The Telegraph, "Twitter shares tumble after short seller calls it 'The Harvey Weinstein of social media' after sexism & misogyny identified by Amnesty

[R0wantrees]

by Olivia Feld, san francisco
20 DECEMBER 2018

(extract)
"Shares in Twitter have fallen by more than 12pc after a short seller accused the company of being "The Harvey Weinstein of social media" for failing to deal with harassment.

The note by Citron Research called the company toxic to investors and advertisers after a damning report by the human rights organisation Amnesty International which laid bare the scale of abuse on the social network.

“The culture of hate and anonymity should have Twitter trade at a discount to its closest peer, not a 100pc premium”, it said.

“The hate on Twitter is real and the company is not taking proper steps to curb the problem. Citron believes this story has just begun and advertisers will be forced to make more morality-based brand building decisions.”

Soon after the report was published Twitter’s share price tumbled. The company's failure to crack down on hateful and abusive messages has been an ongoing problem despite repeated efforts to tackle trolls.

On Tuesday, Amnesty released a report with Element AI, a software company, which found that 7pc, or 1.1 million tweets, sent to women in the UK and US last year were “problematic” or “abusive”. Women of colour were 34pc more likely to be mentioned in offensive tweets than white women." (continues)

The report analysed 228,000 tweets sent to 778 female politicians and journalists. Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, called on the San Francisco-based company to take action over "highly offensive racist and misogynist" abuse on the platform.

Abusive content violates Twitter’s own rules, said the report which defined problematic content as anything which is "hurtful or hostile, especially if repeated to an individual on multiple or cumulative occasions".

Twitter responded saying that it is publicly committed to improving the health, openness and civility of public conversation on its service. It's abusive behavior policy prohibits harassment, intimidation and silencing of users voices.

"Twitter uses a combination of machine learning and human review to adjudicate abuse reports and whether they violate our rules,” said Twitter's Vijaya Gadde." (continues)
www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/12/20/twitter-shares-tumble-short-seller-calls-harvey-weinstein-social/

Twitter does not list sex as a protected characteristic, so sexism cannot be easily reported within their reporting procedures

Rejoice!

Late Xmas gift.

SO Abuse agaianst women is totally consistent with their rules?

Yes.

30/5/2018 BBC article re Fairplay for Women's open letter.

'Twitter is banning women who "speak out against the dangerous dogma of trans ideology", a feminist group has said.'
(extract)
"In a letter to Twitter director Martha Lane Fox, Fair Play for Women says the company is allowing "a concerted attack on women's free speech".

But trans activist Ashleigh Talbot said the group's letter seeks to "whip up" hatred against trans people.

Twitter said its rules are enforced equally for every user, regardless of the commentary they engage in.

Fair Play for Women describes itself as a group of "ordinary women" who argue that "in the rush to reform transgender laws" women's voices will not be listened to.

It says Twitter users have been banned for stating "basic, incontrovertible biological facts" such as saying men are not women.

Their letter links to comments, that it says has led to people being banned from the site" (continues)

Transsexual writer Miranda Yardley said she was banned from Twitter for stating that Green Party LGBT spokesperson Aimee Challenor, a trans woman, is a man.

Writing on her blog she said: "According to the rules of Twitter it is now hateful conduct to call someone who is a man, a man.

"The implication of this is that the concept of proscribed speech, things we are now not allowed to say, now extends to the truth. This is fundamentally illiberal."

Fair Play for Women also said women receive abuse for talking "about their biology" - including being threatened with violence and referred to as Terfs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).

The Green Party's Aimee Challenor said: "Miranda Yardley's comments about me are abusive and damaging. Twitter is right to take action against this form of online harassment which goes against Twitter's rules."

Fair Play for Women has called on Martha Lane Fox - who is also a member of the House of Lords - to use her position in Twitter to "stop allowing bullying men to police our language, threaten us and abuse us". (continues)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3262965-Good-article-today-BBC-on-the-twitter-ban-on-womens-free-speech-on-trans-issues

Great this is out there. Very interested to see how meaningfully Twitter actually responds.

Twitter is weird. I got banned before I even started and had to get through several layers of 'combination of machine learning' or whatever it was before I even got on.

It doesn't take much imagination to realise that if you set up automatic systems, they will be played to breaking point. Twitter seems to do what it can to enable this.

Bloody hell, that’s fab news.

They ignore actual women telling them we are being abused, I doubt they’ll ignore the markets.

But won’t this just motivate twitter to crack down even harder on GC posters? Because the twitter starting point is that people with penises can be women? So twitter can weed out the hate that is affecting stock prices by banning us all...and leaving the hate-free penis-having ladies triumphant.

But won’t this just motivate twitter to crack down even harder on GC posters? Because the twitter starting point is that people with penises can be women? So twitter can weed out the hate that is affecting stock prices by banning us all...and leaving the hate-free penis-having ladies triumphant.

there is a hashtag #twitterlosingwomen

At the end of the day Twitter is a business and needs to make money. The best way to do that is to have as many people using it as possible so they can sell advertising services. I had a Twitter and Facebook account but they were for my business. I spent money on advertising (very small amounts) and one thing you can do is really target your adverts so for example women aged 18-35 and you will only use your budget advertising to that group. If businesses think that women are leaving Twitter or that targeted advertising is meaningless because of self-id then it could affect twitter's revenue. I closed my Twitter business account and am unlikely to open again.

there is a hashtag #twitterlosingwomen

But presumably you can only use it on Twitter, so slightly self-defeating.

Suggests anyone on twitter needs to continue to mute advertisers and tell twitter and the advertiser why

Btw mute not block so advertiser sees your message

Confused.

Should I block or mute?

Either way, it does not allow me to comment as to why.

A few of us have been doing this on twitter.
Respond to a promoted tweet with 'I will be blocking you in potest of Twitter censoring women #Twittersilencingwomen.'
Write the name down so you don't forget.
Block them a day later when they've had a chance to read it.
It's worth a shot. I'm off to do some more now.

Ok I see.

But I have a private account, I m not sure the company will see my reply.

I was on there and that Katie character who I think is a doxxer started paying too much attention so I left. I’ve seen that user mention people’s employers in a passive aggressive way.

...very busy muting twitter advertisers. Gone from 0-30 muted in no time at all. Lol

'in protest at'
FFS fat fingers.

current thread, OP DJLippy wrote:

"Apparently Twitters stock plummeted 20% recently - probably because of all their BS censorship.

Let's make them see that their misogyny is going to cost them even more money. I think they might be willing to listen now. Some people on twitter are organizing an adverser boycott - it's so simple here's how it works.

If you want to protest about Twitter sexism copy and paste this message whenever you see a “promoted content” tweet from one of their advertisers. Then proceed to mute whichever company has paid for the Tweet. Muting is more effective than blocking because this way the advertisers can see the message

Account muted in protest at @twitter censoring women who speak up for women’s rights. #TwitterCensorship #Twitterlosingwomen

What say ye wimminz? Let's show them we mean business!"

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3464723-Join-the-Twitter-advertiser-boycott-TwitterLosingWomen?

Mute them, don't block them. They need to see the message.

Surprised by the fact that it's Amnesty "sex work is work, TW are W" that published the report. Which makes me think that it will definitely be read as, all the disagreements with the TWAW people = misogyny, let's have less of that ...

Im new to blocking/muting. How do I mute? I can see how to block, but mute doesn't appear to be an option.

instructions here:

(for those of us who identify as technophobes!)

help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-mute

Shares in Twitter have fallen by more than 12pc after a short seller..
Is that legal? Don't short sellers bet on the share price falling? It's a positive for us but it looks like a coldblooded attempt to rig the market rather than any genuine concern.

Much as I wish Amnesty's recent report on Twitter's misogyny would have a huge negative impact on the company, I fear we might be making too much of the one-day $3.64 dip in its stock price that's been credited to short seller Citron's remark about that report. (In which Twitter was called "the Harvey Weinstein of social media" & labelled "toxic to investors".)

Fact is, Twitter stock has been all over the place in 2018, reaching a low of around $22 in the early part of the year, & a high of nearly $47 in the summer. What's more, December has turned out to be a wild one for stocks generally, with markets in the US (where Twitter trades) experiencing some historic single-day losses & gains.

True, Twitter stock did lose just over 11% value (that's the correct %, not 12 or 20% as some reports have stated) in a single day, December 20, a couple of days after the release of the Amnesty report. But that's far from unusual or record-breaking for Twitter: in another single day, July 27 of this year, Twitter stock went down by 20.5%.

What's more, the entire stock market tumbled on December 20, with the Dow down two percentage points & many other individual stocks losing considerably more, just like Twitter. Moreover, when the Dec. 20 one-day drop happened Twitter stock was already in the midst of a much larger slide in price over a longer period. The bigger story here is that on December 12, Twitter stock was at $36.25 & 12 days later it was at $26.45. (It's now at $28.40.)

I have no idea what's behind the fluctuations in Twitter's stock price. But just because Twitter had a big one-day price drop after Amnesty released its report documenting widespread misogyny on the platform - & short seller Citron called the company toxic - does not mean this price drop was caused by the Amnesty report or Citron's remarks about it.

The stock market is predominantly male, & traders in particular have long been known for extreme misogyny. My guess is, most traders who heard or read about the Amnesty report aren't much concerned by it. In fact, a lot of traders would probably find a report documenting widespread abuse of women on Twitter heartening rather than damning.