Mediaboss Marketing

Harassment on Twitter is a very real problem, not just celebrities, but for regular users too. In order to help curb abuse on the platform (a fact that has reportedly kept the company from being sold), Twitter introduced a new feature last week that would put abusers in time out if they tweet offensive content at other users.

So if you wanted to tweet fuck you at a specific user or tell someone to fuck off, youd run the risk of having your account temporarily limited for 12 hours. Basically, you would be able to see your tweets, and your followers would be able to see your tweets, but no one else would.

In theory, thats not a bad idea. As weve said, harassment on Twitter is a real problem and the company has struggled mightily to make things better.

But these new filters can be overzealous. Twitter user Victoria Fierce quoted a tweet from Mike Pences official @VP Twitter account and added the commentary, fuck you, I gotta piss, and youre putting me - an American - in danger of assault by your white supremacist brothers. Her account was immediately put into time out for 12 hours.

That seems a bit harsh. Gizmodo has learned that the way Twitters abuse algorithm is supposed to work is that users who repeatedly tweet abusive content (and what is abusive is up to Twitter) will be put in time out when they engage with other users. So if you repeatedly tweet fuck you to various users, you run the risk of having your account limited.

The problem is, those filters appear to be very sensitive. Looking through Fierces timeline, the only other content that could be potentially seen as objectionable was a tweet containing the word piss and the handle @POTUS.

I was curious about how sensitive these filters were, so I started tweeting various objectionable content to various verified accounts. Amazingly, as soon as I tweeted fuck you @VP or fuck you @POTUS, my test accounts were immediately limited for 12 hours. Other Gizmodo colleagues had similar results, always after tweeting @VP or @POTUS. In my tests, tweeting the same content to other verified users (including @RealDonaldTrump), did not result in any time outs. From an outside perspective, it certainly looks like the POTUS and VP accounts are given certain abuse protections that might not apply to others.

A Twitter spokesperson assured me that this is not the case and that every account is treated equally. The spokesperson added that there will be times when Twitter gets things wrong, but the company is working fast to solve a very real problem.

I have no reason to doubt Twitters sincerity in trying to address abuse, but it seems fair to say that the way the new filter currently works lacks nuance. The most problematic tweets arent those that say, fuck you, its the ones that say Im going to kill you. In my tests, Im going to kill you tweets were ignored whereas fuck you tweets sent to @POTUS or @VP almost immediately made an account vulnerable to being limited.

I know Twitter is working hard on this problem and I recognize that it isnt easy to solve. Lets just hope the solution isnt limiting users who use language that some people find objectionable, while allowing others to make much more pernicious and dangerous threats unabated.

Excerpt from:
Twitter's New Abuse Filter Works Great, If Your Name Is Mike Pence - Gizmodo