Twitter Abuse: Lists Notification Feature Quickly Changes Out Of Fear Of Abuse

On Monday, Twitter introduced a change to its lists feature designed to help curb abuse. On Tuesday, the social network rolled back the changes out of concerns that it would actually produce more abuse.

Monday, via the Twitter Safety account, Twitter announced it would no longer notify users when they are added to lists on the platform. Lists are typically used as a means of curating groups of people to create a limited timeline but has become a favorite tool of harassers who would place people in lists with vulgar or offensive names.

While the decision to ditch notifications was intended to keep people from having to see any of the abusive lists they were added to, some users conveyed that it would have a counterproductive effect. Harassers would simply add people to lists and they would never know about what they were being associated with.

“Critical for people to know if they've been added to a list intended for targets. This is blinding the vulnerable,” explained Twitter user SwiftOnSecurity, a popular account that covers information security.

Users also suggested to Twitter that a better approach would be to allow users to remove themselves from lists, or to automatically remove a user from a list when they block the list’s creator.

Twitter took action to address the issue it created rather quickly. In a matter of just a few hours, Twitter’s vice president of engineering Ed Ho copped to the issue on Twitter, calling the decision a “misstep” and said the company was reversing the change.

The change was intended to be a part of Twitter’s ongoing battle with abuse that takes place on the platform. Last week, the company announced it was ramping up its efforts to rid the platform of harassment. Ho said at the time that the company was “moving with more urgency than ever” to curb abuse.

Earlier this month Dick Costolo, the former CEO of Twitter acknowledged the company had a problem with harassment when he was heading the company.

International Business Times has reached out to Twitter for additional information regarding changes to the list feature but has not received a response.