Unless you have been under a rock the past week then you probably are aware of the fire Twitter is taking concerning the abuse many user receive from the seemingly millions of Trolls that reside on Twitter. In the recent blog released on Social Media Today, Twitter’s Battle Against Online Trolls: An Urgent Issue We All Need to Address they took a well crafted approach to explaining the problem.
A few years ago I mentioned in a number of blogs that it would probably take a celebrity getting hammered or some high level social influencer being called out by a Troll before Twitter would be forced into doing anything about the Troll environment it has let get out of hand.
It seems it actually took Wall Street to get Twitter to face the fact that people are leaving the platform my the ten’s of thousands because of the uncontrolled abusive users of Twitter.
Of course, I won’t leave out the fact Facebook is also has the same level of problem as Twitter and Google+ is starting to get it’s sure of Trolls, although Google at least has the capability the others seemingly do not have to take care of the Trolls which it seems Google+ is doing.
What It Will Take to Clean Up Twitter
For a long time now Twitter has had the need to face the fact that their social platform has become out of their control, not just by the negative abuse users, but also by the hundreds of thousands of automated, BOT driven, posts being made to the Twitter stream. It is this artificial traffic making it to appear there are trillions of people interacting with each other on Twitter. It is this perception Twitter has created that there are billions of people on Twitter that is drawing in the Trolls. Cut off the automated posts and the traffic falls to a more real number of a few thousand posts a minute..or day.
The artificial traffic was what the article written by the Wall Street Journal was touching on..or hinting at..that was really what the investors of Twitter want Twitter executive to validate. In other words, the people, or institutions, who are now owners of Twitter are wanting the people running the show to get real and show who the Real Twitter Users are ..not who is manipulating Twitter.
Attention Grabber
What attracts Trolls is attention. The more attention the more it fuels their feeling they have manipulated someone’s attitude towards something. Where do they get more attention? Twitter fits Trolls needs and wants because it appears to them, and their probing database calculation programs, to attracts a lot of people, which makes Twitter a huge target..or feeding ground..for Trolls.
Cut off the volume so Twitter appears to be less attractive to Trolls would be the first thing Twitter needs to do, but NO, that would negatively influence the number game they play with their advertisers. Let’s not forget Twitter’s revenue source that satisfies the investors. OH, what is Twitter to do?
Poison the System
It would be the right thing for all of the social spaces to get real with their marketing of the actual real number of users. It has been a fact since the beginning of social networking that none of the databases can be validated. Even in the movie Social Networking it was mentioned that the database can be manipulated of which the comment was made “that’s is what makes this so brilliant”.
It is good to see social media is now becoming consumer driven instead of social network executive driven. The consumers leaving Twitter and Facebook are starting to impact these site’s thinking. Now Wall Street…the place Twitter and Facebook felt they needed to be to make billions of dollars…is now calling their shots.
The next player to step in will be the government of which will be the ultimate Call-Out of the youngsters who started the sites that the darkside..Trolls..took over.
it is going to be interesting to see what Twitter really does to stop Trolls and not upset their advertisers..or could their advertisers be funding the Trolls? Hummm….that could be fodder for another blog. Until then, I’ll stay over here on Google+ and what this show unfold.
Let me know how I can help.
