In other Olympic related news, Twitter’s acted the ass too!
Twitter’s got issues with harassment. They don’t help. To quote myself from 2010:
In August, I found myself in a weird situation where I was having ‘reverse’ harassment (I was accused of harassing someone else). I thought about this and said ‘You know, there should be a way to handle this past blocking them. I mean, I’ve got a healthy self-image, but some people don’t.’ and I opened a ticket on Twitter for help.
Twitter did nothing.
I have an amusing history of being harassed by that fake Jorja Fox person, as well as a fake Nicolette Sheridan who also told people to hang themselves etc. The only way I was able to get her account removed was to contact Nicolette’s people and tell them “Hey, this idiot’s pretending to be your client and being a bitch. You, and only you, can get the account closed. Here’s how.” Never even got a reply from the agents.
The Twitter Wars:
Clearly I should have become a famous diver, like Tom Daley for whom, when he was harassed and threatened with death/violence, suspended the attacker’s account. Tom’s attacker has been arrested. Though that’s Great Britain, and they have weird laws. Or maybe I should be a major company, like NBC, who got Guy Adams suspended for posting ‘private’ information that was totally publicly available on NBCs website. Twitter says Guy can have his account back after he apologizes for breaking a rule. Which he didn’t. Even worse, Twitter told NBC about Guy’s tweet, and that they should complain, which is epic levels of asshattery. They did restore his account about 36 hours later, mind you, but in a form letter saying the original complaint was retracted. Eventually we got a more public apology and reply, but there’s no mention about how the email address was openly find-able on NBC’s website anyway.
I’m not the only one noting the disparity here, for a change. Jim Romesko blogged about @LauraGlu, who had tweeted:
I wonder why Twitter never deleted the account that posted my home address and threatened to dismember me.
— Laura Gluhanich (@LauraGlu) July 31, 2012
Lest you think this is abnormal, Twitter didn’t suspend Spike Lee’s account when he published George Zimmerman’s home address, got it wrong, and instead sent angry people to an innocent elderly couple.
Basically, if you’re not famous/important, Twitter’s policy is this: Suck it up.
But if you are, they’ll move heaven and earth.
Nicely done, Twitter. You’re quickly becoming to harassment what Facebook is to privacy.