If you have a grudge against someone, it’s best to create a number of Twitter accounts and harass your victim to no end. Why? According to Twitter, it’s not in their best interest to enforce their Terms of Service regarding harassment. I undoubtedly disagree with this decision on behalf of Jack Dorsey and their “legal” team.
If Twitter isn’t known for reliability, they can at least be known for a positive user experience in most cases, right? Well, not for Ariel Walderman. She has been dealing with someone who has created a number of Twitter accounts for the sole purpose of harassing her. This is a blatant violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service.
Ariel goes into a detailed account of the situation on her blog. Essentially, the attacker has been using Flickr and Twitter in conjunction to sling insults and other reputation-damaging phrases. This activity can hurt someone’s online reputation (like if someone potentially Googled her); especially knowing that a number of companies now Google employees to identify less than positive work ethics.
Twitter’s initial response initially assured her they would take care of it and for Ariel to contact them if further problems continue.As one might expect, the problems continued, and now with more egregious vulgar insults.
Eventually, after this e-mail exchange, she decided to engage Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, into the picture in and effort to seek effective resolution from the Twitter team. Jack Dorsey responded to Ariel and proceeded into a telephone conversation, resulting in Jack conferring with his legal team to decide the best course of action.
Well, Ariel was still being plagued by the harassment from one user, and attempted to contact Jack again to address the problem. (Maybe he was out of the office raising funding and didn’t give a shit about the users.)
Jack Dorsey’s final response to Ariel on simply enforcing their Terms of Service?
“Ariel,
Apologies for the delay here. We’ve reviewed the matter and decided it’s not in our best interest to get involved. We’ve tasked our lawyers with a full review and update of our TOS.
Thank you for your patience and understanding and good luck with resolving the problem.
Best,
Jack.”
There you have it, kids. Straight from the CEO himself, cowering behind the FCC’s Communications Decency Act (Section 230); will effectively do nothing in response to harassment from Twitter users.
***
Now, as one who used to effectively manage the abuse, stalking, harassment and unacceptable content within the Community on AOL (no comments on the users themselves…), I have a very unique opinion on this matter.
Now, AOL’s Legal team and Twitter’s Legal team seem to agree and both reference the same act in terms of the legal minimum in handling unacceptable content — essentially it’s perfectly legal for a content provider to do nothing in regard to content contributed by users. It’s a legal liability if they do so. (It’s the same reason why Wikipedia’s underlying foundation, WikiMedia, briefly experienced a potential legal disaster recently.)
However, AOL still does enforce their Terms of Service to some degree. Moderation may be out of the door, but reactive enforcement is still alive and kicking. Some might say that AOL still enforces TOS due to the fact there are minors on the service and others might say for PR reasons. (God forbid, AOL hosting a profane piece of content and doing nothing.) Let’s say for a moment, that the process failed, all somone needs to do is Turbo like a Pro and their harassment will be reviewed by AOL’s staff.
Twitter on the other hand, only offers “good luck” to the victims seeking resolution to their harassment and nothing more because they heir on the side of legal liability.
Twitter is wrong.
Liability (as defined in the CDA), only occurs when a content provider produces content themselves OR moderates that content. The logic behind this:
- If you create content (editorialize), you lose the immunity.
- If you moderate content, it’s expected that you enforce every guideline or lose immunity.
- If you promote/margininalize content; you are by definition, “moderating” content; you may be granted immunity. (This is the real grey area.)
Makes sense for AOL, at the time when moderation existed. Especially, being associated with a large media company — it’s not usually a good idea to face off with the FCC and the FTC, especially when they were proverbially owned a number of times in the past.
However, Twitter refuses to address the harassment coming from their users citing that it would cause a great deal of alarm for such a “small company,” and continues that they will modify their Terms of Service to better reflect their positon on harassment.
Let’s get out of the legalese for a minute, okay?
If someone’s activity is clearly unsolicited harassment, especially over a pattern, what value does that provide Twitter? Another “active user” to gloat about? Illegitimate accounts like those that Trolls, Psychos and Haters use, are of zero value, likely negative value to your company.
A content provider must also judge what “is” harassment. Oh, believe me, during my time at AOL we visited this topic almost daily with various live examples ostensibly provided by AOL users. It’s not a tough subject but one must always consider the severity, the pattern and the intent of such a statement.
I’ll run you through a crash course in determining if a statement is harassment:
Jack is a douchebag.
– “Jack” is ambiguous, vague and could be talking about a number of subjects.
– “Douchebag” is unambiguous, a clearly negative connotation, and mal-intent context.
– End result: OK!
Jack Dorsey is a douchebag.
– Jack Dorsey is unambiguous, referring to a specific person (probably the one who reported such content.)
– “Douchebag” is unambiguous, a clearly negative connotation, and mal-intent context.
– End result: VIOLATION!
See, it’s not that hard, and almost anyone (including India and the Phillipines) can do it right, given the right Swiss Army Knife of training.
I urge Twitter to immediately reconsider their enforcement policies and not leave the ‘Ariels’ out there in the cold, and to listen to their users and react appropriately. Twitter is a private company, private network, and private organization, unless the government is subsidizing it (trust me, they aren’t). You are free and able to enforce the Terms of Service as you see fit; just don’t “Safe Harbor” the abusers.
Note: I don’t really know Jack Dorsey, and I don’t think he’s really a douchebag, I just wanted to make that example. Also, I love Twitter, I just want abusers of their TOS to be dealt with appropriately, more than just silencing them from the Public Timeline. I support Ariel in her efforts to bring remedy to her situation.
[Link via StumbleUpon]
