Twitter unrolls plan to deal with Periscope trolls more aggressively
Twitter's live video-streaming app Periscope is about to become a much less appealing place for trolls to ply their hate.
In a new Medium post bearing the title "A Safer Conversation," the Periscope Trust & Safety Team pledges to more actively root out problematic commenters starting on Aug. 10. Accounts that repeatedly violate the service's community guidelines will be suspended.
"The Periscope Community Guidelines apply to all broadcasts on both Periscope and Twitter," the post reads. "As part of our ongoing effort to build a safer service, we are launching more aggressive enforcement of our guidelines related to chats sent during live broadcasts."
Periscope's existing guidelines already provide community members with a process by which they can flag abusive chats for further attention.
"During a broadcast, a viewer can report a comment as 'Abuse,' 'Spam,' or 'Other Reason,'" a Periscope support page, last updated in May 2018, reads.
"When a comment is reported, a few viewers will randomly be selected to decide if the comment is offensive. They’ll be asked to identify the reported comment as 'Abuse or Spam,' 'Looks OK,' or 'Not Sure'."
In these cases of user-side comment moderation, the way the other, randomly selected viewers votes determines the outcome. If the majority agrees, the commenter temporarily loses the ability to post. If they don't think a particular comment is abusive, the reported commenter gets top keep using Periscope uninterrupted.
It's an imperfect system. Everyone views offense in different terms, for one, and in the most extreme scenarios, the randomly selected viewers could even turn out to be other trolls.
The new policy, then, introduces an additional check against bad user behavior. Once the Aug. 10 policy goes into effect, "we will also review and suspend accounts for repeatedly sending chats that violate our guidelines."
It's a welcome step for the company to take, though it doesn't change the fair (and forever mounting) criticism that Twitter has a nasty habit of providing a relatively safe social media platform for neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and their ilk to spread their hateful messages.
Topics Social Media X/Twitter
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
