How did Twitter become the hate speech wing of the free speech party?

Twitter has changed. When it started out it was a haven from the unread count in your email inbox, from the tension of blogging and comments. You didn't have to write long form essays, you didn't have to moderate commenters. You didn't have to make all those bold lines go away to reach inbox zero. You just followed some people and typed thoughts that occurred to you. Those who followed you got texted them, or sent them in IM. Simple.

Then, we came up with @ replies. They were a way of making it clear who you were responding to. Twitter sensibly adopted them, but they were off to one side. You had to click on the @ tab to see them. Your primary experience was still the people who you followed, which you controlled. I wrote about Twitter theory with this in mind.

Twitter created permeable, overlapping publics, and championed free speech and anonymity. They said they were the "free speech wing of the free speech party".

Twitter reinforced this by hiding tweets that start with an @ unless you followed the person being talked to. This reduced serendipitous friend discovery, but also damped down arguments. (You can still see this in twitter analytics: note the difference in reach versus engagement for posts versus replies).

However, Twitter had a perceived problem - this very contained, comfortable nature meant that it took effort to get started and find people to follow. They worked really hard at changing this, building a sign up process that made it very hard not to follow lots of people, especially famous ones. Also, they changed the way we got notified.

Emails and app notifications of new followers and @ replies were set up to drive engagement, encouraging you to return.  That @ tab got an unread count on it, just like the email inbox, and the app got a red number on it on iPhones.

The problem with this is that responses do not follow a smooth distribution. Sure, most tweets get no responses, but some take off. Hashtags became another way to spread tweets sideways, beyond the follow graph.

Twitter saw this as increased engagement, and most of the time it was good. They built special tools in for "verified" users—the celebrities and brands they used to woo the rest of us with on sign up. The Verified get to damp down the notification flood, or just see other verified people.

The problem is that by making @ replies the most visible part of the app, they'd brought us back to email and blog comments again.

Your tweet could win the fame lottery, and everyone on the Internet who thinks you are wrong could tell you about it. Or one of the "verified" could call you out to be the tribute for your community and fight in their Hunger Games.

Say something about feminism or race, or sea lions and you'd find yourself inundated by the same trite responses from multitudes. Complain about it, and they turn nasty, abusing you, calling in their friends to join in. Your phone becomes useless under the weight of notifications; you can't see your friends support amongst the flood.

Twitter has become the hate speech wing of the free speech party.

The limited tools available - blocking, muting, going private - do not match well with these floods. Twitter's abuse reporting form takes far longer than a tweet, and is explicitly ignored if friends try to help.

This is where we are now. There are new attempts to remake following-focused semi-permeable publics. Known, ello, Quirell are some. In the indieweb world we are just starting to connect sites together with webmentions, and we need to consider this history as we do.

Also published on Known

Also published on my blog

Also published on my website

Also published on ello

Also published on Medium

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@kevinmarks Good read. But I feel like the "sudden mob of internet hatred" issue transcends Twitter. It's becoming a vast social problem.
@kevinmarks you can turn off notifications of mentions "from anyone" and you choose to look at "people you follow" on the notifications tab.
@firasd it's been a problem for a while, yes. It looked like twitter had found a way around it and the erosion of that is my lament
@sampullara twitter add new notifications regularly, and default them to on. Finding the options after a crisis is hard.
@kevinmarks @leighalexander We don't need a cis white male intruding into a human of vagina's mentions during such a time, thanks.
@kevinmarks great piece!
+1 How Twitter Became the Hate Speech Wing of the Free Speech Party: @kevinmarks's brief history kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespe… @HT @mikebutcher
How did Twitter become the hate speech wing of the free speech party? http://www.kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespeech.html
@benwerd @dangillmor @kevinmarks If you missed it github.com/meitar/pat-twi… is a @unhosted app that lets users help users @Circleof6app style.
@kevinmarks GG bellends... Got to be a cream you can get for that.
@kevinmarks I think the question is can a service maintain an indie feeling when it goes mainstream?
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How did Twitter become the hate speech wing of the free speech party?
http://www.kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespeech.html
@kevinmarks oh hey, i saw and retweeted this yesterday :) you make a good point but i don't at all know what the answer is. you jerk
@eevee I'm not sure I know what the answer is, but it's probably not more notifications.
@kevinmarks @AbiWilks @kadhimshubber that plus constant outrage.
@kevinmarks @jtroyer @davidauerbach a public infrastructure need for controls to handle weight of humanity? duh. ask @craignewmark about it
@kevinmarks I did see this the other day! Thanks for re-upping.
@kevinmarks that's a really fab piece. Sometimes I really miss 2007 twitter.
@kevinmarks That's a great essay. But my point is: no one's forced to endure harassment on Twitter; the network has little value. Leave!
@kevinmarks If Twitter doesn't fix its sociality *and* engagement, harassed women and media figures like me will leave it to the trolls.
@jason_pontin we do find it valuable, but that is partly the memory of it being better, the way people my age pine for email's golden age
@kevinmarks Twitter *was* fun and useful once. I would willingly invest time and thought. But because of the trolling, I'm nearly done.
@kevinmarks This is awesome. It makes me feel less alone, AND I like thinking of Twitter as in progress rather than a failed experiment.
@caulkthewagon I'm hoping that Twitter starts modelling engagement better, and understands the toxic side of it. They need better signals
@kevinmarks Do you have any ideas about what sort of tools could help curb the vitriol?
@kevinmarks @kowitz I only complain because I care about the service. It feels like they're squeezing every penny out of the system. Sad.
@dburka miss u
@dburka @kevinmarks Yeah. Agreed. It's surprising to me how detailed their notification setting are, and how little control I feel.
@kowitz @dburka if you're verified, you have more settings (and possibly different defaults). New notifications keep being added
@dburka Shareholder value!
@dburka @kevinmarks @kowitz they're having challenges with metric validation set in motion with Non-GAAP reporting, and IPO-stakeholders.
@kevinmarks we're still on the @tummevision tip together. If we we're taping I'd want to have @mkramer on if she'd be willing
@kevinmarks how are you finding @ello ?
@heathr I'm not using @Ello much, though I read @cshirky and @quinnnorton there
@kevinmarks I read this: it nailed it.
@kevinmarks @jason_pontin Yes but. How many replies are we talking about? And what % of users get unmanageable amounts? Surely fixable.
@kevinmarks @cstross @ewout Free speech doesn't preclude forums like Twitter from making their own rules.
@kevinmarks @craig_montuori @shervin @semil Interesting! Q is whether we could optimize something beyond "engagement". Else slave to metrics
@kevinmarks @Me_In_Jersey @instapundit @realmyiq2xu2 Yes. Great info. Also the outsourced company to "check" abuse reports.
@kevinmarks @Me_In_Jersey @MomMilkshake @instapundit The internet has gone downhill since the good old days of Unix-based surfing.
@kevinmarks yes i am a part. subscriber to this theory but maybe also it is more complex
@mala it's also your private register collapse theory again oblomovka.com/wp/2003/10/13/…
@kevinmarks Though the idea that an avatar at the moment of a Tweet should be considered a part of that Tweet is also valid and interesting.
@kevinmarks But isn't how it works today.
@kevinmarks I pretty much agree that it would be better. But difficult to resolve with a user's right to delete their image from the service
@kevinmarks @AdrienneLaF "Twitter has become the hate speech wing of the free speech party." Seems like an unfortunate truth.
@kevinmarks @jcenters They say they’re changing things.
@GlennF @kevinmarks I'm skeptical it can be fixed without changing what Twitter is. Twitter doesn't scale well.
@GlennF @kevinmarks App dot net was the ideal solution. But, well…
@jcenters @GlennF my point in that piece is that twitter did scale well, until they changed things.
@kevinmarks @LynnMagic yes, this blogpost really shaped my thinking on Twitter's problems
@kevinmarks @dabravanel ibwas searching under Settings thinking duh that would be where it would be.
@girlziplocked @dabravanel I can just about see how they thought that making settings per account was helpful, but it is not obvious at all
@kevinmarks @dabravanel I feel like RT or GTFO is my philosophy at this point.
@girlziplocked @dabravanel but the nuances of faves are fascinating - the star/heart dichotomy is just the beginning.
@kevinmarks @dabravanel I think they'd be useful for low volume users, but not for people like me who tweet all day.
@girlziplocked @dabravanel well, we have been investigating indiewebcamp.com/favorite and @SlackHQ's 'all emoji are kinds of fave' is reframing
@kevinmarks @dabravanel @SlackHQ @arthur_affect and I both agreed yesterday that faves are like "message receipt" tools for us.
replacing comments with external posts
replacing comments with external posts 1 min read Regarding http://motherboard.vice.com/read/im-on-twitter-tooWe have an answer to this, in the shape of thehttp://indiewebcamp.com/webmention protocol.This makes it possible for posts on other sites to notify you when they have commented on an article of yours, through a simple protocol.I know this sounds like development work, but there are a couple of services that implement this wi
@kevinmarks @jeffjarvis @leolaporte Twitter needs a "Prime Directive" (Star Trek) filter. I keep having to invoke it manually.
@kevinmarks one of them, for sure. Another: overvaluing voice(s) of the already privileged, which connects to abuse he ref's in piece.
@kevinmarks it is also the reflection of larger issues that resonated w/ me. Thanks for reminder of your Oct'14 post btw. Good to revisit :)
@MojaveMusing yes, built-in protection only for the verified is part of the mismodeling there.
Thank you @kevinmarks for writing this. kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespe…
@energyovertime @kevinmarks I would really like the ability to turn off notifications on a per-tweet basis.
Thoughts on censorship
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Thoughts on censorship
Recently I’ve seen two articles on Hacker News, both censorship related: one about Twitter and one about the Great Firewall of China: Adventures in Twitter Censorship Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet Forewords: I’m very well aware that there are brutal differences, especially that you’ll probably face jail in China for criticizing things you’re not allowed to, but still: the Twitter paper was received as a "nah, that’s a glitch in caching", even though the evidence indicates
@kevinmarks huh! that’s an interesting way of pulling it. you think it happened that early?
@yayitsrob I think that change was what changed the kind of public it established by default, but the culture took a while to transition
STOP GIVING TWITTER IDEAS twitter.com/kevinmarks/sta…
@girlziplocked you're right, I should be charging them
@kevinmarks @Jason @girlziplocked oh man I'd forgotten about the @ reply column. Those were the days.
@kevinmarks but that is unsustainable for a commercial organisation ... as they are finding
@emilybell you can say that about most publishers too though.
@kevinmarks @TheSun @katieglassST This is very good. Sad too, I really do love Twitter and being able to follow writers/journos (faves x)
@kevinmarks @waltmossberg I changed the tweet (actually lack of a simple "Edit" button is another aspect where FB users scratch their heads)
@kevinmarks @EamonCaddigan @matasar I've seen a crap ton of people's chats. They usually don't get flooded. Unless they have popularity.
@jgidd18 @EamonCaddigan @matasar or if they are called out by someone with a lot of followers for bad think
@kevinmarks @EamonCaddigan @matasar So, people with popularity shouldn't comment on things? Not sending there followers on them like dogs...
Twitter's Tragedy of the Comments
A response to Abi's postThe characterisations of 'echo chamber' or 'filter bubble' as opposed to 'public discourse' miss the point. There is no one public- there never was. Literary theory talks about each work having a 'public', and reactions to the work having 'counterpublics'.Thinking about the web as set of partially overlapping publics makes a lot of sense, and one of the great things that twitter did originally was accommodate that well. We followed people we were interested in, read some of their twe
How did Twitter become the hate speech wing of the free speech party?,http://www.kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespeech.html How did Twitter become the hate speech wing of the free speech party?, http://www.kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespeech.html
How did Twitter become the hate speech wing of the free speech party?,http://www.kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespeech.html How did Twitter become the hate speech wing of the free speech party?, http://www.kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespeech.html
@kevinmarks @mezzoblue @tomcoates I'd rather a space exist where ppl can discover of each-others opinions - go to a bubble like fb then!
@kevinmarks @ShitposterClub but that's silly due to the asynchronous nature of microblogging
@kevinmarks @HopeStillFlies mostly disagree but Twitter design makes it possible to swamp ppl even if no ill intent.
@kevinmarks @ShitposterClub you're not being forced to answer /all/ inquiries before moving on to the next.
@kevinmarks @HopeStillFlies point being I don't think either of us consider selves trolls or malicious, I would appreciate benefit of doubt.
@kevinmarks @HopeStillFlies btw experience management is being improved in GS, Hannes added block/mute 2 Qvitter, I made a pic hiding plugin
@kevinmarks @HopeStillFlies I think with the right tools we can make managing experience better than Twitter for people that want control.
@ShitposterClub @kevinmarks Hours too long & pay too short for something Godfrey Elfwick / weev / Shanley does 100x better than I ever could
@ShitposterClub @kevinmarks so why even try I'm a jerk and people can knock themselves out calling me that
@HopeStillFlies @kevinmarks what are you mad about, the coc thing or the troll desig, bc the defederation stuff is unrelated to this afaict.
@HopeStillFlies @kevinmarks I just wanna be one big happy family again.
@ShitposterClub @kevinmarks I WON'T LET IT I'M A GODDAMN ALBATROSS AROUND YOUR NECK REEEEEEEEEEEEE
@ShitposterClub I thought they ran an instance & the wiki was explaining to users why "unlinking". @kevinmarks has explained they don't
@HopeStillFlies @kevinmarks ok I think we all cool then? I didn't like the "troll" thing but w/e. KEVIN COME BACK TO GS ITS DOGFOODING MAN
@kevinmarks No, I was using it because 140 char, and because algorithmic moderation is a real threat.
@jilliancyork being chosen by someone with thousands of followers for their little hunger games is also a real threat.
@kevinmarks didn't say it wasn't.
I’m beginning to feel the reason Twitter doesn’t have ‘mentions’ controls is explained by @kevinmarks (engagement): kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespe…
tragedy of twitter commons twitter.com/kevinmarks/sta…
Thanks! Much appreciated. I know this is too complicated for 140 characters. :)
“Your tweet could win the fame lottery, and everyone who thinks you are wrong could tell you about it.” LOL
my original post on how it did scale is at j.mp/twittertheory
Read the linked piece. Thing is, analytics are great for commoditized tweets, not so much for UX.
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“Twitter Hate” in 2014 #SCSA🌐 More proof of how ⁦@POTUS⁩ did not start the Hate Campaign. kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespe…
For the benefit of us without your level of understanding where is the hate speech in what @ZubyMusic said in his tweet?
I call everyone, mate. But if we take the literal meaning of mate, it means someone who I have mated with. I quite obviously haven't mated with 99.9% of the people I have called mate and wouldn't want to. Does that mean I'm homophobic? Please give me your advice.
What has hate got to do with ‘ok dude...’?
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The hate speech wing of the free speech party.
If you want to chat about the earlier days of blogs, let me know - as I was building the crawler at Technorati I got to know the landscape pretty well.
“Do bot trusted” certificate problems popping up when I click
my site isn't https
The genesis of the dlippery slope in media was Crossfire. The latent market for partisan-bickering punditry was revealed.
The genesis of the slippery slope in media was Crossfire. The latent market for partisan-bickering punditry was revealed.
probably memory holed but also relevant en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars
just distinguishing long-form content platforms (e.g., blogging platforms) vs short-form content platforms (e.g., tweets, insta)
Ah, microblogging, got it. (Microformats are a way to embed structured data in HTML that we use to add rich responses to independent blogs and microblogs in a distributed way)
Ahh. Non-coding law-talking guy, I am.
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