The only people who ask for anything are vocal minorities.
And when the public replies are from a swarm of shortlived anonymous accounts, but direct a storm of abuse at an individual's persistent online identity, as well as often any accounts with whom they have interacted... that's not just people shouting back, that's something wholly different and unique to the twitter environment.
While I have no doubt this happens (if anything happens on the internet, it's breeding a better asshole), I question whether it happens as much as some of the posts in this thread make it sound like.
As in, whether it happens enough to restrict the way most people interact with the site.
As a counterpoint, most of the onsite crowing I see about "abuse" and "harassment" on Twitter is of the "I said something publicly, responding to me publicly is harassment" variety. And then when I go look at the timelines, I don't see anything particularly awful.
Your posts are coming from someone who has likely never had to experience that. While that's good, and I hope you never do, stop trying to downplay the experiences of others.
I will absolutely not. When those experiences (were this any other field, we'd call them anecdotes) are being used as an argument to change the way something works for literal millions of unrelated and unknowing people, it is open to the same criticism, scrutiny, and verification that any other piece of data is.
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The only people who ask for anything are vocal minorities.
And when the public replies are from a swarm of shortlived anonymous accounts, but direct a storm of abuse at an individual's persistent online identity, as well as often any accounts with whom they have interacted... that's not just people shouting back, that's something wholly different and unique to the twitter environment.
While I have no doubt this happens (if anything happens on the internet, it's breeding a better asshole), I question whether it happens as much as some of the posts in this thread make it sound like.
As in, whether it happens enough to restrict the way most people interact with the site.
As a counterpoint, most of the onsite crowing I see about "abuse" and "harassment" on Twitter is of the "I said something publicly, responding to me publicly is harassment" variety. And then when I go look at the timelines, I don't see anything particularly awful.
Anyone with that mindset should start a blog.
Your posts are coming from someone who has likely never had to experience that. While that's good, and I hope you never do, stop trying to downplay the experiences of others.
I will absolutely not. When those experiences (were this any other field, we'd call them anecdotes) are being used as an argument to change the way something works for literal millions of unrelated and unknowing people, it is open to the same criticism, scrutiny, and verification that any other piece of data is.