Twitter is in a precarious situation where it seems they are doing what they can to counter harassment on their site but their ideas seem not to be working well.
Earlier today, Twitter’s Safety account tweeted of a change they had made on Lists where you wouldn’t get notified when you get added in one.
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/831247282544599040
Lists are one of the best things about Twitter since you can create lists based on certain categories, like “people in tech” or “comedians” or “breaking news outlets.” When you are added to a list, you get a notification and it gives you an indication of what people think of you thanks to your tweets.
Twitter’s action of not letting you not be notified when you are added to a list may be tied to the fact that some people are harassed on the platform after being added into specific lists. However, the decision to make such a change in lists was not met by people well on Twitter.
This was the last useful thing on Twitter
Being added to a list and knowing what list you were added to was literally the last useful thing about Twitter.
— Anthony Quintano (@AnthonyQuintano) February 13, 2017
A good case for using lists
I have 166,000 followers and my even my list notifications are not overwhelming. I use lists and want people to see.
— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) February 13, 2017
Now this is a better idea for dealing with lists
The correct approach is to allow people to remove themselves from lists or do it upon blocking the owner.
— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) February 13, 2017
Twitter saw that they have made a mistake and decided to roll back the feature citing it as a “misstep.”
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/831281441082265600
This change was also echoed by sentiments from Twitter’s VP of Engineering, Ed Ho.
https://twitter.com/mrdonut/status/831276041255555074
It is back to the drawing board as they try to make Twitter safer for its users. They had promised a slew of changes to curb harassment on the site like filtering replies and in the case of lists, they have to look for an alternative method to deal with that.
