You do realize tho, that the best way to call someone a cunt is to phrase it like a question. "Hey, Ev, is your mother a cunt?" and then it gets linked on Techmeme or something. /snicker - Eric Rice

Yet another instance where a "Like" is not really the most appropriate signal of interest in the content, but I suppose I really liked your summation of the events. Good stuff, Thomas - you continue to be a champion for quality, effective community management within social media circles. :) - Nathaniel Payne

I'm really down on Twitter after hearing about all this last night. Evan Williams' Twitter responses just come across as obnoxious in my opinion: http://twitter.com/ev... I'd expect more from someone high up at the company concerned than just weighing in on the debate like that. - Mike

Ok I had to force myself to stop hitting the 'like' .Anyhoot, how about an analogy of this sort- if JohnMcCain can call his wife one (in public) and get away with it. Then Thomas can call Evs moms whatever and the same will hold true with Confessions and Ariel ... The prime issue here is that $$$ and biz is gets higher value then simple true values themselves. This is a very important conversation - the value systems of communitys are at stack ! - Peter Dawson

Wow. Twitter approval rating 12%. - Akiva Moskovitz

Note, I'm definitely *not* calling Ev's mom a cunt. I'm just posing the question. We all know that Ariel was called a cunt and a lot worse. Is there a double standard here or would Ev treat his mother the same way? Sometimes I think it's helpful in cases like this to think about how we'd feel if the person being harassed were our mother, daughter, girlfriend or wife. - Thomas Hawk

Not that it makes it "right" but isn't it true that a TOS defines what a company CAN do to remove accounts, not what they MUST do? - Mike Doeff

Mike, sure, the TOS is open to interpretation. From Ev's tweet they don't consider calling someone a cunt harassment apparently. I'm just curious if he'd consider it harassment if it were his mom. Irrespective of "can" vs. "must" Twitter led people to believe that they'd handle harassment like Flickr does and now they are not abiding by it after the fact. - Thomas Hawk

Thomas, I have to ask, and not to be a jerk, but more to understand where you think the line is drawn., When IS it OK to call someone out publicly, by name, and call them a vulgar and or derogatory term? The Twitter TOS are drawn from the Flickr TOS, yet this post not only calls out the person, but their name, address, and phone#. http://tinyurl.com/ypq3q3 I understand it could be argued that it's your opinion of the guy, but one might argue the same here. Would Flickr be justified in removing your post? - cmiper

cmiper, good conversation point! I think calling someone an asshole once (who assaulted you physically) and in an editorial context is different than the type of attacks that Ariel repeatedly had to endure over a 2 year time frame. If I called Anto Kamarian an asshole repeatedly with my Flickr account for a 2 year time frame I'd say he had a case. If I call him one once in the context of a story about how he assaulted me I think it's something different entirely. - Thomas Hawk

If calling someone a cunt is harrassment and grounds for account termination Twitter had better get busy : http://terraminds.com/twitter... - Brian Sullivan

Brian, I don't think the issue here is simply calling someone a cunt. I think the issue is the repeated series of harassment over the course of 2 years. You're missing the bigger picture. Simply calling someone a "cunt" once is not necessarily harassment in my opinion. Repeatedly stalking someone on Twitter as she was is. Context matters. - Thomas Hawk

I was just pointing out how ludicrous your picture post and its provocative title was. I would like to verify the facts before jumping on the Twitter is satan bandwagon. Other than Ariel's blog is there confirmation of this harrassment somewhere else? Twitter has stated that they don't consider Ariel's case harrassment. So who are we to believe here? The fact that Ariel was called a cunt is not enough in my mind. - Brian Sullivan

There's no question about this in my mind. There *needs* to be some way to block Tweets from particular users. - Ryne Nelson

Brian, Ariel says that the harassment happened multiple times and documents it going back to June 2007. She also documents that Flickr actually *did* take action on it. If Ariel did not have this happen to her I'm curious as to why Flickr took action. If the facts are not as she states, Ev has had every opportunity to explain why. The fact is that she documents many of the cases whereas he simply says it's not harassment. I'm all for his side of the story, but where is it? - Thomas Hawk

Thomas, understood, I think we are somewhat in agreement to this point. But, now what if you called him an asshole over 20 times on three different websites? - cmiper

cmiper, I think if I called him an asshole over 20 times that would probably qualify as harassment. I still think that I should have a right to do that on my own domain for instance, but I wouldn't expect to be call him an asshole over and over and over again repeatedly 20 times on Flickr, nor on Twitter under their current TOS. - Thomas Hawk

Evan Williams responded to this post in the comments section on my blog. You can read more on his perspective there. - Thomas Hawk

I think the analogy Thomas makes about thinking about female loved ones is a good one. The other way I looked at it was to ask myself if anyone repeatedly swore and made derogatory remarks at another person in a corporate environment, would it be considered acceptable? Most likely it would be considered bullying or harassment and HR would soon sort it out. I've seen people fired on the spot for doing it once in a public meeting. - Sally Church

It is clear that this person is harassing someone. For Twitter to step back now and say "Oh, did I say that?" about their TOS just makes me feel like they are punking out. However, it is hard to get over the fact that this is happening to an employee of a competitor. - Yolanda

Yolanda, but doesn't the fact that it's happening to a competitor make it that much worse? My point is would Ev and Twitter allow this to happen to a competitor while they wouldn't allow it to happen to their mothers, daughters, wives, etc.. Ariel is somebody's little girl. I know that may sound cheesy, but if someone did this to one of my little girls I'd be pissed. Ev still hasn't answered the question on how he'd handle this if it was his mom or wife Sara. - Thomas Hawk

Personally how I'd handle this if I were Twitter is to say, yeah we made a mistake. We should have taken action by deleting the account harassing Ariel and we didn't. It's now been deleted. We're new and learning. We've deleted the account, are changing our TOS and either will/or won't allow this kind of thing in the future. - Thomas Hawk

Yes, that's exactly how they SHOULD have handled it. I really don't understand their punking out on their own TOS and throwing words out in the air thinking that they are making sense. Was it the Thompson Twins that had that song "Lies, Lies, Lies. Yeah!"? Now its "Words, words, words, yeah!". - Yolanda

Does the "block" feature on Twitter not work? - Kenneth LeFebvre

I am (un)happy with Ev' response" You'll note that Ariel didn't put up any of the screenshots she took of this content. (kosmar: Have you don't the search on Summize? Can you find something? Because I cannot.) " - thats so so lame.. @ev, if you really wanted to see the perps scaper here it is !! http://kosso.co.uk/twitter... - Peter Dawson

Kenneth: yes, and no. You can block a specific twitter ID, but in some of these cases individuals just keep creating new IDs. In one that affected me, the person created over a dozen different accounts. To my knowledge, when it became outright threats is when Twitter finally took action. - Todd Jordan

Kenneth - Adding to what Todd Jordan said about blocking... There is a bug (acknowledged by Twitter) in the Track feature that is resulting in track results from blocked users coming through. For example, if I am tracking my name or user id using Track, I might see insults from people who I have blocked. Twitter says they are going to fix this but no timeline has been provided yet. http://snurl.com/27s01 - Mike Doeff

block is not any help here. insults are insults also if you blocked them. and google will find them if anyone searches for your name, right? - kosmar

who actually harased Ariel ? http://friendfeed.com/e... - Peter Dawson

Peter, your deduction leads to the name of Jonathan Kossmann. But I'm not sure this is right. My understanding would be that Jonathan merely maintained an account that allowed people to post anonymously to Twitter -- not that he was the harasser himself. His site does reference though that he kept server logs of who posted using that account. He very well may know who it is or at least their IP address. - Thomas Hawk

lmao I love how every 20 minutes or so this will pop back up to the top of my feed - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

From the "Confessions" site: "This account was set up as a bit of fun. People have used it in ways which were not intended. Therefore I have decided to shut the service down. All IP addresses are naturally stored in the server logs, as with any other web server on the internet. Now. Be good. And I'll see you on Judgement Day!" - Thomas Hawk

Kosmar: Google crawls Direct Messages? Broadcasting to the public timeline and sending direct messages are very different issues, IMO. I was under the impression we're talking specifically about DMs, in this case. If you can see DMs in Google, I'd say that's an issue that should probably be addressed, anyway... - Kenneth LeFebvre

I lol'd - Chris Jones from twhirl

@kenneth i understand its about public msgs - kosmar