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Comment by grabcocque | Hacker News Reader

It does rather cement in people's mind the association that Twitter is now mostly a haven for bullying, trolling and harassment. Something POTUS uses twitter for regularly.

Twitter had been trying to shake off the negative image it had acquired, but Trump's unchecked behaviour is rather putting paid to those hopes.

Question is if there's sustainable business in being the largest interpersonal abuse platform on the net.

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They've been trying to shake it off? How exactly? All I see is complete inaction from Twitter.

Twitter is really a terribly managed business on so many levels, including the one you referred to. It's a mystery as to why their institutional investors haven't staged a coup and brought in new management.

because last time they tried that it didn't even work?

:) I get that - and clearly the move was a failure. In which case, the blame falls squarely on the board.

Twitter has a business model/product model problem, among other things.

I think the product is exactly what the users want, actually, though it seems to generally result in a toxic shithole of all-against-all.

I think the business model problem is a direct consequence of the product succeeding at being what it is. That's not really a very good environment for "brand engagement" or whatever kind of consumerist brainslug implantation program they think they might use it for.

A radical redesign of the product could probably make it a better advertising platform. The question they're facing I think is really that they are being pulled in two directions: increase (or at least retain) the number of users on the platform pulling opposite make the platform more appealing to advertisers and people who have discretionary income.

They could hire me as a consultant maybe and I would instruct them that being the world's greatest engine for social strife is not an admirable product design goal.

They actually did.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-moves-dickcostolo-...

And several times more.

Investors are looking at increasing revenues and/or valuation, either is a hard thing to do with Twitter no matter who is at the helm.

Twitter created some kind of council made up almost entirely of people like @femfreq in response to #GamerGate and its aftermath. Supporters applauded it as taking responsibility and promoting a message of diversity and good things, detractors saw it as the end of Twitter-as-we-know-it.

I think this happened around the time some right-wing accounts were suspended or suffering weird "glitches" (e.g. sudden massive decreases in follower counts) but I'm not sure what the relation between that and the supposed oversight council was.

Other than the initial drama I don't think anything ever came from that. At some point Twitter sent promoted tweets pointing out the block feature with a nice animation about making nasty people go away but needless to say that wasn't even remotely helpful.

Twitter's Trust and Safety Council is a little bit SJW, but mostly it's there to keep celebrities from being bothered so much they stop tweeting. You can be as mean as you want to a nobody, but tweet something even a little bit derogatory to a celebrity and your account is history.

That explains the punishments. Every case I'm aware of involved a celebrity, though not always directly. There's been a lot of toxicity on Twitter recently but fewer scandals about celebrities (except Taylor Swift deleting her account).

It's not only Twitter. It's a phenomenon on other countries on other platforms too.

Basically, they have become a tool for conformity through approval seeking, shaming and bullying.

But most sadly it's people throwing any opinion and every opinion to see what sticks.

Twitter could just ban Trump but Twitter needs Trump more than Trump needs Twitter so it'll never happen

Has Trump ever doxxed anyone? Encouraged others to dox or harass? I hate him but AFAICT most of his Tweets are simply disliking public figures, which isn't generally considered harassment.

His tweets are actually considered violence by some. But to answer your question, he has never doxxed anyone.

People who consider words to be violence aren't worth paying attention to, particularly since these are the same people who think violence in the service of their own ideology is speech.

Why wouldn't it be harassment bullying a public figure?

I'm not agreeing with the assertion in this case, but there are very different standards for people "of public interest" and ordinary common folk. This distinction is made in a lot of places, including European privacy laws e.g. in Germany.

This is false, Donald has harrassed an 18 year old girl on twitter for asking him a question in the primary:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/65389793993336422... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/65396140136346828...

Which led to her getting harassed by his followers: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/this-is-what-happens...

It can't be false: it's a question, not an assertion.

In the tweets you linked to, he mentioned someone who asked him a question had worked for his opponent.

How is that harassment?

Where does he incite others to harass?

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