How Twitter Developers Can Combat Abuse
dabr twitter · 6 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~549 times.
Here's a simple step that Twitter App Developers can do to reduce the amount of abuse which is generated on the platform.
A few friends of mine regularly receive harassment on Twitter. Typically, there are two ways to deal with it:
- Mute the offending user. This means their tweets to you never show up in your replies.
- Block the offending user. The same as muting, except the offender is also prevented from seeing your Tweets while they're logged in.
There's a flaw with both of these tactics - the miscreant can still target messages at you.
For example, a journalist I know has blocked a particularly persistent griefer. This sad-sack continually mentions the journalist and repeatedly links to her articles. This means the abuse appears whenever the journalist searches for people linking to her articles and inevitably, when her followers get drawn in to replying on her behalf.
So, here's a radical solution - if you're blocked by a user, you shouldn't be able to @mention them.
Alice is blocking Bob. Bob cannot see Alice's Tweets. Bob can still send @ replies to Alice. Should our clients block Bob from sending a Tweet containing an @ reply to Alice? Should the Twitter API block these messages from being sent?
Until Twitter gets around to implementing this at the API level, here's a way that app developers can add the functionality.
Friendship API
Using GET friendships/show we can determine if the logged in user is being blocked by a specific user.
In this example, I (@edent) have blocked the well known troll @monkey. The app can perform this request every time @monkey attempts to send a tweet containing "@edent".
https://api.twitter.com/1.1/friendships/show.json? source_screen_name=monkey &target_screen_name=edent
In return we get a message showing if the user is being blocked.
{
"relationship": {
"source": {
…
"screen_name": "monkey",
…
"blocking": false,
"blocked_by": true,
…
},
"target": {
…
"screen_name": "edent",
…
}
}
}
The app can then either refuse to send the message or tell the user why it has been blocked.
Drawbacks
If enough popular apps start doing this, it might act as a small disincentive - letting abusers know that their messages are no longer welcome.
But until Twitter adopt this as the standard for their API, it will be possible for a harasser to simply switch to using the official apps.
The real change, of course, has to come from within. People have to learn that no means no - if someone chooses to ignore your messages, that's not an infringement of your right to free speech.
I'll be implementing this in Dabr over the next week. I'd be interested to hear from any other developers who make this change.
Terence Eden says:
Terence Eden says:
Terence Eden says: