Leslie Jones and Twitters’ Troll Economics
as a private company, Twitter has no legal obligation to let anyone use its service, the activities at issue here—targeted harassment, as well as posting faked tweets—violated the company’s terms of service, and they weren’t speech that any business would feel obliged to protect. If customers in a coffee shop behaved as Jones’s trolls did, they would immediately be booted.
.. The company has reasonable rules in place to prevent such abuse, but it is often justifiably criticized for failing to monitor for violations and enforce its guidelines rigorously and consistently. While Twitter responded quickly to Jones’s concerns, it has not done anywhere near as well in responding to similar reports from non-celebrities. And this very selectivity has led people like Yiannopoulos and his supporters to claim that they’re being punished for their conservative ideology, rather than for their incivility.
.. But if Twitter wants to stick with this approach and grow its business, it needs to recognize that identifying and stopping abusive behavior isn’t optional. Its value depends, in large part, on what economists call network effects: the more people on the network, the more valuable it becomes to users. But trolls can create reverse network effects—the more of them there are, the less valuable the network becomes.
.. That’s why it has long been clear to other media organizations that if fostering robust and healthy discussions in comment threads is part of your business model, then moderation is a must. For a service on the scale of Twitter, the challenge is obviously much greater.