As you know, I am a fan of @tiktok_us these days, but I need to put them on blast for a bad design choice. Folks interested in content moderation/platform safety, buckle up. This is a story about bad people exploiting a loophole for harassment. We can learn from this. [Thread 🧵]
TikTok has a "block" feature that works similarly to Twitter. If you block someone, you can't see them and they can't see you. This includes comments.
So now we have A (person being harassed) and B (awful person who thinks it's fun to e.g. leave death threats in comments)...
So now we have A (person being harassed) and B (awful person who thinks it's fun to e.g. leave death threats in comments)...
B has figured out that they can comment on A's post and then immediately block A, which then means that A can't see that comment - and in fact doesn't even know it's there since it doesn't show up in their notifications.
The result is that some TERRIBLE COMMENT is just sitting there on A's post. Everyone else can see it. But A doesn't even know it's there, which means they also can't DELETE or REPORT it.
The only hope A has to get rid of, say, a death threat or [insert other horrible thing], is for others seeing the video to report it & hope it gets taken down.
But if A knew it was there they could just delete it! Which is obviously the right design choice to keep people safe!
But if A knew it was there they could just delete it! Which is obviously the right design choice to keep people safe!
This is an obvious loophole. And harassers on TikTok have figured it out and are deliberating exploiting it.
I can imagine tweaks that would fix this problem - quarantined comments is one, though the easiest would just be to hide the comment from EVERYONE'S view after blocking.
I can imagine tweaks that would fix this problem - quarantined comments is one, though the easiest would just be to hide the comment from EVERYONE'S view after blocking.
I'd like to see @tiktok_us close this loophole.
I'd also like to see all platforms do the hard work of designing for the worst possible people. Don't tell me "the risks, the misuse, we never thought about that" (to quote Zoom's CEO). Think about it. wired.com/story/opinion-…
I'd also like to see all platforms do the hard work of designing for the worst possible people. Don't tell me "the risks, the misuse, we never thought about that" (to quote Zoom's CEO). Think about it. wired.com/story/opinion-…
Also this particular problem reminded me of this tweet quoted in @schock's book. It's great that we've gotten to "blocking is an important feature!" but, you know, ::Jeff Goldblum voice:: harassers, uh, find a way.
https://twitter.com/AngryBlackLady/status/516604901883797505
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
