A Definition of Twitter Harassment

In light of the recent SXSW controversy surrounding its online harassment summit as well as the recent failed United Nations report highlighting “cyberviolence” against women and girls, it is important for everyone to be on the same page before we can effectively discuss possible solutions.

What is online harassment? I’m not even going to try answering such a big question. Instead, I am going to compartmentalize and offer a definition of Twitter Harassment, in the hopes that it will serve as a basis for discussion and refinement. My definition is anti-victimization and pro-personal responsibility — and yes, I do realize I’ve probably lost most people who advocate against harassment with that statement. I expect such people to say I don’t go nearly far enough. I admit this is only a basic definition, and will be happy to consider opinions and build from here. For now…

Twitter Harassment is when a person uses more than one account to communicate with you multiple times against your wishes.

That’s it.

There are three notions that are critical to my admittedly limited definition of Twitter Harassment.

Persistence
Harassment requires more than one occurrence of an offensive act. If I were to call you a vile name once, that is not harassment. If I persist in calling you vile names over a period of time, then that is harassment.

Individuality
Behind each unique account is a decision maker who is acting in her or his own self interest.

Mitigation of Damages
In United States law, people who suffer damages, either physical injury or financial loss, have a responsibility to mitigate their damages. The common example given is when a landlord’s tenant breaks the lease after one month of a twelve month rent contract, it is the landlord’s responsibility to mitigate damages and try to find another tenant for the remaining months. The landlord can’t just leave it empty and receive damages for the rest of that year.

These notions defeat the claims of what is most commonly referred to as harassment on Twitter, which I define as dogpiling and abuse.

Dogpiling
Dogpiling is the act of many people on Twitter addressing you, usually in a negative way and usually in a short period of time. Dogpiling is not harassment because of my notion of Individuality and Mitigation. It is easy to see why those who are victims of dogpiling often consider it to be harassment. When you are flooded with mentions it is easy to lose sight of the notion of Individuality. In the victim’s mind the dogpiling can seem to be from a single group — “others”. As such this single entity is sending multiple messages over time, which fits my definition of Twitter Harassment.

But these are individuals who are sending these messages (if they are sockpuppets then it is harassment). And this is how Twitter is designed. Twitter is not free. The price you pay for broadcasting your message to the world is the possibility that the world will send a message back.

If you say something controversial on Twitter and the whole world disagrees with you, you cannot cry harassment if they let you know. What’s more, you are able to mitigate those damages by protecting your account. Using Twitter’s tools and putting your account into Protected mode and only checking Notifications from people you know are both excellent tools for ending dogpiling. Otherwise you just have to block and/or mute each individual you wish would not communicate with you. Again, that is the price you pay for the ability to broadcast your opinion to the world.

Abuse
Abuse covers most of what is remaining. If someone sends you an offensive picture or an insult or even a threat, I would consider these to fall under abuse. They are not harassment because they lack Persistence and because you have the ability to Mitigate such abuse. It is unfortunate that there are people who will send abusive tweets, but you never have to hear from them again with the block and mute features. If you do hear from them again in the form of a different account, that is harassment.

If someone sends you abusive messages over multiple social media accounts, I would consider that harassment, but I would not consider that Twitter Harassment.

I should also mention that while I do not consider dogpiling or abusive tweets to be harassment, that certainly does not constitute endorsement. Abusive tweets should be reported. For dogpiling, I would personally check someone’s account before offering my opinion in order to not dogpile, but that is a notion of etiquette and not harassment.

In thinking about this definition I had trouble with a couple of issues that I am still thinking about.

Inciting harassment — This can include “dot replies” in order to inform one’s follower base to disagree with or insult someone. The problem here is one of scale. If I do it with my 600 followers, that shouldn’t be much of a big deal. If Taylor Swift did it with her 65.6 million twitter followers (!) then I can see how that could render Twitter unusable for the victim. On this I lean toward the “that’s the price you pay for using Twitter” side.

What if someone sends an abusive tweet and I block him, but he keeps talking about me, possibly spreading lies? This question has given me the most pause on this thought experiment. I lean toward calling this harassment, but I am open to opinions.

Let me know what you think! You can harass me @brad_glasgow.