Twitter: finally, fighting toxicity?
After many years of tolerating abusive behavior by a minority of users that at one point threatened the survival of the company, Twitter seems to be considering doing something about the problem by acquiring Smyte, already used by many people to do what Twitter wasn’t apparently able to do, combat trolls.
The company, which employs around 20 people and that has already raised funding of around €6.3 million, was created at the Y Combinator incubator in 2015 by three engineers specialized in security, uses machine learning rules derived from a company’s data related to scams, phishing, spam, false accounts, bullying, hate speech, insults or trolling. Immediately after announcing the acquisition, Twitter provoked angry complaints after closing the Smyte API, leaving the company’s current customers without service.
Twitter’s interpretation of freedom of expression has always struck me as naive. While it should obviously be defended, we also need rules to prevent the kind of abuse and bullying that has become rampant on Twitter. Because the company has failed to find a balance, growing numbers of people have stopped using it actively, preferring instead to simply listen in or keep up with the news.
Can Twitter, now returning to growth and more active than ever, introduce rules to exclude trolls, bullies and extremists who simply want to spread hate speech? Smyte has a good reputation, so buying it is not a bad first step, but Twitter now needs to develop rules to exclude rule-breakers. As I have pointed out on many occasions, there is little point in closing an account if the person or organization behind it can reopen it with another name almost immediately and gain visibility simply by following it from other accounts or buying followers. It needs to start using digital fingerprinting, for example.
Meanwhile, companies such as eGarante, in Spain, now offers a service to prevent and combat harassment on social networks such as Twitter (link in Spanish) based on deterrence: it collects evidence of such behavior that can be used in court. The downside of this is that it puts every conversation into a legal context that may only be justified in very specific cases, but it does provide a means to deterring threats and insults, the only valid response to which is recourse to the law.
At the same time, distinguishing say, satire or criticism from insult is not always easy, and mistakes will be made or intentions willfully distorted. There are people out there who promote hatred without using insults or hateful language, simply through irony or satire, others who do it only occasionally, or who pretend to be rebels, non-conformists or iconoclasts. Some people like to be the center of attention, organizing user revolts or threats of boycotts when challenged or silenced. Nevertheless, this is an issue we need to address, and the way to do that is by establishing clear rules and then to have strategies to implement measures against those who do not abide by them. Twitter’s acquisition of Smyte could be a turning point: is the company finally going to abandon its ingenuous defense of a freedom of expression without rules that has hit its bottom line, or will it continue to tell the victims of insults and harassment that they should just bury their heads in the sand like an ostrich or turn the other cheek?
(En español, aquí)
