People have no idea how to use Twitter lists

In January I started a social experiment by creating two triggers to add people to lists who use certain hashtags — specifically #Catholic and #GOP, putting them into “Fellow Catholics” and “GOP People,” respectively.

The results were hilarious, if not frightening. A lot of people have absolutely no idea what the “List” function on Twitter is for. I wanted to share just a few of the responses I got.

Some people are super nice:

Some people seem to think they have a right to not be listed:

In fact, 74% of the people that were added and responded to me really had NO understanding of Twitter lists:

Only 2 people so far have understood what happened to them:

If you want, you can go look at the 100’s more who have responded to me on Twitter. It’s entertaining.

But let me make this clear: a Twitter list is a function of Twitter that allows you to add public profiles to lists in order to watch certain groups of people, publicly. There are even private lists, which I didn’t use. These lists simply let me watch your ALREADY PUBLIC content in a different place and organize it a little better. Regardless, you have no control over my lists and I could care less if you think you don’t belong on it. Tweets are PUBLIC.

In the end, this is obviously just one aspect of Twitter’s platform. But it stands as a testament to how little amateur users understand the features they are using on Twitter and the real lack of “privacy” they have.