Shagun Jhaver
Amy Bruckman
Skip Abstract Section
Abstract
Online harassment is a complex and growing problem. On Twitter, one mechanism people use to avoid harassment is the blocklist, a list of accounts that are preemptively blocked from interacting with a subscriber. In this article, we present a rich description of Twitter blocklists – why they are needed, how they work, and their strengths and weaknesses in practice. Next, we use blocklists to interrogate online harassment – the forms it takes, as well as tactics used by harassers. Specifically, we interviewed both people who use blocklists to protect themselves, and people who are blocked by blocklists. We find that users are not adequately protected from harassment, and at the same time, many people feel that they are blocked unnecessarily and unfairly. Moreover, we find that not all users agree on what constitutes harassment. Based on our findings, we propose design interventions for social network sites with the aim of protecting people from harassment, while preserving freedom of speech.
- Zahra Ashktorab and Jessica Vitak. 2016. Designing cyberbullying mitigation and prevention solutions through participatory design with teenagers. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’16). ACM, New York, NY, 3895--3905. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Associated Press. 2017. Unreal When It Targets You: Faceless Trolls Attack Online. Retrieved from http://molawyersmedia.com/2017/04/14/unreal-when-it-targets-you-faceless-trolls-attack-online-2/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- David Auerbach. 2016. If Only AI Could Save Us from Ourselves. Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603072/if-only-ai-could-save-us-from-ourselves/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, and Edward Loper. 2009. Natural Language Processing with Python: Analyzing Text with the Natural Language Toolkit. O’Reilly Media, Inc. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lindsay Blackwell, Jill Dimond, Sarita Schoenebeck, and Cliff Lampe. 2018. Classification and its consequences for online harassment: Design insights from heartmob. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW’18 Online First).Google Scholar
- The BlockBot. 2016. The Block Bot. Retrieved from http://www.theblockbot.com. Accessed: 2017-09-04.Google Scholar
- Danah Boyd. 2008. Why youth heart social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning -- Youth, Identity, and Digital Media (2008). 119--142.Google Scholar
- Kathy Charmaz. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis. Sage Publications Ltd, London.Google Scholar
- Danielle Keats Citron. 2014. Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
- Robyn M. Cooper and Warren J. Blumenfeld. 2012. Responses to cyberbullying: A descriptive analysis of the frequency of and impact on LGBT and allied youth. Journal of LGBT Youth 9, 2 (2012), 153--177.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kate Crawford and Tarleton Gillespie. 2016. What is a flag for? Social media reporting tools and the vocabulary of complaint. New Media 8 Society 18, 3 (March 2016), 410--428.Google Scholar
- Munmun De Choudhury, Shagun Jhaver, Benjamin Sugar, and Ingmar Weber. 2016. Social media participation in an activist movement for racial equality. In Proceedings of the 10th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media.Google Scholar
- Jill P. Dimond, Michaelanne Dye, Daphne Larose, and Amy S. Bruckman. 2013. Hollaback! The role of storytelling online in a social movement organization. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’13). ACM, New York, NY, 477. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Judith S. Donath. 1999. Identity and deception in the virtual community. In Communities in Cyberspace, Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock (Eds.). Psychology Press, 1996, 29--59.Google Scholar
- Maeve Duggan. 2014. Online harassment. Pew Internet Project.Google Scholar
- Maeve Duggan. 2017. Online harassment. Pew Internet Project.Google Scholar
- Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman. 2008. Scaling consensus: Increasing decentralization in wikipedia governance. In Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’08). IEEE, 157--157. Google ScholarDigital Library
- GamerGate Wiki. 2016. The Block Bot. (2016). Retrieved from http://thisisvideogames.com/gamergatewiki/index.php?title=The_Block_Bot. Accessed: 2018-01-10Google Scholar
- GamerGate Wiki. 2017. GGAutoBlocker—GamerGate Wiki. Retrieved from http://thisisvideogames.com/gamergatewiki/index.php?title=GGAutoBlocker. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- R. Stuart Geiger. 2016. Bot-based collective blocklists in twitter: The counterpublic moderation of harassment in a networked public space. Information, Communication 8 Society 19, 6 (2016), 787--803.Google Scholar
- Ralph Gross and Alessandro Acquisti. 2005. Information revelation and privacy in online social networks. In Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, 71--80. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Amanda Hess. 2014. Twitter Harassment: User-Created Apps Block Together, Flaminga, and the Block Bot Crack Down on Twitter Abuse. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/future. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- Zachary Jason. 2015. Game of Fear. Retrieved from http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2015/04/28/gamergate/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- Shagun Jhaver, Larry Chan, and Amy Bruckman. 2018. The view from the other side: The border between controversial speech and harassment on Kotaku in action. First Monday 23, 2 (2018). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8232.Google Scholar
- Sara Kiesler, Robert Kraut, and Paul Resnick. 2012. Regulating behavior in online communities. In Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
- Travis Kriplean, Jonathan Morgan, Deen Freelon, Alan Borning, and Lance Bennett. 2012. Supporting reflective public thought with considerit. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’12). ACM, Seattle, Washington, 265--274. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Cliff Lampe and Paul Resnick. 2004. Slash(dot) and burn: Distributed moderation in a large online conversation space. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 543--550. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Amanda Lenhart, Michele Ybarra, Kathryn Zickuhr, and Myeshia Price-Feeney. 2016. Online Harassment, Digital Abuse, and Cyberstalking in America. Retrieved from https://datasociety.net/output/online-harassment-digital-abuse-cyberstalking/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- Gilad Lotan, Erhardt Graeff, Mike Ananny, Devin Gaffney, Ian Pearce, and Others. 2011. The Arab spring -- The revolutions were tweeted: Information flows during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. International Journal of Communication 5 (2011), 2--26.Google Scholar
- David Malki. 2014. The Terrible Sea Lion. (2014). Retrieved from http://wondermark.com/1k62/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- J. Nathan Matias, Amy Johnson, Whitney Erin Boesel, Brian Keegan, Jaclyn Friedman, and Charlie DeTar. 2015. Reporting, reviewing, and responding to harassment on Twitter. Double-blind peer review committee chaired by Zeynep Tufekci.Google Scholar
- Sharan B. Merriam. 2002. Introduction to qualitative research. In Qualitative Research in Practice: Examples for Discussion and Analysis (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass Inc Pub.Google Scholar
- Elise Moreau. 2016. The Top 25 Social Networking Sites People Are Using. Retrieved from https://www.lifewire.com/top-social-networking-sites-people-are-using-3486554. Accessed: 2017-08-10.Google Scholar
- Torill Elvira Mortensen. 2016. Anger, fear, and games: The long event of #Gamergate. Games and Culture.Google Scholar
- Elinor Ostrom. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
- Patreon. 2017. Randi Harper is Creating Online Activism and Open Source Anti-Harassment Tools | Patreon. Retrieved from https://www.patreon.com/freebsdgirl. Accessed: 2017-08-10.Google Scholar
- Whitney Phillips. 2015. This is Why We Can’t have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. MIT Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dan Pine. 2016. Anti-Semitic Emails, Tweets Hit Candidates and Journalists. Retrieved from http://www.jweekly.com/2016/06/17/anti-semitic-emails-tweets-hit-candidates-and-journalists/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- RationalWiki. 2016. Atheism Plus. Retrieved from http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Atheism.Google Scholar
- Rebecca Ruiz. 2014. When Your Job Is to Moderate the Internet’s Nastiest Trolls. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2014/09/28/moderating-the-trolls/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- Jodi Schneider, Tudor Groza, and Alexandre Passant. 2013. A review of argumentation for the social semantic web. Semantic Web 4, 2 (2013), 159--218. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Sjwomble. 2016. The Problem With Personal Block Lists. Retrieved from https://sjwomble.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/the-problem-with-personal-block-lists/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- Todd Spangler. 2017. IMDb Shuts Down Discussion Boards | Variety. Retrieved from http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/imdb-message-boards-shut-down-1201977581/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- Statista. 2017. Twitter: Number of Active Users 2010--2017. Retrieved from http://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- Nitasha Tiku and Casey Newton. 2015. Twitter CEO: ‘We suck at dealing with abuse’ -- The Verge. Retrieved from http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7982099/twitter-ceo-sent-memo-taking-personal-responsibility-for-the. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
- S. Turkle. 2006. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Retrieved from http://www.citeulike.org/group/48/article/949801. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Twitter. 2016. Blocking Accounts on Twitter. Retrieved from https://support.twitter.com/articles/117063. Accessed: 2017-05-01.Google Scholar
- Twitter. 2016. What are Replies and Mentions? (2016). Retrieved from https://support.twitter.com/articles/14023. Accessed: 2017-05-01.Google Scholar
- Marshall van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson. 1996. Electronic communities: Global villages or cyberbalkanization? In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS’96). http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis1996/5.Google Scholar
- Theresa Velden and Carl Lagoze. 2013. The extraction of community structures from publication networks to support ethnographic observations of field differences in scientific communication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64, 12 (2013), 2405--2427.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Jessica Vitak, Kalyani Chadha, Linda Steiner, and Zahra Ashktorab. 2017. Identifying women’s experiences with and strategies for mitigating negative effects of online harassment. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 8 Social Computing (CSCW’17). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kyle Wagner. 2012. The Worst Job at Google: A Year of Watching Beastiality, Child Pornography, and Other Terrible Internet Things. Retrieved from http://gizmodo.com/5936572/the-worst-job-at-google-a-year-of-watching-beastiality-child-pornography-and-other-terrible-internet-things. Accessed: 2017-05-01.Google Scholar
- Charlie Warzel. 2016. “A Honeypot For Assholes”: Inside Twitter’s 10-Year Failure To Stop Harassment. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/a-honeypot-for-assholes-inside-twitters-10-year-failure-to-s. Accessed: 2018-01-10.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Online Harassment and Content Moderation: The Case of Blocklists
Recommendations
Identifying Women's Experiences With and Strategies for Mitigating Negative Effects of Online Harassment
CSCW '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social ComputingThe popularity, availability, and ubiquity of information and communication technologies create new opportunities for online harassment. The present study evaluates factors associated with young adult women's online harassment experiences through a ...
Silencing Women? Gender and Online Harassment
While gendered online harassment has received increased attention in academic and public debates, there is a lack of empirical studies examining gender differences in experiences with online harassment. Relying on two independent large-scale population ...
Classification and Its Consequences for Online Harassment: Design Insights from HeartMob
Online harassment is a pervasive and pernicious problem. Techniques like natural language processing and machine learning are promising approaches for identifying abusive language, but they fail to address structural power imbalances perpetuated by ...
Comments