Possible routes for distributed anti-abuse systems
There is no abuse problem on the platform, or rather any abuse problem on the platform is already a solved problem via existing techniques (e.g. standard ML classifiers).<p>Consider SMTP, which is a true peer-to-peer system. In SMTP, abuse is a solved problem - spam filters work great, and 33mail&#x2F;mailcatch (disposable email) improves things tremendously. At most 1-2 recruiters&#x2F;SAAS offering marketing automation&#x2F;etc slip through my filters each week, forcing me to expend about 3-5 seconds&#x2F;week clicking &quot;report spam&quot;.<p>The &quot;abuse&quot; problem on twitter is similarly not really a filtering issue; if it were, then it could be easily solved by a moderately better twitter client or switching off notifications of @mentions.<p>No, the actual problem people face is that they want to stop others from speaking, and label the speech they wish to stop &quot;abuse&quot;. What&#x27;s scary to most (including me) about Twitter is that an angry mob may form and decide they hate me, and then use Twitter to coordinate real life actions against me.<p>That&#x27;s not a problem of abuse on the platform; that&#x27;s a problem that the platform enables people to speak among themselves in ways I dislike. Lets be clear that this is the problem some folks wish to solve. It&#x27;s only by identifying the problem that we can properly solve it, or decide if it&#x27;s a problem that should be solved.