Protect your staff from Toronto's terrible Twitter trolls, bosses told Far from gently wading in the cesspool of Twitter, a Canadian arbitration body has told employers they need to actively push back against trolls. The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) was taken through arbitration by its workers union over the abuse some staff were receiving through the TTC's official Twitter customer service …
Lessee, a "Canadian arbitration body" (not otherwise ID'd in the article) orders a business to act as social police. I wonder who gets to decide what sort of speech is offensive and must be supressed? Can't be the business, they've shown they can't be trusted to act correctly.
Can I apply for that job? Or do only nameless govt. arbitration bodies get to do it?
It's not social police. If people are insulted and shouted at in person, say, on a tube platform, it is held to be unacceptable and even assault. Screaming down a telephone at a help-desk person is the same, and a company can have a policy that the employee can reply 'this is not acceptable and I am terminating this call'. So why is it different for another communications channel, this one privately owned and yet in full view of the world? Why is it social police to say 'reply telling them this is not acceptable' and to block the user if the horrible behaviour persists? Why has the right to tweet come to trump every other consideration?
Let's try this again.
The article says that people are complaining about quote, "...offensive, profane, racist, homophobic and threatening..." stuff appearing on the company twitter feed. I assume much of it really is nasty stuff, but every one of those descriptors is highly subjective in nature.
So you tell me exactly what "offensive" means, okay? Because I may have a different opinion on it than you. If you decide what it means and then restrict me based on your opinions, is that not belittling to my opinions?
My point is, the identification of so-called offensive language is often disputed. That's what political correctness is, you know, an attempt to impose a uniform set of left-wing beliefs on all society by force.
It would be better to let people everywhere reach their own conclusions and take their own actions. That's how cultures evolve and improve.
This government body wants to short-circuit the process because they obviously know what's best for everyone. Trouble is, they're really just a bunch of officious do-gooders who don't care about anyone's opinion other than their own.
"Lessee, a "Canadian arbitration body" (not otherwise ID'd in the article) orders a business to act as social police."
The TTC isn't a "business", it's a public body. Public bodies are usually held to different standards than corporations and often have different responsibilities and likely of certain legal powers that business doesn't have. Being part of the city government, they probably do some responsibility to act as "social police" as part of making and keeping the city a nice place.
...announcements of delays and closures...?
To be honest, this is the first application of Twitter I've seen that I thought might be useful. Sure, messages that could be filtered to only cover an individuals daily route would be better, but building on an established platform makes sense.
But... to do that you need a Twitter account which opens the door to the trolls.
Is it really worth it?
If a company decided that the ONLY way they will commuicate with customers/user is Twitter then TBH, this is a company that I won't deal with unless I really, really, really had to but as I don't own a phone that can use twitter then the issue is moot.
To save you asking, I use a nokia 6310. Had it for at least 10 years.
Too many companies use social media as excuse for not updating information on their website.
e.g. in bad times UK snow a bus operator I sometimes use will have service problems due to many roads closed / too dangerous for bus use.
The only way to have a clue about what services are affected are (without phoning / emailing someone at the bus company is)
Look at their Facebook page or look at their Twitter feed
That bus company is sole provider of many routes, so there is no (bus) alternative available.
"If a company decided that the ONLY way they will commuicate with customers/user is Twitter then TBH, this is a company that I won't deal with"
Don't worry, I'm sure they also have Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Grindr accounts too. Have to be all inclusive ya know.
You need a Twitter account so that you can help news sites to write news stories without the bother of employing journalists. Much like with science and maths, truth is what the majority think it might be, and it's your job to be that majority.
Next week I will explain why running an ad blocker makes you a filthy criminal of the lowest sort.
There are a lot of service companies that announce things on twitters, like transit delays or whatnot. There is a nearby restaurant that I frequent for lunch, and they post their daily special on twitter as well. Basically it boils down to an arguably more powerful RSS feed.
Of course, It's possible to view those feeds without having a twitter account, but it's convenient to just launch your twitter app with everything already configured, and just do a quick scan.
It's also possible to communicate with companies for simple things, such as basic troubleshooting and general inquiries, and they are more likely to respond promptly because the entire conversation is public.
Uh, not really.
In years gone by, even before all this electronic nonsense, you'd get people barging into conversations - the response being "just ignore the troll". As in, reference to the annoying brute beneath the bridge. From that, someone who acts like a troll is - trolling.
However, considering your
> People who are trolling are not just fishing for reactions.
maybe you are confusing "trolling" with "trawling"?
I believe trolling is another method of of fishing so those who are aware of that meaning often get confused between the two and associate "trolling" with "fishing for reactions", "baiting" etc.. I wonder how they square that with the many references to "don't feed the trolls", or "get back under your bridge, troll"?
> I believe trolling is another method of of fishing
Well, you live and learn. We just referred to that as a variant of line fishing back when I were young (on the working coast, btw) - probably because we'd never be able to distinguish the words when spoken!
El Register is really based in San Francisco not the UK and any mention of a conservative will get you lambasted with downvotes.
I agree with you, the tweets that Leslie Jones put out against DJT were far worse than anything he supposedly did against her.
That story will always remain untold on The Register because it is a bastion of leftist ideology and they don't allow free speech here!!
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"After years of criticism and complaints, last month Twitter finally started taking a more proactive role in pushing back against its needlessly offensive users when it permanently banned high-profile troll Milo Yiannopoulos from the service for encouraging and coordinating racist attacks against actress Leslie Jones."
Is the Reg now a bastion of SJW lies, or did you just not bother to look any deeper than the headlines yourself? In no way did Milo ever coordinate racist attacks you complete muppets.
Neither is Twitter pushing back against needlessly offensive users - it's banning conservative opinion while leaving radical jihadist and racist Black Lives Matter accounts open. It's censorship of opinions they don't like.
Please do some research I'm seeing a lot of rubbish like this on the formerly awesome Register lately.
"So what IS the conservative opinion about Leslie Jones?" --- she is a typical snowflake liberal, spews racism and hatred against white people and then cries when random people do the same to her, then falsely accuses Milo and gets him banned...in other words the typical liberal fascist who likes to shut down any differing opinions because they are incapable of arguing on the actual merits of what they stand for.
Dunno about others experience, but there are any number of companies for whom Twitter is my first choice for support.
In Canada at least many companies refuse to include an email address on their sites, or take days to respond.
Phone calls drop you into multiple choice hell, followed by twenty minutes on hold, after which one of three first level phone drones - serving several hundred thousand customers - will demonstrate that they know significantly less than you.
Twitter, for whatever reason, usually generates a response fairly quickly.
Often a useless response, but often enough to eliminate gross problems like "is your service down?" from the mix.
Where Twitter is best is giving customers immediate information about outages.
It's fast, it comes directly to my device, and doesn't force me to waste time phoning or surfing to a Web page.
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