“A Honeypot For Assholes”: Inside Twitter’s 10-Year Failure To Stop Harassment

[rainbows_]

For nearly its entire existence, Twitter has not just tolerated abuse and hate speech, it’s virtually been optimized to accommodate it. With public backlash at an all-time high and growth stagnating, what is the platform that declared itself “the free speech wing of the free speech party” to do? BuzzFeed News talks to the people who’ve been trying

Comments

[naotmaa]

This was a good read. it's frustrating they don't do anything about this. I think when twitter works they way it should, it's great. I followed the Iranian protests in 2009, BLM protests, protests in the UK, etc. using twitter. It can be a great source of information, especially information that goes under-reported by the media.

But then things happen like the other day, when I clicked on a tweet by a celeb to see the responses-it was a harmless tweet-but one of the first things I see is a gruesome photo of people murdered by ISIS. I've reported so many people over the years but I doubt most of them were ever followed up on.

[sugartitty]

This makes me glad that I have never used Twitter and basically limit my social media use to the occasional comment on ONTD and liking my 70 year old aunts' photos of their grandkids on FB.

[redstar826]

I do social media for a left wing activist organization. We are relatively small compared to the big names out there (we have about 50k likes on facebook, about 12k twitter followers which is small potatoes compared to a larger organization) and we deal with trolls on a daily basis. It gets really tiring after a while, especially since our accounts are 100% volunteer run. A large number of the trolls we get are Trump supporters, and I feel like it has gotten worse in the past few months. And we aren't even campaigning for Clinton, so they have no real reason to bother us.

[elialshadowpine]

My thoughts on this are complex but my brain is mostly going "GRRRR FUCK WHITE CIS MEN."

My icon may sum this up best.