Twitter: Nasty, Brutish, and Short

Twitter is short. But does it also have to be nasty and brutish? Does openness necessarily breed incivility? Is there a way to preserve both?

Now, at last, Twitter and its CEO, Dick Costolo, is vowing to do something about Twitter’s problem with trolls, assholes, harassers, imposters, and their icky ilk:

We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years. It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.

I’m frankly ashamed of how poorly we’ve dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It’s absurd. There’s no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It’s nobody else’s fault but mine, and it’s embarrassing.

We’re going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.

A few questions arise. When Zeynep Tufekci wrote her brilliant essay about net neutrality, algorithmic filtering, and Ferguson, she made it clear that when the events of Ferguson could not rise above the filtering of Facebook algorithms — not to mention the editorial blind spots and prejudices of media — the news from the town’s mean streets could rise through Twitter because the network is open.

Ever since then, I’ve been wondering whether being open means having to be open to anything and everything, including shitheads’ bile. Once a service sets standards — either to exclude the allegedly bad stuff or to recommend the allegedly good stuff — does that mean it simply isn’t open anymore? Does that turn Twitter into Facebook? Does that shut access for a Ferguson story to emerge?

Around that same time, Twitter and its users started to draw lines in the sand. Twitter took down accounts that showed the first ISIS beheading videos and accounts that shared the stolen celebrity nude photos.

Importantly, I also heard users say it was wrong not only to share but also to look at these things, else one becomes an accessory to the trolls. That is a process of users — society — negotiating norms. It’s a good thing, I say. We are deciding the kind of net we want to build.

So now these two processes come together as Twitter struggles with how it and we can build the kind of network that does not breed abuse, that does not feed the trolls. I think it’s possible. Or I hope it is.

Twitter used to make it ridiculously hard to report abuse. When reporting trolls on mobile, Twitter required submitting URLs of offending tweets, which forced the victims of that abuse to hopscotch through so many pages that it was simply easier to block the abuse, knowing that it though unseen to the target, it would still ferment and fester somewhere on the network. Twitter fixed that. Twitter has made it easier to report trolls and it could make it yet easier.

I report spam accounts to Twitter all the time. It’s easy. It is a generous act for users to report spam, making Twitter’s job of eliminating it just that much faster and easier. It is an act of collaborative enlightened self-interest. Twitter needs to find similar means for trolls.

I think that means trusting the civilized users to identify the uncivilized.

Here’s my suggestion: I have reported probably a few thousand spam accounts and certainly a few hundred trolls to Twitter over time. Twitter checks those. If Twitter finds that I’m reliably right, why doesn’t Twitter give me the privilege of identifying and at least blocking and muting if not outright killing troll accounts? Twitter should certainly do likewise for victims of abuse. Those victims and trustworthy users could also nominate others to hold the privilege. Together, we can help Twitter pounce on trolls and starve them of air before they can spew more venom. Twitter can still check our handiwork; if we abuse the privilege, we lose the privilege.

Twitter — together with us, its users, Twitter’s society — need to define abuse. I tried that here:

[T]he troll is a subset of the asshole rather than the product of a separate line of DNA: the jerk, the boor, the cad, the schmuck, the douche bag, or the ass, to borrow James’ hierarchy of the hard-to-take .

What distinguishes the troll from the mere asshole is, I believe, that he* (1) has a target; (2) seeks to get a response — a rise — out of that target; and (3) believes he is acting out of some ordained moral purpose to destroy, to bring down his target. By contrast, the asshole seeks only to enjoy privilege. He demands personal convenience — and may cause collateral damage in the form of inconvenience to others in getting it — while the troll seeks destruction. He hunts for the kill. The troll believes he has a right and even a responsibility to waste his nemeses.

Does Twitter endorse the killing of just trolls or also assholes? That is a discussion that needs to be held and Twitter should use the network it already has to hold it (any suggestions for a hashtag: #trollhunt? #operationcivility? #starvethefuckers?). Twitter needs to make clear that disagreement is not a cause for dismembership. Only abuse is.

Twitter will also have to adjudicate disputes. If, say, the alleged victim of a famous and once-beloved comedian uses Twitter to accuse him of sexual abuse, is that trolling or justice? Twitter will need to find a way to decide. I suggest that it convene a jury of peers from Twitter to advise in these cases.

And Twitter will need to avoid governments expecting it to kill the behaviors and users that *they* find unsavory, for once a system of exiling users is in place, many institutions will want to avail themselves of it.

Twitter’s challenge is to maintain the openness that separates it from filtered platforms — technical and media — while nurturing the civility it requires to grow. Possible? We’ll see.