By Justin McKinney, Staff Writer
Twitter has reportedly come up with a new system for blocking users and filtering out what they deem as “low quality” tweets in order to help put an end to online harassment.
While I can agree online harassment is an issue, however blocking users and tweets that the company says are low quality are stupid.
It may sound harsh but I think the obvious solution is people just need to have a thicker skin.
I mean is anyone in their right mind still shocked when trolls post dumb and horrible things? Ignore it or just block them, Twitter doesn’t need to set up a system to save their users from harassment.
I realize that certain celebrities have gotten it very bad at certain points in the apps history. As I recall Robin Williams’s daughter, Zelda, was harassed horribly after her father’s suicide, in fact she actually left Twitter because of it.
That’s certainly horrible because obviously the last thing she needs after her father dying is to be harassed by idiots online.
However, when faced with this type of harassment she just deleted her account. She shouldn’t have to do that, but Twitter monitoring its site like its Orwell’s 1984 isn’t a viable solution at all.
They won’t catch even half of the trolls that are causing the problems they are trying to fix.
The site is simply way too large to be monitored. They have millions and millions of users; there is no way they can fly in like Superman and save every harassment victim on the site.
Not to mention while Twitter is trying to stop people from trolling, their site has become a haven for ISIS recruitment. ISIS has devoted a very large section of their organization to recruiting potential fighters via Twitter. While Twitter has attempted to shut down ISIS affiliated accounts, they continue to pop-up every single day.
I’m no rocket scientist but I feel like an international terrorist organization responsible for killing thousands is a much larger issue than people saying mean things. If I was running Twitter that would be my main focus, not trolls.
I also question their use of the term “low quality” tweets; What does that even mean?
Facebook claimed at one point that they were filtering low quality material and it turned out they were just taking any type of right wing news outlet or right wing pages and making them appear significantly fewer times than left wing media.
I question if this is what is going to happen on Twitter. Is it just going to end up being a company filtering out tweets they don’t agree with in the name of ending harassment? They are a private company and I suppose they have the right to do this, but I think it is extremely immoral.
The fact is that as silly as it sounds, many people rely on social media for news. The owners of these large social media outlets are very much aware of this and I wouldn’t be shocked at all if they would use a cause like ending online harassment in order to exploit it for their own needs.
I am all for not wanting people to face the horrors of harassment but more or less silencing people’s accounts isn’t going to work.
As I said before, you cannot possibly keep track of everything that’s happening on Twitter, and investing funds that could be better spent combatting ISIS just doesn’t make a lot of sense.