Twitter Improves Their Reporting System

With every social media website, it is almost guaranteed that there will be users on that website who abuse other users. And as this social media website grows, it begins to gain attention from the media and other outside sources that expect this website to have appropriate reactions to these cyber bullies. Currently, as Twitter continues to grow to almost 300 million users, it’s outdated and clunky reporting system cannot simply keep up with amount of abuse that is happening on the site. In response, Twitter is beginning to build upon its current abuse system and is taking a “first step” in their quest to keep Twitter a positive place on the internet.

The first issue with these sort of social media websites, is that stopping a user is not as simple as banning them from the website. Since Twitter cannot stop someone from creating multiple accounts, they must try to give the user enough reason to be afraid of losing their account information. By example, if someone gets their account removed from Facebook, the abuser would lose out on tons of different data  (posts, comments, photos, videos, likes…..etc) and this could be devastating. If an abuser is banned from Twitter, they can simply create a new account and follow the people they are interested again. Sure, they also lose all their tweets and photos, but those may be less valuable compared to other social media sites.

Along with this, it is difficult to make a reporting system that is both good at detecting abusive users and also banning them accordingly. If Twitter makes it easier for people to report each other, there will be many more false reports that are created simply due to the user being upset at someone and trying to get them in trouble. Some websites actually keep track of this false reporting and use it as a way to ban people who are abusing the reporting system.

As we discussed in class, it is difficult to keep the internet organized since it was not built from the ground up with a strict set of standards. By example, in South Korea, gamers are required to provide their Social Security number when they sign up for their gaming accounts. This way, the government can directly track who is playing too often and can make sure they do not get addicted to online gaming. If we had this standard for our social media websites in our country, Twitter would have an easier time keeping their users controlled through their abuse systems. But, due to increase in data breaches at many major companies, I simply do not trust Twitter or many other companies with my social security number.   

Article: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/twitter-improves-tools-for-users-to-report-harassment/?ref=technology