“Did you call the hypothetical hardware store and buy a theoretical chainsaw?”

As the head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team, I’ve been asked more than a few times exactly what it is that my team does at Twitter, and the response is invariably something along the lines of “it’s too much to cover in 140 characters.” Trust and Safety has a simple mission statement: to keep user trust and protect users’ rights. It sounds very pie-in-the-sky and naive, but it’s incredibly heartfelt — and I can say firmly that my team believes passionately in that mission statement.

There are a few different divisions within Trust and Safety. We’ve got an engineering tools team that builds our tools and enables our work, an API policy team that works with developers to help them maximize their use of our API, a policy team that deals with everything from international issues to trademark to DMCAs to subpoenas to parody accounts, and a spam team that focuses not only on spam but also on phishing, hacking, and malware issues.

I joined Twitter back in October of 2008 (decades ago in Twitter time) and since then my team has grown from being just me to 20 people — currently, the largest department at Twitter. We’ve gone from scrambling to try to find resources to fix problems (like people being hacked or accounts being deleted) to creating tools that allow us to identify compromised accounts and proactively reset users before they’re affected.

We continue to hire and we continue to iterate upon our policies and our rules in an attempt to make sure that we’re doing the “right thing” — the right thing for users, for Twitter, and for the ecosystem. Sometimes we suspend accounts belonging to people who didn’t know what they were doing was wrong. They file a ticket, we respond to the ticket, and situation by situation, we evaluate the issue and either approve the appeal or deny it. We process hundreds of appeals per day every day of the week, including weekends. We work hard to straddle a balance between letting “good” users who were just confused or unfamiliar with the rules back in and keeping users who may have malicious intent or simply don’t plan on obeying the rules out. We avoid partisanship and favoritism; we do not mediate content; we ensure that our policies and rules are fair and evenhanded. When we receive complaints about a given policy or rule, we reevaluate it. When we get feedback about the way our system currently works, we listen to it. We make notes for future iterations of tools and procedures; for example, when large numbers of people were being flagged for sending high numbers of @ replies who were just trying to have conversations, we fixed it so they wouldn’t be affected. 

Twitter — including the executive team — supports us in what we do and realizes the importance of it. Sure, we don’t always go along with other teams and sometimes we demand changes in projects as part of our role as in-company user advocates — but we’re listened to, even when what we have to say doesn’t make things easy (or makes them drastically harder) and even when what we have to say doesn’t make them happy. 

I take what we do seriously. I believe that it matters. I believe that it’s important to protect user rights. I believe that it’s important that users know they have advocates and that their advocates are passionate about what they’re doing, not just going through a rote process. We strive for objectivity, neutrality, and fairness and we do our best to be responsive and informative. 

I asked a few of my staff the question referenced in the title of this blog post — why do you do what you do (with the “here at Twitter” implied)?

Answers:

“I’m trying to make something great.”

“I’m motivated by being part of a company that’s working to empower people through communication, which I’ve always been passionate about. I love helping people and solving problems, which is a big part of what I’m doing here right now. Helping people communicate more effectively is a really positive feeling.”

“I like to be able to contribute to something I believe in. I believe in what Twitter stands for and more specifically, Trust and Safety.”

“I really enjoy shaping the direction the platform takes and what that means for the ecosystem.”

“I’m here for the users.”

“It’s clear and important and directly related to the success of good things happening. The problems we deal with extend beyond the internet — human stuff as opposed to merely website stuff.”

My personal answer is short and simple: because it’s the right thing to do. We do what we do because it’s what should be done and we work really, really hard to do it right. We genuinely care; we’re not a faceless group who has no accountability (if you doubt this, just look at my @ replies) but rather people who want to make Twitter as good as possible for as many people as possible. With over 125 million registered users and 65 million updates a day, there’s a lot to be done and we’re constantly striving to do it better.

I respond to @ replies seven days a week (though not 24 hours a day); my work account is also my personal account. You can find me here: @delbius.

not amused.

Message your hosting provider. Seriously, it was the only way I could do it.

to the pain!

I may be dead but I’m still pretty.

• Buffy

Would I rather be feared or loved? Um… Easy, both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.

- The Office

Things attended so far:

• Securing Web Behemoths
• Can You Copyright a Tweet?
• What Can Carl Sagan Teach Us About The Web?
• Micmacs
• Should the Government Tweet?
• Trolls to Stars: the Commenter System
• Twitter Keynote
• RT: I’m Going to Kill Myself - Preventing Suicide Online

Still to go:

• MacGruber
• Other things

I’ve heard about QR codes for some time but had never really delved into them much — now that I’m headed to SXSW to speak on a panel about “Securing Web Behemoths,” though, I decided it was time.  Cue a helpful post from Lifehacker about a QR-Code generator — http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ — and I created a QR code to test.

I have an iPhone, so I downloaded i-nigma’s free QR Code reader.  After that, I went to the generator and attempted to create an image that would link to delbius.com.  It was literally as easy as typing in the URL that I wanted and clicking “generate.”

Boom. Scan it with the reader and it links directly to delbius.com.  Sweet!

Tonight, I discovered that by putting eggs on the middle rack of an oven, baking them at 325 degrees for 30 minutes, submerging them in ice water and, after they cool, peeling them under running water, you can successfully “hardboil” (hard-bake?) 24 eggs at once (or really, however many your oven can hold.

Awesome.

To recap:

• Put eggs on middle rack of unheated oven.
• Put baking sheet under eggs, because if one of them cracks, woe is you.
• Turn oven on to 325 degrees (bake).
• Allow 30 minutes to pass.
• Submerge eggs in ice water.
• Peel eggs under running water (this made it a lot easier to peel — they were stubborn at first).
• Be stoked it didn’t take you three pots of boiling water at eight eggs apiece to do the same thing.

I checked out Flavors.me and created flavors.me/delbius; who knows, maybe I’ll make www.delbius.com direct to there.  Apparently I have to figure out how to change an A Record.  I don’t know where to find one.  That’s okay.

Today’s soundtrack: Princess Superstar.  Who is, coincidentally (or not coincidentally at all, but as extra information), on Twitter as @psuperstar.

Google searches this morning:

• Make cat stop meowing
• Cat meows food morning stop
• Train cat out of meowing for food

Amount not slept due to cat: 50 extra minutes

Feelings: saddened, sleepy, sullen

I have never, ever drunk tea during teatime at work.

Evidence begins to accumulate that Samson is, in actuality, a dog.

A bathroom door left open during a shower can only be seen as an opportunity.

The graffiti unicorn is a rare sight, even in more urban areas.

At least my drivin’ hand is getting a tan this summer.

The tiniest alien was unsure as to whether or not he was pleased with his life decisions thus far.

“This is the strangest parade I’ve ever been a part of,” mused the dinosaur.

Anarchist hippo feels that you’re not trying hard enough.