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Let’s make Twitter a better place by ridding it of trolls(medium.com)

over 7 years ago from Eduardo Nunes, undersight.co

  • Jake Lazaroff, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

    I think this is a noble thing—online harassment is absolutely a real issue that needs to be addressed—but here's what concerns me:

    We need both time and money.

    This problem has been tackled before, by people who are victims of online harassment, for people who are victims of online harassment, often without any sort of organized funding. For example, Good Game Auto Blocker, a block tool by Randi Harper to combat harassment from GamerGate trolls, is funded entirely through PayPal and Patreon.

    I'm only going off the people on your company's website, so I'm sorry in advance if I'm wrong or out of line here. My worry is that this project—developed by a group of people who are by and large not systematically victims of online harassment—will profit from that harassment while little money and recognition will go toward similar efforts from those commonly victimized.

    Again, I believe you have entirely good intentions here. But given that groups such as women and people of color are not only much more likely to be harassed online but also much less likely to receive any sort of funding for their work, please consider that it might do more good to draw attention and funding to their existing efforts than to enter this fray yourselves.

    1 point
    • Thomas Michael SemmlerThomas Michael Semmler, over 7 years ago

      this.

      0 points
    • Eduardo NunesEduardo Nunes, over 7 years ago

      Fair point, Jake. I can certainly empathize with your concerns over a group of white men asking for help campaigning against on-line harassment. However, I think if you try to look beyond that initial friction, you'll see that we are neither proposing to build this on our own, nor are we suggesting that we intend to profit from it at all. This has been the hardest point to get across — that we are not really putting out a product or a service, but rather a proof-of-concept of a tool we think could be useful, not just for victims of harassment, but also for organisations working to fight it (who we are, as you can see from the article, inviting to join us on this endeavour).

      0 points