SubscribeAs a communication utility, Twitter does not get involved in these disputes between users over issues of content except in limited circumstances. Twitter is a provider of information, not a mediator. Specific physical threats, certain legal obligations, privacy breaches of specific types of information (e.g. SSN, credit cards), and misleading impersonation are some cases where we may become involved and potentially terminate an account.Seems like a pretty reasonable approach, actually. If you want to sue someone for harassment over Twitter, just sue them for harassment.
Overall, we hold ourselves responsible for building tools that allow our users to control their own experience. Twitter is not a judge for resolving disputes over most content issues—our focus is on providing a service.
"What this means is that legit users that are just discovering Twitter are going to have a harder time acquiring an audience, since those of us that have been around a while will become skeptical of people with a disproportionate following-to-followers ratio. If these people can’t find an audience, they’re likely to stop using Twitter, which means the company’s ambitions of crossing over into the mainstream could be short-lived."~ Mashable, 3-24-08)
Twitter: Web 2.0, But Management Still "BETA"
Confidential customer data released by rogue employee...
Extent of breach unknown due to non-existent audit processes...
Lack of oversight, accountability...
"I didn't know we needed to pay attention to that stuff," says CEO.
I have a list of 13 tweets that Ariel sent us as examples of the abuse from the account she wanted banned. According to our records, this is everything she sent us, except for those from the “confessions” account, which Ariel says was not the main problem. (I couldn’t look those up, because the posts themselves were deleted before we could look at them.)And, for Dreama:
I would *love* to post the whole file of these examples. I think it would clear a lot of things up. Unfortunately, since this content is the source of all this strife, and it’s now off the Internet, that seems…well, not quite right.
What I will tell you is this:
Out of these posts, exactly one mentions Ariel by name. It calls her “experienced.” The others do not personally identify Ariel.
One of them uses the word “cunt” (with a quote, presumably from Ariel). None contain either “crack” or “whore.” None contain threats, physical or otherwise. Most are insults about physical or personality attributes without referring to anyone specifically. If you were following both Ariel and the account of this woman when these posts were made, it may have been clear who she was referring to. Out of that context, you would probably have no clue. But even if they would have mentioned Ariel by name, most of them are not actionable, because we don’t have a rule against insulting people or hurting their feelings.
Caveat: Many of the examples she sent us were from Flickr. I didn’t look at all of these, because…well, we don’t run Flickr.
Our stance is this: We stand by our TOS. We have deleted accounts for abuse of various kinds. We had to make a judgement call here, as one does in all such cases. This didn’t meet the bar for being banned, in our opinion.
You can disagree with our judgment call. And that’s fine. But you’re choosing to do that without seeing the content, and someone has very carefully painted a picture that has misled many people. (One might ask why Ariel didn’t post the full tweets in order to strengthen her case.)
Even if you do disagree with our judgment call, this is not an argument about whether or not we’re enforcing our TOS; this is an argument about how we define “harassment” or “abuse.”
One more thing:
@Russ: “…a lawsuit, seems to be a concern of yours correct?”
No, not correct. That is a total red herring that was probably constructed to make us look like a cowardly corporation (clever!).
Not that we can’t be sued — sure, we can. But that has not motivated our actions here.
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posted by o2b at 2:28 PM on May 22, 2008