New study shows the scale of Twitter’s misogyny problem

When then-CEO Dick Costolo admitted last year that Twitter “suck[s] at dealing with abuse and we’ve sucked at it for years,” he was addressing the elephant in the room and a frustratingly common problem for women on the platform. Although the company has taken steps to combat abuse and report real-world threats, the overwhelmingly negative attitude towards women on Twitter persists. And a new study from the UK has the data to back it up.

To quantify the woman-hating on Twitter, UK thinktank Demos looked for the words “slut” or “whore” in 1.5 million tweets sent by UK users during a three-week period from mid-April to May 2016. Using an in-house algorithm, the research team filtered out conversational or self-identifying tweets to focus only on those with clearly aggressive language aimed at another user. During that short timeframe, the study found “10,000 explicitly aggressive and misogynistic tweets” directed at 6,500 users in the UK alone, TechCrunch reports. Internationally, there were more than 200,000 tweets using the same terms directed at 80,000 users. The study also claims about 50 percent of those abusive tweets were sent by women.

For its part, Twitter’s head of trust & safety outreach for Europe, the Middle East and Asia told TechCrunch, “Our ambition, in tandem with addressing abusive behaviour, is to reach a position where we can leverage Twitter’s incredible capabilities to empower positive voices, to challenge prejudice and to tackle the deeper root causes of intolerance in society.”

And Demos is quick to note that Twitter is not the only social media platform with a misogyny problem — just the source of the data for this particular study. “It’s important to note that misogyny is prevalent across all social media, and we must make sure that the other big tech companies are also involved in discussions around education and developing solutions,” Demos researcher Alex Krasodomski-Jones wrote in a statement. “This is less about policing the internet than it is a stark reminder that we are frequently not as good citizens online as we are offline.”

Twitter reportedly disbands Commerce team behind its Buy button

A couple of years ago Twitter slid into commerce by enabling a “Buy” button that would let users flow directly into the purchase process from an ad. Now, according to a report by Buzzfeed, the company has “curtailed” development on the button, and for the team behind it, many have left the company, while others have been reassigned to work on customer service or dynamic product ads.

The “Buy Now” card is still active, and in a statement Twitter said it “made a change 3 months ago to INCREASE our investment in commerce by moving fully into Dynamic Product Ads.” Focusing on ads may do better for Twitter, but as mentioned in Fortune, the other question is how well commerce efforts are going at competitors like Facebook and Pinterest — which have so far been quiet about results from similar features.

Source: Buzzfeed

Don’t worry, Twitter isn’t going to broadcast all your replies

Twitter just announced substantial changes to how tweets work — namely, removing photo, video links and mentions from the 140-character-per-tweet limit, to help give posts some creative breathing room. Some changes to the way “@” replies work means you’re going to see even more tweets in your feed from people you follow. Most importantly, perhaps, the company wants to reduce confusion for new users — which it sorely needs more of.

But while the social network attempts to streamline and clarify, some of the changes are slightly confusing. We have some lingering questions after reading the company’s brief blog post announcing the news. Do the changes mean unlimited mentions in tweets? (Spoiler: Of course not.) Will your followers see all your reply tweets? Well, that depends.

Twitter is getting rid of the workaround people used to reply to others in such a way that their followers could see the conversation in their feeds. Instead of “.@engadget” when mentioning this site (while showing your followers that you were saying something), “@engadget” will now suffice. (One character saved!) Think of this as a “mention tweet”, started from scratch. Your followers would see this when the changes came into being.

However, if you were replying to an existing “@engadget” tweet, this would be in a “reply style” and would only be seen by users that followed both you and @engadget — not all your followers. (If you want your followers to see a reply, that’s where the new ability to retweet yourself comes in.) Usernames in tweets wouldn’t count against your “reply” character limit, but they will be counted in “mention” tweets. When I put it that way it makes more sense but yes, it’s initially a bit confusing. (It’s worth remembering that up until 2009, you saw every tweet of someone you follow: the whole Twitter firehose.)

While usernames won’t count toward your character count on replies, there’s still a limit of fifty. A Twitter spokesperson added that while this may change later, this is the current cap. Fine with us: Fifty usernames sounds pretty intense as it is.

Now let’s go back to the loss of the “.@username” hack. New tweets that begin with a username will now be broadcast to your followers by default — even if you only wanted a few people to see it. Sorry, Twitter, but not everything starts with replying to someone else’s tweet. With these changes, even if you wanted to make a snarky in-joke to a friend, everyone following you will see it. It’s like a hushed, one-on-one conversation in a pub is broadcast on loudspeakers to everyone else in the bar. Fortunately, at least, Twitter users will probably find ways around whatever features they don’t like.

Twitter, for its part, will be happy, as these tweaks will almost certainly stimulate more conversation, more retweets, more replies and more likes. The social network could suddenly get very loud. It could make the most vocal Twitter users you follow seem even more vocal — possibly to a cloying degree. The same could be said for the ability to retweet and quote yourself. We’ll reserve judgement until the go into effect, but remember: The mute and block buttons are there for a reason.

Twitter drops media and @name replies from 140-character limit

Well, that was quick. A week after Bloomberg reported that Twitter was getting ready to relax its rules for what counts against your 140-character limit, the company is confirming the move today. Soon, photos and video won’t be included in that tally, freeing up more space for those witty quips. What’s more, usernames in replies won’t count against the limit either, and you’ll be able to retweet or quote your own posts. You know, just in case you need to remind everyone of that hot take you had a few months back.

When sending a tweet to someone you want all of your followers to see, you’ll no longer need to include a period or some other punctuation in front of their username. With the changes to the character limits, all tweets that begin with a Twitter handle will be seen by everyone who follows you by default. Despite the rumblings last week, regular ol’ links still count towards that 140-character allotment. CEO Jack Dorsey explained that these changes are the latest in an attempt to make the social network “simpler.”

Twitter has been busy adding new features over the past few months in an effort to attract new users. For example, there’s Moments that serves up a collection of items you might have missed and retooled DMs. Rumors of Facebook-like algorithmic timeline seem to have been exaggerated, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be more changes in the months to come. Unfortunately, there’s no definitive timeline for this new tweet structure to go live as the company says it’ll be available “in the coming months” across the web, TweetDeck and both mobile and desktop apps.

Twitter to Drop Handles and Media Attachments From 140-Character Limit

Twitter announced today that it will be making a number of expected changes to simplify tweets over the coming months.

First and foremost, when replying to a tweet, Twitter handles such as @MacRumors will no longer count toward the 140-character limit. Media attachments, like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, and Quote Tweets, will also no longer be counted.

The changes should provide Twitter users, including brands and websites, with more characters for actual text and article headlines.

Meanwhile, new non-reply tweets that begin with a username will now reach all of a user’s followers, eliminating the need to use the “.@” convention to broadcast a tweet widely. Last, Twitter users will be able to Retweet and Quote Tweet their own tweets.

Twitter expects the changes to have a significant impact on tweets, so the microblogging service aims to provide its developer partners with time to make any needed updates to products built using the Twitter API.

Tag: Twitter
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Tweetbot for Mac Updated With ‘Topics’ Feature for Linking Multiple Related Tweets

Earlier this month, Tweetbot for iOS was updated with a new “Topics” feature designed to link multiple related tweets together in a cohesive way, and now the Tweetbot app for Mac has been updated with the same feature.

Topics are built around the Twitter feature that links conversations. Tweets composed as a topic in Tweetbot are linked together via Twitter’s conversation threading mechanism and use the same hashtag, so “Tweetstorms” or tweets surrounding a single topic connected.

Linking multiple tweets together is often desirable in situations where a single tweet doesn’t suffice, such as a lengthy rant or live event coverage.

This release introduces Topics. A Topic is a way to let you quickly Tweet a group of related Tweets without having to manually reply to yourself and/or manually add the same hashtags over and over again. They are really great for rapid fire live Tweeting events.

You can access Topics by tapping the gear menu in the New Tweet screen. They are also stored in and require iCloud, so you can start a topic on your iPhone and easily continue it on your iPad and Mac.

Today’s Tweetbot update also includes support for Collections, a way to save tweets linked together as a topic, and there are a number of feature improvements and bug fixes.

– Collections Support
– Improved Quote Preview in Compose Window
– Removed play/pause button from video playback. Clicking on the video will toggle play/pause.
– Fixed an issue where incoming DM’s would play a sound even when notification center was set to ‘Do not Disturb’.
– If you mute someone you don’t follow, it now automatically mutes searches, mentions and lists.
– Fixed an issue with using the left-arrow key when in the timeline search field.
– Fixed an issue with tab jumping too many columns.
– Fixed an issue where you could drag additional images or video into a tweet that already had the max number of attachments.
– Fixed an issue where videos would fail to upload.
– Fixed an issue where .mov files could not be added as video.
– Fixed an issue where the progress spinner wouldn’t disappear after loading.
– Fixed an issue where text could be cut off at the bottom after adding an image in the compose window.

Tweetbot for Mac can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $9.99. [Direct Link]

Tags: Twitter, Tweetbot
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Twitter appoints BET CEO Debra Lee to Board of Directors

Following through on an earlier promise to diversify the company and better reflect its user base, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced today that BET CEO and Chairwoman Debra Lee will join the company’s board of directors. Lee will also head up the company’s Nominating/Governance committee.

Thrilled to be joining the @twitter board. It’s transformed the media and the world like few other things in history (and continues to)!!

— Debra Lee (@IamDebraLee) May 16, 2016

In the past, Twitter has been criticized for being both too white and too male, and its previous attempt to hire a new head of diversity didn’t exactly shift that perception at all. As civil rights leader Jesse Jackson pointed out last December, “Blacks and Latinos over-index on using Twitter, but their board of directors and C-suite leadership remain all white.” As Lee takes her seat on the board, however, two other execs — venture capitalist Peter Currie and media mogul Peter Chernin — are stepping down. In April, the company also added Pepsico VP/CFO Hugh Johnson and British entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox to the board.