Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 9
Posts 1 - 9

Notwendiger Twitter-Protest oder Vandalismus?

(Necessary Twitter protest or vandalism?)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 8.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, law, social media, threat, Twitter
Summary | A German artist protested Twitter's lax action upon hate comments on their platform by spraypainting hate comments from Twitter on the German Twitter headquarter building. Twitter only deletes 1% of user-reported hate comments. The German justice minister has also gone after social media companies and is threatening with very high financial sanctions if they do not comply with local laws that prohibit hate language.
Image Description | Image and tweets of the protester and of the justice minister.
Image Tags | male(s), Twitter

Twitter's new rules: An attempt to #StopHarassment

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 4.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, politeness, threat, Twitter
Summary | Twitter is taking steps to address the harrassment happening on their platform. They are planning to temporarily lock or permanently suspend accounts of users who use violent or hateful language. This is meant to target mainly terrorist organizations but some say that it would unjustly target republicans because negative statements about a minority group could be misconstrued as hateful. Twitter has faced criticism before about censoring republicans more than librerals.
Image Description | N/A

The Week in Tech: Facebook Live, a More Civil Reddit and Yahoo’s Odd Deal-Making

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 9.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, marketing, politeness, Twitter
Summary | Reddit has for the first time in its existence enabled users to block other users from commenting. This enables censorship of less desirable opinions. Twitter landed the exclusive deal to live stream a football game on their platform, a deal Facebook was initially after since they are better known for their LiveStream service than Twitter. This is a high-profile marketing campaign for Twitter. Also, Yahoo is trying to sell itself.
Image Description | An image of a smartphone showing a livestreamed interview.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone

What The Fuck

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 16.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, law, politics, social media, Twitter
Summary | The social media employee of the police department Mannheim tweeted out information about a seeming terror attack: a car had hit multiple people in a pedestrian only zone. She had tweeted that the suspect had been arrested. Other Twitter users however started aggressively demanding more information about the suspect, i.e. his race, heritage, religion, etc. The social media worker was shocked at how quickly people on Twitter made this a speculative far right-wing political issue and at somepoint even commented "WTF" in response to one of these tweets at her. Meanwhile people on Twitter were outraged that the police Twitter account would use such language.
Image Description | N/A

Twitter-Nutzer leiden mit diesem einsamen Opa

(Twitter user suffer with this lonely grandpa)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 18.3.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Twitter
Summary | A woman from Oklahoma tweeted a picture of her grandpa eating alone with the comment that he invited all six of his grandchildren and only she showed up. The tweet went viral with lots of people responding with sadness and others with anger at the grandchildren who did not show up. The attacks got so bad that the woman had to tweet out that her grandpa still loves all his gandchildren and that people should please stop threatening her cousins.
Image Description | Tweets.
Image Tags | Twitter

Twitter brings IBM's AI machine Watson on board to fight abuse

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 23.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, cyberbullying, Twitter
Summary | Twitter are responding to growing criticism about the mass of abuse happening on the platform. The are launching a new artificial intelligence helper to detect abuse. His name is Watson and he is very good at understanding subtle meanings and intentions as well as analysis images.
Image Description | Reuters image of silhouettes holding smartphones in front of the Twitter logo,
Image Tags | hand(s), logo, smartphone, Twitter

Twitter, eyeing trolls, provides a mute feature

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 16.11.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Twitter
Summary | Twitter is working out a new way to adress harassment on their platform. Twitter has shied away from censorship in the past to protect free speech but now they are taking a stance against language of violence. Users can now choose not to see certain words or emojis and they can report people who harass them or other people on Twitter. So far, there have however not always been sufficient repercussions against reported users because Twitter's staff are not necessarily fully competent to understand why something is hurtful in a specific culture or context. They are working on schooling their staff.
Image Description | N/A

Twitter Addresses Troll Problem. Again.

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 15.11.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, threat, Twitter
Summary | Twitter has a huge problem with trolls. Many users harrass other users on the platform and Twitter is always trying to do something about it with little success. But at least they are trying - Facebook is rejecting any responsibility for fake news spread on their platform.
Image Description | Getty image of the Twitter icon on a building.
Image Tags | logo, Twitter

Twitter says it's cracking down on abuse (again)

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 7.2.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, politeness, threat, Twitter
Summary | Twitter has been struggling with trolls, racists, and sexists since its advent but now a new motivation has presented itself. When investors such as Disney pull back their offers, Twitter headquarters begin to seriously look into the matter again. Twitter did very little to combat users who are only on Twitter to insult other users - they can be suspended but it is impossible to keep them from creating another anonymous account. For now, users can choose to mute certain words, posts, or threads so that they don't receive notifications for hateful content.
Image Description | Photograph of a hand-held smartphone showing the Twitter icon.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone, Twitter

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