How To Split An Atom

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Last week a brouhaha erupted over Twitter and their Terms of Service. The long version of the story was explained extremely well by Greg earlier this week, so I’ll skip to the juicy bits.

Ariel Waldman, a well known and well respected blogger, felt that Twitter had left her in the lurch by not banning a member who she said had harassed her continuously over the course of a year. Twitter’s response was, at best, blaise. They offered little more than the assurance that the behavior, whatever it was, was not a bannable offense.

Needless to say, this did not sit well with many of Twitter’s most vocal users and thus a blogstorm was born.

A Razor Thin Line

Since the actual transcripts of the abusive events aren’t being disclosed, it’s difficult to say whether the behavior — whatever it was — crossed the line. From all the clues we have been given, what’s certain is that it involved a set of nasty personal attacks against Ariel.

While I feel bad for Ariel, think this sort shouldn’t happen, and hope an appropriate resolution is found for all involved, the big question isn’t whether one person should be kicked from a web service for being a bad netizen, the big question is how much hand holding do we really want?

If you have spent any time online you’ll know that some people are just mean.

Take a look at some of the comments you see crop up on Social Bookmarking sites, take a look at any Forum from 1990 onwards. These platforms are full of feuds, personal attacks and jabs that in some circles would be considered libelous. When you allow people to retain anonymity and put them in social situations, some of the “conversations” that are generated will be unpleasant, it’s a fact of life.

Usually, companies that provide platforms like these handle this fact in one of three distinct ways:

• They don’t do anything.
• They give the community the tools (blocks, moderation etc . . .) to handle issues themselves.
• They moderate, removing users who threaten the culture.

Twitter’s terms of service, as they are written, would put them in column three. Having seen my share of unpleasant bickering over the network, I would say that their actual enforcement puts them much closer to column two.

Which is, as it should be.

The Future?

The responsibility of moderators for communication platforms (AIM, Forums, etc . . ), is to stop the absolute worst offenders, those who use their accounts primarily for abuse, those who create accounts for the sake of stalking, harassing and otherwise annoying users. They should step in when when all the community moderation tools fail.

Why?

Because the line between real harassment and Trolling is razor thin. Making decisions about content and whether that content constitutes real “harassment” is a daunting task, and when you have a platform that enables heated debate, making a fair judgment call is nearly impossible.

Would it be harassment to call someone a name during a conversation? During an argument? Is it harassment if you do it twice? three times? Does it matter what that name is, or what the context of the conversation is?

The big problem here was Twitter’s response. Instead of admitting that they had maintained a boilerplate Terms of Service without later taking into account how their platform has changed, they “stuck to their guns” and incited the community to hold them to their broken terms. They didn’t see this coming and because they were short sighted, they paid for it.

Live and learn.

My final question is what do you think the place is for a owners of a communication platform? Should they define and dictate the discussions that are allowed to go on over their channel, or should they empower users to do it themselves?

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