Twitter still hasn’t learnt to tread that fine line between censorship and freedom of speech

Freedom of speech allows for all kinds of speech. All. It’s only societal pressures and our own innate sense of morality and decency that limit what we say and do. What happens when those pressures and mental restrictions are lifted, however? Will we remain the same person?

The veil of anonymity can grant this freedom and the internet grants that anonymity. This kind of freedom, however, leaves us bearing witness to an unfiltered, unedited side of humanity that most of us would rather not acknowledge.[caption id="attachment_361397" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image: Reuters[/caption]Since it’s inception, Twitter has always maintained that it stands for freedom of speech. It’s executives even took up the chant, “Twitter is the free speech wing of the free speech party.”

When you take a stance like that, you step back and let the community do its thing. Twitter, however, has not done that, mainly because it’s not possible to run a successful business in such an idealistic fashion.

You can’t even run successful democracy that way, which is why our constitution has provisions in place against hate speech and anti-national, anti-semitic behaviour.

Looking at Twitter’s long and checkered history with censorship and community management, it’s quite clear that the company has no clear idea of what it stands for. In fact, it still doesn’t.[caption id="attachment_327334" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image Credits: Reuters[/caption]Just ask yourself this: What is Twitter?

Is it a place where you air your opinions? Is it a source of news? Is it a forum for free and open discussions? Is it a source of entertainment?

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey maintains that Twitter is a communication tool, not a mediator of content. Former CEO Dick Costolo told employees that, “We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues.” Employees tell tales of celebrities (Caitlyn Jenner, Barack Obama, etc.) getting preferential treatment and bespoke algorithms for censoring abusive tweets against them.

Twitter’s rules clearly state that, “In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, we do not tolerate behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.”

As Buzzfeed points out, A great number of high-profile Twitter users have quit over alleged abuse and consistent harassment on the platform. And yet, Twitter still hasn’t done something concrete about it.

In its latest announcement, Dorsey announced a number of steps that Twitter is taking to deal with these issues. These steps range from blocking sensitive content from search, burying low quality or abusive content in threads and making it easier to flag abusive content.

Is it enough? I don’t think so.

If reports are to be believed, Twitter has been struggling with these issues for over 10 years.

Drawing a parallel to video games, developers have been fighting these issues for years. Many games, particularly multiplayer ones, are built around their community. In the gaming world, abuse, racial and sexual slurs and strong language are par for the course, but not welcome.

Developers even have a term for this, toxicity. A toxic community can ruin a game very quickly indeed — League of Legends worked very hard to turn things around — and if these developers value their user-base, they take strong action.

Players are banned, foul language results in an instant, temporary ban on chat, infractions are recorded, penalties scale with your record, etc. And it works.

Again, Twitter’s reaction to such content has been inconsistent at best. The exact reason for this is unknown, but the pointers are many. Some say that Twitter’s content filtering algorithms aren’t that good, others blame it on a confused management, still others simply blame it on scale.[caption id="attachment_361399" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image: Reuters[/caption]Speaking of scale, one just has to look at Reddit to see where Twitter falls short. Fashioning itself as the “front-page of the Internet”, Reddit has a community that rivals Twitter in scale (244 million users vs Twitter’s 316 million). It’s also a community where almost anything goes.

Unlike Twitter, however, Reddit’s strong, mostly consistent moderation has resulted in a site that’s actually, in my opinion, safer and cleaner than Twitter. You’ll find hate-groups and white supremacists on Reddit as well, but as long as they strictly adhere to Reddit guidelines, they’re free to do as they please.

To put it simply, it’s not that easy to abuse someone on Reddit and get away with it.

Twitter needs to do something about policing its community and do it quickly. It’s fast falling from favour, is running out of cash at an alarming rate and growth has come to a standstill. It’s bid to sell itself also failed.

Why would anyone want to take responsibility for the hotbed of controversy, toxicity and hacked accounts that Twitter has become? If Twitter hopes to live through the next few years, it’s high time it started treating its community with a little more respect.