Prevent transgender harassment

[estelle]

Would be cool to add a flag that if the bio contains the transgender flag or pronouns, the script fails. While people will be able to look at the script and edit out this feature, it will help prevent non-technical trolls / lazy bullies from surfacing dead names.

[LuNeder]

Yeah I can definitely see how this tool could easily backfire and be used for harassing trans people

Also, it’d be nice to add something hidden to the bio instead of the trans flag
Maybe just the LGBT flag
Some people out there might not want to be publicly trans

[LuNeder]

And honestly, I think this will probably be used MORE by transphobes to harass transgender people than to unmask transphobes. Big part of the transphobes already have their real name out anyway or just create fake accounts, while lots of transgender people I follow and am friends with just keep their account and change their usernames.

And this having already more than 100 stars, it might be too late to avoid this. While I do like to imagine that most of these stars have not downloaded this yet, they can always download a previous commit.

While having a protection would be better than nothing, I’d assume the best thing would be just privating this as a whole to avoid harassment. One techy transphobe would be enough to remove the protection and redistribute this among all other transphobes.

Mind that this service relies upon a database that contains the data from the Wayback Machine (easy to access, and censorable by users upon request) and the Twitter Stream Grab (harder to access, unclear if it would be redacted). This repo alone is useless, so the question should be about public access to the database and the general problem of the Internet Archive maintaining a Twitter history.
In my opinion it might be advisable to allow access to the database only upon request, and for the community to look into whether the Stream Grab can be changed (Travis would still be able to steward a copy of the unredacted data, which could be useful as people with more nefarious intent would likely also want to have their data removed from the Stream Grab).

[travisbrown]

Thank you for raising this issue here. A few notes:

• Most of the information the service provides can easily be found through other means (Twitter search, the Wayback Machine). People who engage in harassment tend to know about these methods. The goal of the project is to make it easy for anyone to identify accounts that may be abusive, scammy, spreading disinformation, etc. It doesn't change what is possible (either for "good" use cases or abusive ones).
• The underlying service has been publicly available (and publicized) for a month, and has been in use privately by several groups of antifascist researchers and journalists since last November. I've been watching for misuse, and what I've seen has been very limited. If that changes we will restrict access to the service.

There is also a private exclusion list that removes ID-screen name pairs from the public results (although of course the excluded info is usually still also available through Twitter search and the Internet Archive's Twitter Stream Grab, which I have no control over). I will respond privately to all requests for exclusions.

[travisbrown]

@hyperfekt As far as I know, nothing has ever been redacted from the Twitter Stream Grab (although redactions regularly happen for the Wayback Machine), and the way it's packaged and distributed would make specific redactions practically impossible.

[travisbrown]

One other thing to note is that (as @hyperfekt points out above), the availability of the code in this repository isn't very useful on its own—it takes a lot of computing time to build the index from the Twitter Stream Grab and Wayback Machine, and the scraping code isn't available here. Access to the web service can be restricted (or turned off entirely), and without it the browser extension is useless.

[UwUnyaa]

Just to let you know, this whole project is so bad that I had to look up how to report repositories on GitHub. I refuse to call it a tool, because it's nothing but a weapon.

[travisbrown]

@UwUnyaa In what sense is an index of public screen names from public archives (which are in most cases still discoverable through Twitter's public interface) a "weapon"?

[travisbrown]

I've just restricted access to the web service, which means that the Chrome extension will no longer add previous screen names to Twitter pages for now. If you had access to the service before the public launch last month, feel free to contact me.

Please note that all of the data indexed by the service is very public. If you feel that information provided by the service is a threat to your safety, you should be aware that there are several other ways for people to find that info (in most cases extremely easily, via a single Twitter search), and that there are steps that you should be taking to identify (and possibly limit) your exposure. I'm happy to discuss those steps, or to put you into contact with someone else who can help.

I'll post an update here before opening the service to the public again, and in the meantime please see the README for information on requesting exclusions.

[UwUnyaa]

@travisbrown Making this kind of OSINT easier is just a bad idea, especially with the current state of affairs.

If it's already public and people are able to get around it by making a new account or something, I don't see the issue. The corporations already have access to all the data. It's already possible for people who are intent on doxxing/harrassing, making it easier for regular people vs institutions just seems clearly helpful.

[travisbrown]

@travisbrown Making this kind of OSINT easier is just a bad idea, especially with the current state of affairs.

@UwUnyaa I disagree, and I know many other people who do as well. I've seen dozens of cases where this tool has been used to identify astroturfing, disinformation, scams, etc., to trace connections of current US political candidates to QAnon, and even a couple of cases where it's resulted in offline consequences for right-wing extremists (losing jobs, having harmful online activity known to their local communities). I know that there's potential for misuse, but given the full situation it's not clear (to me, or to many others I've spoken with over the past months) that that outweighs the value of the tool being publicly available.

[LuNeder]

If it's already public and people are able to get around it by making a new account or something, I don't see the issue. The corporations already have access to all the data. It's already possible for people who are intent on doxxing/harrassing, making it easier for regular people vs institutions just seems clearly helpful.

Well, it being public doesn't mean one will know how to do it. This thing makes it terribly easy to do it, anyone would be able to use this for harassing.

And creating a new account is not something most people want, specially if you already have lots of followers that you would end up losing or if you already have your account for a long time.

Still, now that this tool exists, the only option for lots of people may very well be creating a new account. The exclusion thing will definitely help, but now that it's public that doing this can be easy one techy transphobe can just create an unrestricted alternative.

Twitter themselves should probably change how they deal with accounts uuids. Probably making them private, being only something to deal with suspensions and bans and stuff, not something public that everyone can see.

@LuNeder They already harass plenty, you can block. The question seems to be about deadnames primarily, which seems to me like something worth making a new account for when the data is public, or tolerating that some people will know. Everyone of those followers a trans person had before switching names would know about their previous identity, as well as any software that could see it. The data exists. That's just what happens when you share your information with people and build an identity that you then want to change. Do we really want twitter to be in control of all our data and put it all behind closed doors? And yes like you said, the software to do this already exists so it's more a question of how we respond to twitter's policies. Whatever, it'll happen how it happens.

[LuNeder]

@travisbrown Making this kind of OSINT easier is just a bad idea, especially with the current state of affairs.

@UwUnyaa I disagree, and I know many other people who do as well. I've seen dozens of cases where this tool has been used to identify astroturfing, disinformation, scams, etc., to trace connections of current US political candidates to QAnon, and even a couple of cases where it's resulted in offline consequences for right-wing extremists (losing jobs, having harmful online activity known to their local communities).

Just because it can be used for good, it doesn't means it won't be used for bad. This kind of tool shouldn't be public. Make it available for only a handful of trustworthy journalists then. This is not a job for random internet users.
As a public tool, this will be used against journalists, LGBT people in general and people in abusive relationships.

I know that there's potential for misuse, but given the full situation it's not clear (to me, or to many others I've spoken with over the past months) that that outweighs the value of the tool being publicly available.

Well it does. Going on a json of the size of twitter itself is not something anyone will do, but using a simple browser extension that will immediately give them all previous names of someone with no obstacles is something anyone can do