No doubt, but I was heartened to see that the BB comments expressed a good deal of sympathy for him.
I read something recently (can’t find it now) to the effect that one’s policy should be to put the best possible interpretation on what anyone says, as a starting point. To expand that, we shouldn’t read between the lines to infer that someone is racist, misogynist, etc. because they express an opinion that is sometimes associated with those attitudes. It’s better to ask for clarification before going into full attack mode.
- A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and
liberal in what you receive. You should not send heated messages
(we call these "flames") even if you are provoked. On the other
hand, you shouldn't be surprised if you get flamed and it's
prudent not to respond to flames.
- Remember that the recipient is a human being whose culture,
language, and humor have different points of reference from your
own. Remember that date formats, measurements, and idioms may
not travel well. Be especially careful with sarcasm.
In my Perfect Universe™, there would be a rule that people would read an entire thread before jumping in with the same damn comment that’s appeared 8 times already. That and RTFR.
The way I remember hearing it (I can’t remember the exact quote) was something like: if someone tells you something, start from the assumption that what they’re saying is true to them.
That is, from their perspective, what they’re saying is probably true. So, instead of calling someone a troll or a shill or something similar, try to figure out: From what perspective could the things they’re saying make sense?
Because in their heads, what they’re saying probably does make sense, and, from that perspective whatever you’re trying to convince them of doesn’t. So, unless you can find a common perspective (which will probably be you putting yourself in their perspective), you’re never going to convince them of anything.
See, this is why I never liked the idea of letting someone else control your block list. You have to trust the people that you’re outsourcing your opinion to, and hope that they don’t add people mistakenly or maliciously. As well as the whole filter bubble echo chamber effect.
Yes, specifics – anonymized and abstracted as necessary – would be quite helpful. Can you please oblige us @funruly? Because I literally don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Not figuratively. Literally. Now it is entirely possible this is because I am an idiot, but I believe deeply in idiot-proofing the rules as much as you sensibly can.
I can definitely agree with adding a reminder that
It’s not OK to attack the powerless, or victims.
Which implies, correctly, that it is OK to attack the people in power. People in power don’t need as much in the way of defense, and they are targets because they are already powerful and have many advantages that others may not. Deal with it {insert sunglasses sliding on face gif here}
As am I. Some sanitized examples, as stated above, would help.
I understand why people would use them, esp. people with high profile accounts, despite the flaws in the approach. While it’s a flawed approach, it’s still a way to mitigate Twitter’s failure to have reasonable standards of discourse and reasonable levels of moderation to manage harassment. When you’ve got a broken system you can’t fix that involves mass-scale piles ons of serious abuse that can sometimes escalate to far worse or a broken filter that mitigates that, a broken filter’s better than the alternative.
