I wish I shared your optimism. It would be immediately weaponised (on social media, of course) as an attack on free speech, or whatever is needed to get the right people riled up.
Social media is awful but a) the vast majority love it (if you told my mother she was losing Facebook she’d be livid) and b) it serves the interests of the powers that be.
> I do not see the direct benefit of this for the end user...
I posted it to my Facebook earlier. So far the response has been unbridled glee. I think you're tremendously underestimating the sheer joy people have at being handed a method of striking back at the people making their lives a misery, and need to recalibrate your model of how people will react to this.
> The best solution here is to completely disconnect from social media
I've thought about that, but your reputation is being destroyed. You'll offer no defense? You'll let everyone who you value get that impression of you? You'll allow it to become permanent, public record for anyone who ever looks you up with a search engine?
> surely you'd agree that someone trolling kids online ... should be ashamed of themselves and driven out of polite society, yes?
I think pretty much everyone involved here, aside from the children, ought to be ashamed of themselves. I don't buy into the idea that people ought to be driven out of society though.
> If, for example, someone's mass tweeting at me via their followers (e.g. a blogger who dislikes me and posts my twitter handle), I'm going to be in a much better position if I turn off Twitter notifications for awhile than I would be if I let the notifications continue to show up on my phone.
Yes, when someone makes a death threat it's good if you stay away from the windows and hire bodyguards to check the car for bombs.
> there are two things at work here. Are you suggesting people shouldn't be allowed to spam someone else?
Denial of service attacks should carry some consequence.
> Or are you suggesting that people shouldn't be allowed to say harassing things to other people?
Depends on the severity and frequency of the harassment.
"By the way, religious and political views do not only express themselves in the fields you mention. What disrespectful soul there decided to take my "Favorite Quotes", with access previously restricted to "Only Friends", and plaster them -- without so much as a warning -- all over my public profile?"
> I’ve been thinking of tweeting my home address, so this is a relevant concern.
Giving out their home address didn't work out well for Tony Stark in "Iron Man 3" or for this guy in New Jersey [1], but they both had done things to get some people really annoyed with them.
So at the very least make sure that you don't have anyone out there who is really annoyed with you and has only been prevented from forcefully expressing that annoyance because they do not know where you live.
Absolutely, 100%. If you modified this to be people face to face or people I already know and love, definitely not.
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