Twitter amends TOS to allow harassment
By Erna Mahyuni
When a user complained of being harassed on Twitter, Twitter’s response was to announce changing its terms of service. In other words, it’s not going to act on the complaint but instead is going to amend its TOS.
Ariel Waldman made a complaint to Twitter support about a user who was making derogatory comments about her on Twitter, to the extent of publishing her full name and slurring her with coarse insults. Twitter’s TOS clearly states as article 4:
“You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users.”
At first Waldman’s case was taken up and she was told the perpetrator’s posts would be removed from the public timeline. Said perpetrator did not desist, but kept making offensive Twitter posts about Waldman. After persistent emails back and forth where Twitter was insisting that what the harasser was doing, including calling Waldman a ‘cunt’ was not ‘illegal’, she finally received this final missive (as posted by Waldman on her blog):
“Ariel,
Apologies for the delay here. We’ve reviewed the matter and decided it’s not in our best interest to get involved. We’ve tasked our lawyers with a full review and update of our TOS.
Thank you for your patience and understanding and good luck with resolving the problem.
Best,
Jack.”
Waldman then posted her experience dealing with Twitter on her blog, and at time of writing has received up to 280 responses and a bevy of reactions on other blogs, including Sarah Lacy’s.
But Twitter had no problem telling a user, a journalist who happened to have the same name as a rap star’s that he was violating the TOS. They even went so far as to take the supposed trademarked name and hand it to the rap star. This despite the Twitter name was the journalist’s actual last name.
Though some might say Twitter is doing the right thing by not arbitrating Twitters, there is clearly a case of double-standards going on. It’s fine to ignore harassment, but it’s not all right for a user to somehow infringe the TOS in other ways.
In the popular MMO, World of Warcraft, the TOS clearly states that derogatory remarks are not allowed. Any racial slurs or swearword-laced insults, stalking or the like would have the WoW GMs come down on a player with warnings, or a straight-out ban. Blizzard gives no excuse not to follow its TOS, but Twitter obviously has no reservations at changing its TOS instead of following it.
In other words, Twitter is going to amend its TOS to allow other users to harass, insult, stalk and defame them on Twitter’s Public Timeline. Let’s all welcome the trolls to Twitter with open arms, abandon moderating on forums or blogs and allow Internet users to harass you via the Internet with abandon.
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July 15th, 2008
right now i am being harassed on youtube because i defened a friend. the guy has said horrible sexual things about me useing my screen name and calling me white trash. the guys screen name is fisfero. he has threatened to make more videos of me. this guy wears a mask and calls me names. i have reported him to youtube but thats a joke. they have done nothing. i have cried myself to sleep thinking what if these videos of me never end. i dont know what to do because nobody will take me seriously?