Disappointing Twitter response in a serious harassment case

Comment by James, on 25-Feb-2010 18:46

Twitter is being smart.

If they embark down a road of removing comments such as these, they can conceivably be held responsible for those they do not remove.

If they remove nothing, they can maintain the comments posted on their site "at arms length" (common carrier if you like).

If the comments do not violate the ToS of Twitter, they should not remove.

It is up to the aggrieved party to take issue with the commenter through the legal process.

Comment by James, on 25-Feb-2010 19:12

Yes, I saw the originals. Clearly it was defamatory personal attacks from an unhinged individual.

But simple answer is, that obvious defamatory personal attacks from an unhinged individual don't immediately appear to be rule breaches at twitter (this said, I'm not now, nor have I ever or likely will ever be, a twitter user).

Twitter, and other social networking sites like this have a very fine line to walk, and an ENORMOUS amount of content passing through them.

I imagine they probably get thousands of "complaints" each day, from annoying teenagers and the like, "waah twitter, so and so called me a ...". They need to stick to their rules or they wind up with a hideous "shades of grey" situation.

Perhaps they need to change the rules, to make this sort of thing clearly against them, but I would hazard a guess that it would be a pretty hard thing to quantify.

You can easily moderate geekzone, you have only a few thousand members, probably a few hundred activly posting ones. You can put time and consideration into each moderation decision made, you can explain to those involved your decisions etc... Twitter hasn't a hope.

I'm not saying the comments should or should not be there, just that twitter need to have black and white rules otherwise their service would not be practical, calling them a "fail" for following their rules - that seems pretty unfair.

Comment by Nightwyrm, on 26-Feb-2010 09:44

Twitter use a third-party support desk, who's service at best is mediocre.

I had an issue in the past for which I received appalling service from Twitter Help, including closing my ticket without notification. At the time, I was put in contact with one of the main Twitter staff, and she resolved my issue in 5 minutes.

With this particular individual, I didn't even think of the Twitter Help, I just sent the details direct to the staff member I've contacted before.