Update 3: Please see my follow-up post about Twitter's response.
I started using Twitter in March 2007, just before their SXSW explosion. Not surprisingly, I instantly became addicted and since then have used the service for everything from personal to professional.
Overall, Twitter is a great platform to connect with friends and co-workers and it felt safe in an "everyone knows everyone" sort of way in the beginning. However, as with any social network that continues to grow (especially one that focuses on broadcasting messages to the masses), it opens itself up to the prospect of abuse, harassment, spam, and other types of typical Terms of Service violations. Considering the social network-sphere as it exists today, most people would assume that Twitter would be prepared to react and take action against TOS violations - their TOS page even states
"(These terms of service were inspired, with permission, by Flickr.)" - Flickr being well-known for taking action on TOS violations, even when the violations are debatable.
As I found out last month, the reality of Twitter is that they refuse to warn and/or ban people who use their service to "abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users" (to quote their fourth line item on their TOS page). What does this mean? In short, anyone can use Twitter to consistently harass you and ruin search results for your identity and Twitter won't execute any means of community management.In June 2007, I unfortunately found myself on the receiving end of multiple accounts of harassment from a user on Twitter. When the user started using my full name in their harassing tweets, I reported the harassment as a form of cyberbullying to Twitter's community manager and received a response that let me know they cared about the situation:
"[We] have decided, as a preemptive measure, to remove [the user's] updates from the public timeline. ... If you have anymore problems with [this user], please let us know right away, we're here to help :)"
The harassment continued throughout the course of 2007. Since Twitter and I had an open dialog started, I would periodically report cases of continuing harassment (some of which spread between Flickr and Twitter). Twitter would take no action while Flickr would immediately ban and remove all traces of the harassment.
Unfortunately, in 2008 it escalated to a level that could no longer be ignored. Tweets were being fired off directly calling me a "cunt" amongst other harassing language. On March 14, I wrote to Twitter, giving the example URLs of abuse and stated to them clearly:
"Since this is an ongoing case and due to the nature of the content, I think this person is clearly violating Twitter's TOS and I find it necessary for Twitter to uphold to this: "4. You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users." Honestly, I believe this harassment has gotten way out of hand for too long. I am writing to you and to Twitter to remove this user for consistent long-term harassment."
Twitter responded after 3 days:
"Unfortunately, although [this user's] behavior is admittedly mean, [s/he] isn't necessarily doing anything against our terms of service. I've been following [their] profile since your first complaint to monitor [them], as well. We can't remove [this user's] profile or ban [this user's] IP address; [they're] not doing anything illegal."
To which I replied (at which point, Jack, Twitter's CEO was copied):
"I don't believe this is a case of illegal activity - this is a clear case of harassment which is outlined in your TOS.To be blunt, I find that someone using your service to call me a "cunt" in a public forum is defined as harassment. Again, your TOS states:"4. You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users."It's Twitter's responsibility to uphold the TOS, otherwise the TOS has no meaning."
At this point, Jack responded requesting a phone discussion about the issue. My notes from the phone call on March 19:
I told Jack that it the harassment has escalated and that it was a very clear violation of their TOS and that I had had similar cases of harassment on Flickr in which Flickr took down all 3 of the harassing accounts. I asked Jack if Twitter had ever dealt with stalkers or banning people before and he told me they never had. Jack explained that they're scared to ban someone because they're scared if it turned into a lawsuit that they are too small of a company to handle it.
Jack additionally explained that their TOS was up for interpretation, to which I responded that it isn't. I explained that it clearly states "You must not harass other Twitter users" and that harassment is defined as continuous small attacks, which this is.
Jack then asked me about what other social networks had done. I said that Flickr deleted all the profiles and that services like Digg and Pownce don't think twice about banning abusive or harassing users because it's part of the TOS. (Note: Flickr is known for asking users to take down content and/or banning accounts that might even very loosely be *considered* as harassment, which, again, I find interesting, considering at the end of Twitter's TOS, it states: "(These terms of service were inspired, with permission, by Flickr.)").
Jack asked me what good it would do to ban my stalker since it seemed obvious that the stalker would continue to stalk me elsewhere. I told him that it was not his nor Twitter's responsibility nor business to stop my stalker, but that it was very much their responsibility to identify users violating their TOS on their own service and take action accordingly.
At the end of the conversation, Jack asked me "well, what would be a happy resolution for you?". I responded saying that seeing the user who is consistently harassing me banned. I told him that I totally support Twitter and want to see them do well and was trying to understand their fear of getting sued, so I said that at the "EXTREMELY least" that Twitter needed to send the user harassing me a warning, that Twitter didn't owe the user any information other than the fact that they had been reported as violating their TOS and to cease or be banned. I very much stressed that Twitter needs to send users violating TOS a warning at the very least if they don't ban. Jack then said he would need to talk to their lawyers about that and would get back to me by the end of the next week.
Jack didn't get back to me until I emailed him on April 9 with 8 new instances of abuse that included my full name and email address, attached to words like "crack-whore" and "lesbian porn", to which he emailed me back a response:
"Ariel,
Apologies for the delay here. We've reviewed the matter and decided it's not in our best interest to get involved. We've tasked our lawyers with a full review and update of our TOS.Thank you for your patience and understanding and good luck with resolving the problem.
Best,
Jack."
Thanks, Twitter. It's great to know that your Terms of Service that you force everyone to agree to don't mean anything.
Update: I've also started a topic on Get Satisfaction about the issue that also outlines how Twitter's excuse of being sued holds no ground under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Update 2: This is already disclosed in the about section of this blog already, but I am stating it again here at the request of others: I am the community manager for Pownce, however, this issue started before I was working at Pownce. The opinions stated here do not reflect my clients/employers and I did *not* write this in the interest of them. It is well known that I am not a Twitter-hater (much the opposite).
(original screenshot via Chris Messina)Comparatively, when users sign up for Flickr, they're shown the activity that is being created by other users on the site immediately:
(original screenshot via Chris Messina)Additionally, Flickr always shows content other users are contributing on their service on your personal dashboard, regardless if you've added friends or uploaded photos of your own. In this way, Flickr is communicating that they have a live and constantly active ecosystem to participate in - making the user feel less uncertain about adding to that activity and interacting with the site.The recommendation being - don't use emptiness as a motivation for users to interact more with your site, even if you have super friendly instructions. Displaying example content not only shows that your site isn't dead inside, it shows users what's interesting without saying it.
