@chaser324 said:

So the issue isn't the system itself, more the lack of manpower on their end?

I can see how this might be an issue. I can't even imagine how many tweets exist on the Internet.

It's okay. Please just remember this the next time you get the feeling to show me up. heh. We're all here to talk about things with one another, not just "win" arguments.

Yup. Twitter is fucking terrible at this stuff, always has been. Being able to block people easily is something a lot of people need, especially when a shitstorm like this happens, and I have absolutely no problem with it.

I dreamt about this. A whole generation of shitty teenagers getting blocked on twitter by an app like this and then growing up.

To be honest, the blocking on Twitter doesn't seem too severe in some respects, it's pretty much a shadowban right? They just can't see the stuff you're posting to them but you can still view their stuff and post replies and such? It probably would be worse for everyone if it was a full block because the one doing the "harassing" would be more motivated to make another account.

I would like to know more about the inner workings of Block Together. Does it automatically add people I block to the main list? Do more people need to block a person before it gets added to a list or does that person have to be manually added? How do you deal with false positives? It seems like a pain to sort that stuff out.

@akyho: I would suggest if you are trying to break into the games industry and find you are on a block list your first move should be a polite email to the people you wish to converse with explaining your situation, and apologising for being a dick.
Any reasonable person would have a hard time taking issue with that.

First time hearing of this @blocktogether thing. I wouldn't want to be blocked by devs or game writers on there, I like a lot of them. How do you know if you're blocked? I know two people who I can't RT or Favourite, but I can reply to them. Ben Kuchera and Ashton Raze.

I hope everyone blocks everyone and the concept of Twitter as a viable tool for communication gets dropped like the Rock drops the People's Elbow.

@ghostiet: Don't worry, Twitter has been gradually making the service worse and worse as time goes on. Soon it will filter tweets and the timeline will be destroyed.

Honestly, reasons like this are why I use twitter basically like a public chat room w/ friends. You can't have serious discussions on it because of the character limit.

Still, a massive list of people to block (without them having done you any harm) seems like a really lazy way to filter one's timeline.

@cagliostro88: I don't think it's much different than what happens after any negative interaction : you often tell people about it. This is just on Bigger scale.

Domt get me wrong I don't think it's perfect but people getting mad about this are kinda crazy. We should be getting mad at the fact that someone had to come up with a block list in the first place because of assholes who are harassing people with little to no proof and twitter doing nothing about it.

@darkstalker: Sure but when you tell others you usually give a reason why with your statement. Here is just blank. If you tell me "i blocked this guy because he keeps insulting me" or "i blocked this guy because he tweets constantly about pizza and i get hungry and i ruin my diet" (to make a silly example) is way different from just telling me "i blocked this guy, you should too"

I'll point again to the fact that TYFC are on that list and I sincerely doubt it is because of harrassment. It just very easy to misuse something so drastic, and Chris Grant himself went back on it

like i said i don't think its perfect but I totally see why its there.

Twitter is different thing for different people. I just use it for random news and funny quips from people. If someone kept @ing me about politics or something I might block them too even if they were nice because thats not what I want twitter for.

a lot of people on this board and elsewhere have gone on about "don't feed the trolls" or how one side has a right to speak etc but then the same group thinks its a huge problem and they are being "silenced" because that certain group doesn't want to listen and takes action to not interact with the "trolls" (be it an imperfect one). they cant win. people have the right to speak but others arent forced to listen.

that last paragraph is just kinda an emotional ranty half-joke so don't take it too seriously.

I've done the exact same thing on facebook in the past. I removed people to avoid being bombarded by political statements that weren't welcomed. But i never said to anybody else "remove them too, and i won't tell you why". It was a matter of managing my private online spaces.

I truly understand why this list was created, i just don't agree with this method. To make a shitty military analogy, it's like nuking an entire city because missiles and mortars are shooting from there. Yeah you won't have anymore problems, but you just wiped out a lot of innocent civilians.

Please understand that nobody here is actually getting mad about it. Even the op stated in the title that he was simply bummed about it. We're just exchanging opinions on it in a civil manner :)

@cagliostro88: I dont think anyone here really disagree its an extreme measure but when people start posting home adresses and "real" threats you have to do something to try to quite the crazies. It does suck some "innocent" people are probably gonna get caught in the crossfires. but for people who dont want to deal with multiple tweets calling them cunts everytime they post whats the alternative? that kinda stuff doesn't bother me personally but for the people it actually causes stress to read its kinda the only way to at least avoid some of them for now.

maybe twitter can release something to make it better like certain words or something so if you use bitch in your message it wont appear. thats jsut off my head so i didnt put much thought in the ramifications but you get the idea.

@darkstalker: Yeah we are all well aware of the horrible stuff that happened and I repeat that is an understandable reaction. But a list like that should be man-managed to make sure nobody that is not actually harrassing people ends in it.

In my very own personal opinion twitter is akin to youtube comments. You have no barrier between you and the cesspool part of that. It's great for receiving istant feedback ("connecting people", a pr would say :D) but you're gonna get every shade of it, from the best to the worst. Everyone become his own "complaints department" and if in past times you had someone at your work-place specifically going through emails or phisical mail and vetting them (I bet Jeff could tell some great stories about the crazies's mail they received at gamespot in the 90's) now you don't have that filter anymore if you stay in the public spotlight like that. If in the old times celebrities used to have mail sent to their agent office who destroyed the various threats, now if you have some popularity on twitter you get to experience that directly :(

Twitter isn't a democracy. Not everyone has a right to equal say. It's social media so if I don't want to be social except with a certain group of people then I have that right just how you have to right to hear from everyone including the crazies.

I'm personally with you btw : I like to hear the crazies along with my friends. Some guy miles away saying he hates me doesn't bother me. By hey that's just me.

@darkstalker: Absolutely. It's your choice and nobody gets an actual say on that. Nobody is advocating for the dickheads; we're just discussing about the cons of a very drastic solution to the dickheads-problem

Same as you i don't get bothered by someone is saying stupid shit or threats directed at me, or to someone who can manage that. Tim Schafer now for example or Samantha Kalman at the time of her appearance on the bombcast have been very funny to read as they responded to harrassers. But i get really really sad when the dickheads actually manage to make an actual impact on someone :((

I think my name is on that list most likely because I've been extremely critical of Polygon. Hilariously enough Phil Kollar actually followed me not to long ago. Also if you're just going to preemptively block a whole bunch of people just because they are on some list you're an asshole yourself.

Oh man, I'm so glad I never signed up for twitter. I feel like in "some" ways we'd be better off without it.

@assinass: You've done been blocked, son. They're not seeing those replies you're making.

It's a nightmare machine. Without it, people would keep their freaking outbursts to themselves, or only bother a couple of people. Twitter allows them to spread it like the plague.

I think I ended up on the list because Kuchera blocked me back during the Penny Arcade Report days. He doesn't take criticism of any sort well and has a hair-trigger on the block button. But oh, well! It seems the block list is no longer in operation, so it's moot at this point. Even Polygon seems to recognize that was a terrible idea. The decision to block anyone should be based on personal interaction, not a computer-generated list of people you might not get along with. You might end up blocking a lot of undeserving people that way.

@hailinel: Yarp!

Considering Doc Adams is on that list, who is basically the father of the Extra Life charity and one of the nicest and hardest working people I ever had the pleasure of working with, I can agree that this is a terrible counter-measure for a terrible problem. I'm sure a majority of the people on that list deserve to be blocked from interacting with most people on Twitter, but those are also the type of people who can and will just create new accounts to harass who they want to. It's a stop-gap measure where the positives don't out-weigh the negatives.

Hah! Well. Apparently, ashton raze replied to me out of the blue about not knowing why I was on her block list and so I guess I'm unblocked now. I can favourite her and everything.

@jasonr86: Did you read what he said? He talked about supporting the boom and retreating feminist stories frequently. Even if he didn't mention that saying there was a femninist boom isn't offensive in anyway.

@ssully:

I don't know how to work phones. Look a couple comments below this one.

I remember something of an outrage when the heels compiled the names of all the journalists they didn't like. I don't know if they had a twitter blocking robot. Oh well. So it goes.

Twitter is dumb. I use it mostly for the dumb, because I'm not getting enough dumb, or maybe not the right kind of dumb, from here.

@ssully:

Edit: responded to the wrong thread.

Anyway, read my second comment. Everyone else that asks, read my second comment.

Hey, everybody, everyone! Read my second comment.

lol

That's right you folks, do not insult a "games" "journalist", even if it is one who regularly insults the intelligence of all of us.

(Not sarcasm. Kuchera needs to see a shrink.)

I've blocked at least one good friend on accident without noticing for DAYS. Sometimes mistakes happen! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One the biggest problem of the gaming press is the hive mind mentality where they all think alike, all write the same articles and cover news from the same angles. This only reinforces that. They're plugging their ears preemptively while shouting loudly to block any further criticisms, good or bad, legitimate or not. Doesn't matter. If they don't hear it it didn't happen right? Now the people using this don't even have to think about ignoring people they may or may not want to hear from, the list does it for them! The gaming media's ship is sinking and instead of salvaging it they set it on fire.

You don't think that's maybe a bit over-simplistic and hyperbolic?

I mean, I'm pretty sure this is still gaming we're talking about, but the way some people talk about it, you'd think this was a Middle East conflict.

I'm kind of torn about this. On one hand, I think the basic idea of block together is sound; I imagine it's especially useful for groups of people who are being legitimately harassed and could use tools that allow them to band together to filter out some of the bullshit. On the other hand, seeing some Polygon writers use it as a way to block out reasonable criticism is a really bad look. It all comes down to discretion, I guess.

I getBlockTogether, and stuff like it, ESPECIALLY after the few weeks in gaming we've had. With that said, if Justin McElroy, Leigh Alexander, and pro wrestler Lance Storm ever decided put their block lists out there for people to share, I'd be blocked by a hell of a lot more people. And I consider myself not an internet jerk who hates feminism in games or whatever (I even have an Eric Pope quote about me in my Twitter profile)

I think Leigh blocked me during the 775Million thing, when she was getting a lot of hate tweets and I got caught up in her mass blockings (I don't know what I asked specifically, but I think it was along the lines of why she was lumping in the misogynists with the few people who were asking her about the price mistake. Oddly reminiscent of the GamerGate bullshit of recent, so maybe I deserved it.)

And these are only the Twitter users of note who I KNOW blocked me. I'm sure some others have blocked me for some reason or another, legitimate or otherwise.

Basically, my point is that BlockTogether is something good that can potentially be misused, especially if you pissed one person off one time, even accidentally, and then their friends decide to share blocklists and suddenly you're blocked from ever talking to them,

I can't apologize to Lance Storm, Leigh Alexander, or Justin McElroy. They'll never see it, even though I consider myself fairly involved in pro wrestling and games journalism. But hell, maybe I don't deserve to get unblocked.

So if I block someone on my facebook for whatever reason I see fit, are they a victim too?

Edit - reason i say that is I have done complete clearouts of facebook in the past, reducing my list from 500ish people down to about 75 essential people. I was accosted in a nightclub by a girl who I had defriended. She went completely mental at me, tried to throw a drink at me and hit a bouncer instead. Needless to say, I made the right choice.

You should not put so much weight in social media. You might think you are missing out, but you are not. Nothing truly useful or important that happens on social media is completely confined to it.

@splodge: You're misjudging what the topic is about. I'll say it again: nobody here is discussing anyone's right to remove/block people on your private social media. We're are talking about the creation of a blacklist to be shared. Your example would have been fit if you told other people to defriend that girl too, without even saying why.

@cagliostro88: well, I think the blacklist is kind of irrelevant because in the end everyone will block anyone they want. If I told everyone who was with me to unfriend her on Facebook when they got home, and they did, that was their choice to do so. Even if they did not know about the incident, but did it because they trusted my judgement, that is also their choice.

I see this the same as not picking up a private number that calls your phone, or not wanting to receive junkmail. Whatever the reason for the blacklist, a persons right to do whatever they want with their own social media far outweighs the inconvenience some people may have to suffer because they cant read tweets of people they are interested in. Whether the blocking happens individually or as a group, everyone makes the choice themselves.

I think we should change the name of "games journalist" to "games correspondent"

@brodehouse: Except that in this school cafeteria there's also jackasses who stand in the doorway shouting death threats and calling for individuals to get raped, hold up and wave giant printouts of naked pictures of said individuals and also yell about how terrible they are at everything. A shared blocklist is the best defense against these people not because they don't want to hear their opinions necessarily (though that is certainly part of it, harassment is hardly worth engaging with) but because the atmosphere has been poisoned so much.

Shared blocklists are not a perfect tool, everybody involved is fully aware of this fact. Blame Twitter's complete lack of wanting to crack down on harassment. They recently sent out an email talking about updates to their TOS and privacy policy and all that's being changed is that Twitter really wants to sell you branded merchandise - nothing about trying to shut down hate speech or abuse.

@cooljammer00: Wait, did you actually do something to antagonise Lance Storm (mistakenly, unwittingly, or otherwise)? I'd love to hear that story. Did you rag on Canada?

Right, so... why don't they actually blame Twitter's complete lack of wanting to crack down on harassment? These writers have power. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of followers. And twitter harassment isn't exclusive or even most pronounced in game related things.

What if, rather than finding yet another way to blind themselves to these assholes, they actually banded together and relentlessly demanded change?

I can't say what's in their hearts, and I admit this is a very pessimistic assumption, but from what I've seen I honestly don't think they want that. They need their enemy to exist to justify their own crusade. And if it was as simple as just hitting one "block" button and you'd never see any message from that IP address again, they wouldn't be able to re-tweet all of the horrible things those people say to prove how horrible those people are.

Again, just my own reaction to their inaction, and probably not the reality. But still, we're left with many prominent people who could wield their considerable power to enact positive change without really having to go anywhere or do that much... who just aren't doing anything.

I dont follow all the people getting harrassed but i can say that the ones I do often make comments about the bad reporting process and @twitter while doing.

also the idea they want to be harassed so they can push their agenda is pretty terrible and there is absolutely no proof that's true. im pretty sure they would prefer not to be told to die hundreds of times a day and just write about what they like.

@darkeyehails: No idea, but I later found out Lance Storm is kind of weird, so maybe it all worked out? http://wrestlingonearth.com/things-lance-storm-dislikes/

lance has a great love for the block button and is easily annoyed. he talks about if often on the forum i go to.

Here is the thing: Maybe Twitter was a bad idea entirely.

There isn't a single benefit for that social system I can think of. What sustains it is people's basic need for attention where it can be quantifiable and the excessive access people have to those seeking it. In both cases, addictive and arguably unhealthy.

@matiaz_tapia: I've been introduced to and interact with numerous cool people through Twitter I might have otherwise never met. A lot of good and fun comes from the platform. It's not nearly all shit.