After all the outcry, there is still no mechanism on Twitter to deal with a barrage of harrasment. You have to report each tweet individually with many many clicks, and at best that tweet alone is locked—long after you saw it anyway. No benefit to you, no deterrence to harraser.
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There could be so many options but they don't exist. Could designate tweets as "can't embed" or "can't quote" or "can't quote unless following". You could mass report the barrage (which is the real issue, not individual tweets). You could mute "fruits-of-quote tweet".
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The reporting is onerous but results are haphazard. Similar language is sometimes allowed sometimes not. BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER. Twitter's remedy of "locking" a past tweet—already in my mentions—is of ZERO value to the person facing the barrage and ZERO deterrence to the harraser.
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Real. Lots of people seem to spend their lives tweeting "insults" at women who say anything gender related? While they were real people, bots might have been more creative: a revolving array of "cunt" "snowflake" "bitch" "SJW" "first world problems" etc.
https://twitter.com/TonyCava/status/1041361157020217344 …Show this thread -
Ordinarily, I'd have muted or blocked or moved on, if that. The onerous reporting process plus toothless remedy plus lack of ability to deal with the problem (many individuals tweeting boring/stupid insults rather than any one boring/stupid tweet) doesn't incentivize reporting.
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To be clear, it was much less than what many people face. I could have deleted the tweets, but wanted to see how it went (researcher side > peace-of-mind side hahaha). But my mentions were useless in the middle of the hurricane, and normally Twitter is useful during such crises.
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LOL, while we're at it can I fix my typos in the thread even if I can't have reasonable mechanisms to report or mute the whole barrage? harassment, inadvertent, lol. I had the keyboard set to Turkish.
It does wonders to spellcheck to write in multiple languages.
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Now, of course, this is a hard problem. The same affordances that allow a zillion people to say stupid things at once also allow for funny/fun/important stuff. I'm aware of that. But there should be a way to mute "fruits-of-a-quote-tweet" and/or control embedding/quote tweeting.
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It's a funny game. Last time I wrote about gender/phone size, it was a bit tongue-in-check, but also real. At the outlet, we got paid bonuses based on traffic. Some "men's rights" forums seized on it and my traffic shot up. I was like, umm. Thanks? Distorted incentive alignment.
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Finally, I'll check but I don't think I received a single useful suggestion/conversation from quote tweets. Many who follow me know how much work I do about journalist/dissident security and understand that I'm not complaining because I can't figure out something for myself.
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Unlike replies, the quote tweet takes the whole thing out of context and encourages a barrage of random strangers to make the same mind-numbingly boring and repetitive comments. IMO the quote tweet should be modified. It's not a positive conversation-enhancer in its current form.
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Also: Facebook saw drop in personal sharing after it spooked people about privacy. People messaged instead—arguably the right choice anyway. My lesson is fewer Twitter threads & more long-form—also probably right choice anyway. Not enough protective features to make it worthwile.
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This morning, I started a thread and then I was like—wait, it will be quoted out of context etc. I'll write it long-form instead. Writing long-form is often a better choice for me anyway, but just noting lack of platform protections is definitely a force fighting network effects.
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So, days later still going on. Pondering stopping using Twitter for anything substantive unless I get control over whether third-parties can "embed" or quote my tweets—out-of-context embed & quote makes it too easy for too many people to make stupid comments in my mentions.
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Maybe they'll screenshot, etc. I know. Whatever. That adds friction—someone has to find the tweet or type my name and then write something. Greatly decreases the fly-by idiot comments. Pointless to report—no deterrence, just work for me. Mute/block pointless: it's fly-by idiocy.
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I could ignore it—most of it is the zillionth iteration the same stupid comment. But, no, I want control over whether news outlets or anyone can embed my tweets and I want control over whether a tweet in a thread—it's a thread for a reason—can be quote-tweeted in isolation.
@jackShow this thread -
Yes. I may do that. I actually like the messy/opennes of Twitter. I don't mind disagreement and can totally ignore the occasional idiocy or insult. But there needs to be controls to add friction to the *volume* of idiocy/insult. Problem is scale/volume.https://twitter.com/JuanIsidro/status/1042401273105014794 …
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At a minimum, someone wants to quote a tweet embedded within a thread? Force the outlet/website to embed or quote the *whole* thread. That should discourage the fly-by idiocy and out-of-context quoting. Either that, or Twitter should just disable threads so we get it: no control.
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End of conversation
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