twitter
User Reports, blocking, muting- shouldn’t affect accounts
I believe MASS REPORTING (software obtainable on GitHub), to be a major concern. Without having to have actually broken any rules, users can be reported, blocked and muted out of the public eye by even small groups of people.
I believe there are several solutions:
- If you report someone, you cannot follow or report them again - prevents stalking.
- Reporting, blocking, muting should only affect the reporting users experience, not the reported user’s experience in the algorithm. (Example: They simply do not have to experience your posts again on their OWN timeline.)
- Only admin should have the ability to affect your account, and should not be done autonomously.
Basically, each individual will be responsible for their own experience, not the experience of others. The algorithm should have no say in this and should not affect anyone’s reach.
I mostly agree, but there might be a few people on Twitter who act in good faith and report accounts that are clearly breaking the rules. I'm sure the vast majority of reports are by snowflakes who can't stand those who disagree with them, but there also have to be some valid reports. Letting good faith actors file multiple reports on someone is probably OK. But, any filing of bogus reports should be used against the reporter.
I agree that blocking and muting shouldn't be held against the person being blocked/muted. In most cases they should be held against the person doing the blocking. For instance, I was blocked by the Cincinnati Reds (!) for bringing up their former owner. If that's going to impact anyone, it should be them.
The overarching problem Twitter has is their culture. Jack hired people like him and so on. They're passive-aggressive authoritarians who see no problem with censoring debate and lying to people. They're used to being surrounded with people who agree with them and when they encounter someone who disagrees, they can't handle it. Instead of trying to engage the dissenter in debate, they try to silence the dissenter in whatever slimy way they can. They have no real ideas and no ability to decide if something is good or bad. They constantly turn to authority figures for guidance and are deathly afraid of looking "uncool" to those authority figures.
I haven't seen Musk do anything about that and I'm not expecting much from him.
I mostly agree, but there might be a few people on Twitter who act in good faith and report accounts that are clearly breaking the rules. I'm sure the vast majority of reports are by snowflakes who can't stand those who disagree with them, but there also have to be some valid reports. Letting good faith actors file multiple reports on someone is probably OK. But, any filing of bogus reports should be used against the reporter.
This would lead to a number of issues. Who decides who the “good faith actors” are? And why should they get to report someone multiple times? If they have a problem with the content, then they shouldn’t continue to follow. If they continue following just to report, then they are the issue. It’s unhealthy.
That and nobody is obligated to engage anyone in a debate. It’s an unhealthy demand.
If they are truly breaking the rules, they should be reported and a mod should look at it. The main concern would be the mass volume of reports due to user count. In which case, it shouldn’t be anyone’s concern until so many reports are sent, DEPENDING ON CATEGORY.
The multiple reporter groups I had in mind were NGOs trying to prevent kids from being exploited, or trying to prevent terrorism, or trying to prevent criminals from organizing, etc etc. While a lot of NGOs have ulterior motives etc, some actually do what they claim.
I created https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/issues/1791 as one part of dealing with bogus reports.