at a conference) or a place to find/report interesting papers/posts/manuals/libraries. I think the majority of twitter users are like me in this regard: we aren't defining a metric of success by how many Twitter followers we have. In this capacity I find it acceptable, and the downtime is only a minor nuisance that I often don't notice because I just don't tweet that often.
Those are the new early adopters. Services that appeal to the blogerati and their particular quirks get endless free publicity.
Services aimed at everybody have a much higher hurdle to getting that kind of publicity, and forget entirely about services aimed at web novices. Those have to go after print publicity (oh the horror!)
To abuse your metaphor, I can't remember the last time I heard anything positive about crack either, and yet...
When your users are so hooked that they act like twitchy crack fiends, you probably have a winning product, assuming you can execute (which is what people are complaining about) and monetize (eventually).
There is no right to free speech in forums. The forum or a service like twitter are some one else's property. While you have the right to say what you want in public, I don't have to let you stand on MY front lawn if you want to spout hate speech. But if you stand in the street there is nothing I can do about it. Same thing here, Twitter is under no obligation to allow you to say what you want, they own the sand box and they set the rules. Apparently they just don't the gumption to enforce them.
Umm. It's twitter's decision. Twitter decided. This person -- who has a problem with free expression -- thinks twitter decided wrong. And then misleads about what happened -- e.g., saying twitter won't enforce ToS when actually they just don't want free speech banned on their site.
Its not free speech. Free speech is protected by law. By framing it as "free speech" you are saying anyone against this man is against free speech. He can say whatever the hell he wants, but it is not protected free speech. All the people who cry "BUT FREE SPEECH" on the internet whenever someone gets banned are idiots. The constitution protects you from the government, specifically the federal government, not from corporations acting within their own rights. If you can't understand something that basic, then I truly don't value your opinion.
Another reason why users should leave Twitter and migrate to other services like Pownce. Suprisingly, the author of this post is a staff member of Pownce :)
I noticed an appropriate tweet summarizes this debate: "biz: Yesterday pizza was sent to Twitter HQ by friendly twitterers and
today it's a keg of beer from @Mister_Robotics THANKS!"
The Twitter staff is apparently content eating pizza, drinking beer, and spending a freshly minted $15 million.
This seems... strange to me. Users are the life and blood of services like Twitter; I would do everything in my power to keep my users happy and protect them from harassment. I'd rather lose one abusive user than many good users.
The lawsuit explanation, especially, seems strange. I know threatening to sue is a common past-time for certain internet users (even though chances are they don't know what they're talking about and couldn't afford it anyway), but has anyone ever successfully sued a service for banning them?
I predict those kinds of problems will only get worse and more numerous on Twitter because going easy on assholes and not standing up against them for the benefit of your good users is a great way to send a message that you "want" more of the former and less of the latter.
This is exactly what Paul was talking about with respect to Trolls in a public forum. Right or wrong, difficult or easy, it is this simple: if the incentives favour the trolls and disfavour the polite users, the trolls drive the polite users out.
Is this seriously a whole blog post with 190+ comments about what happened when someone was called a "cunt" on Twitter? Because if that's enough to launch a blog with, I'm kicking myself for actually trying to come up with real content.
I've definitely been a victim of such "attacks" (though not on Twitter). The solution is to be more emotionally stable than a 5 year old and not care if someone calls you names.
I think it is one thing to receive the odd insult in internet discussions, and another thing for somebody to do some sort of campaign against you. I don't know the details of the original problem, but I can imagine that there are some sorts of online harassment that call for more severe countermeasures than stableness.
Well, I've certainly had campaigns against me. I've had people attack me in every blog post I wrote for months. Multiple times actually. I just deleted it knowing that they were spending hours doing that and I was spending seconds just clicking them away.
I more than anything just felt bad for someone whose life is so shallow and joyless that they actually care enough to put that much effort into hurting someone they don't even know because they were offended by some trivial thing he said on the internet. I have to believe that a person who would undertake that sort of campaign probably has serious depression and other mental health issues. I can hardly be upset at them given that. The emotional pain that they're trying (and failing) to inflict on me is the same they live with every day.
Short of threats of violence, who really cares? (I've had those too, which I turned over to the FBI, though nothing really came of that.)
"I more than anything just felt bad for someone whose life is so shallow and joyless"
Sure, so would I - but does it help much if some insane person tries to destroy your life? Insane to me means they are pretty much capable of anything. Glad it worked out well for you, but maybe it is different from person to person?
I can't really comment further, though, as I haven't had something like that happen to me.
Well, if trying to destroy my life means saying bad stuff about me on Twitter and Flickr, who cares? If they're capable of anything, including real world violence, then banning their Twitter account isn't going to make much difference in the real world. That's why I'd report any actual threats.
But just people calling me names? I can't find any compelling reason to even care.
I had hoped to read a cracking debate about whether Twitter should be considered a service, a community, or merely a service around which loosely coupled communities had formed, and the obligations implied by each for Twitter inc.
Poor twitter. They can't get a break. I'm surprised that most commenters on the various sites seem to automatically assume that harassment did occur and the offending user should be banned. The complaint was lodged by Pownce's community manager and in no blog post were any of the offending "Tweets" reposted, so everything seemed a bit fishy to me. I assumed I could just go view her timeline to judge for myself, but when I tried to do that, twitter broke.
I hope that chronically broken sites populated by censorship proponents aren't really the future of the internet. It makes me think sites like YTMND are actually performing a noble service to humanity.
Also, YTMND is as "indy" and "legitimate" as a website can be: just some kid who got lucky making something people liked. This is much unlike the SF echo chamber.
If Twitter moderates any legal content, they are no longer protected under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a communications service provider and are instead a publisher, which makes them directly liable for any user's libelous statements even if they didn't know about them.
To qualify Twitter just needs to be a "passive conduit" of the information. I believe the case law has defined this (in Twitter's context) to roughly mean as long as they do not actively monitor and screen content, then they are a passive conduit. That is, I do not believe an irate customer pointing out harassment, and then Twitter shutting the perpetrator off in response to that harassmanet, would undermine their CDA exemption in any way.
I haven't looked at this in a few years, so if there is more recent case law, please enlighten me.
42 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 87.2 ms ] threadIf I didn't read things like hacker news I would have no idea what twitter was.
I'd say the majority of people aren't devoted fanatically to it like the fame-on-a-budget blogger2.0 crowd is. People like Arrington are so frantic about Twitter because it's become of their better platforms for building a user base. When it goes down, their business actually suffers, crazy as that seems.
For me, it's just a sidechannel to organize meetings (like at a conference) or a place to find/report interesting papers/posts/manuals/libraries. I think the majority of twitter users are like me in this regard: we aren't defining a metric of success by how many Twitter followers we have. In this capacity I find it acceptable, and the downtime is only a minor nuisance that I often don't notice because I just don't tweet that often.
Services aimed at everybody have a much higher hurdle to getting that kind of publicity, and forget entirely about services aimed at web novices. Those have to go after print publicity (oh the horror!)
Everybody is free to join, though - hardly the mark of an elite circle.
You might hear a lot of complaints about twitter-the-company, but twitter-the-service is generally regarded highly.
When your users are so hooked that they act like twitchy crack fiends, you probably have a winning product, assuming you can execute (which is what people are complaining about) and monetize (eventually).
Twitter is right. They shouldn't ban people for swearing.
If this guy has a real complaint he should focus on that instead of his stupid, anti-free-speech complaint.
god, say something mean!
PS Since you're giving out directions, do you know anywhere above ageism? Digg isn't it, nor YC :(
Sadly the irony was probably too dry, and resulted in getting modded into oblivion, which is why I said it went wrong.
I suppose no one noticed that the "get a life" and "go die" contradiction was intentional also. Except, again, I did, so it worked out OK.
edit: oh and i lost over 60 karma in one thread. is that a record? it's certainly my record.
I noticed an appropriate tweet summarizes this debate: "biz: Yesterday pizza was sent to Twitter HQ by friendly twitterers and today it's a keg of beer from @Mister_Robotics THANKS!"
The Twitter staff is apparently content eating pizza, drinking beer, and spending a freshly minted $15 million.
The lawsuit explanation, especially, seems strange. I know threatening to sue is a common past-time for certain internet users (even though chances are they don't know what they're talking about and couldn't afford it anyway), but has anyone ever successfully sued a service for banning them?
Wait until the word spreads. It won't be pretty.
What solution do you propose?
I more than anything just felt bad for someone whose life is so shallow and joyless that they actually care enough to put that much effort into hurting someone they don't even know because they were offended by some trivial thing he said on the internet. I have to believe that a person who would undertake that sort of campaign probably has serious depression and other mental health issues. I can hardly be upset at them given that. The emotional pain that they're trying (and failing) to inflict on me is the same they live with every day.
Short of threats of violence, who really cares? (I've had those too, which I turned over to the FBI, though nothing really came of that.)
Sure, so would I - but does it help much if some insane person tries to destroy your life? Insane to me means they are pretty much capable of anything. Glad it worked out well for you, but maybe it is different from person to person?
I can't really comment further, though, as I haven't had something like that happen to me.
But just people calling me names? I can't find any compelling reason to even care.
I was (unsurprisingly?) disappointed.
I hope that chronically broken sites populated by censorship proponents aren't really the future of the internet. It makes me think sites like YTMND are actually performing a noble service to humanity.
Look at http://ytmnd.com/users/Click/sites.
Also, YTMND is as "indy" and "legitimate" as a website can be: just some kid who got lucky making something people liked. This is much unlike the SF echo chamber.
If Twitter moderates any legal content, they are no longer protected under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a communications service provider and are instead a publisher, which makes them directly liable for any user's libelous statements even if they didn't know about them.
To qualify Twitter just needs to be a "passive conduit" of the information. I believe the case law has defined this (in Twitter's context) to roughly mean as long as they do not actively monitor and screen content, then they are a passive conduit. That is, I do not believe an irate customer pointing out harassment, and then Twitter shutting the perpetrator off in response to that harassmanet, would undermine their CDA exemption in any way.
I haven't looked at this in a few years, so if there is more recent case law, please enlighten me.
How does Hacker News get away with moderating conetnt and banning users?
How does Reddit get away with moderating content reported as spam?
How do any of these sites get away with banning porn or spam?