Sinister Security: Twitter

Daughter has best reaction when her dad becomes a Twitter meme

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When it comes to viral internet fame, there are great ways to achieve it and some really not-so-great ways. Getting there by being caught (apparently) eyeing up a young woman, then being called out on it by your daughter, would fall into the latter category for me. Luckily everyone seems to be taking it in good humor.

The original tweet was funny enough. Model Dominique Robinson snapped a selfie on a sidewalk in New York City, not realizing until after the fact that the man next to her seemed to be glancing in her direction.

Wowwwewww pic.twitter.com/6ru2jijpis

— Dom(Unique) (@tooshortforwhat) May 15, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The awkward photo garnered thousands of likes on Facebook and Instagram — but as far as viral photos go, it’s nothing remarkable. But then tweet made it back to the man’s daughter, and that’s when things really blew up:

You ever check twitter and realize your fucking father has turned into a meme? https://t.co/fcGn7JpdP2

— alex (@A_coolestgirl) May 16, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Realizing that the man — Queens resident Dennis Leavey — had been caught sent Twitter into a frenzy. Her response is now more popular than the original tweet. Daughter Alex reacted the way one would expect to seeing her dad’s lascivious eyeline going viral:

I wish I was adopted

— alex (@A_coolestgirl) May 16, 2018

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First came the embarrassment, and then came the apologies:

Unfortunately yes🙄 I am so sorry lol

— alex (@A_coolestgirl) May 17, 2018

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As for the look Leavey appears to be throwing Robinson, Alex Leavey revealed there was an innocent explanation: Her father is blind in one eye, and was just looking down. That said, she did ask that no one tell her mother about it. She told Buzzfeed News, “I immediately knew it was my dad and was laughing at most of the replies to it.”

Robinson, for her part, took some heat for exposing her mysterious admirer to censure, but she says she found the whole thing amusing:

I wish y’all would stop arguing over this photo and move on with your day! It’s harmless, who cares exactly where his eyes are it’s a funny photo , laugh and move on lol

— Dom(Unique) (@tooshortforwhat) May 17, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Still, speaking as a daughter, I say better Alex Leavey’s father than mine.

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This Girl Opened Twitter To Find Her Dad Had Gone Viral In The Most Awkward Way
on Buzzfeed

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Twitter will hide more bad tweets in conversations and searches

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Twitter will begin using a wider range of signals to rank tweets in conversations and searches, hiding more replies that are likely to be abusive, the company said today. Comments from users that have often been blocked, muted, or reported for abuse will be less visible throughout the service, CEO Jack Dorsey told a group of reporters. “We are making progress as we go,” Dorsey said.

Twitter already ranks tweets in search and in conversations. But until now, it has not taken negative signals into account when ranking them. This has meant that replies could easily be gamed by bad actors, whether they’re spammers hawking cryptocurrencies or bot networks attempting to influence elections.

Twitter will now begin examining a much wider variety of signals when ranking tweets in conversations and in search, Dorsey said. Some of those signals include number of accounts created by the person tweeting, IP address, and whether the tweet had led people to block the person tweeting it. Twitter won’t remove the tweets from Twitter, it said, but they will now be moved to the “see more replies” section of a conversation, where they are hidden behind an additional tap.

A test of the new approach to ranking found that the number of abuse reports generated from conversations declined by 8 percent, the company said. “The spirit of the thing is, we want to take the burden of the work off the people receiving the abuse or harassment,” Dorsey said.

Relying on algorithmic signals could have several advantages for Twitter as it works to reduce abuse on the platform. They work without respect to the content of the tweet, sparing Twitter from having to make tricky decisions around the tone or intent of a message. And they work regardless of the language the tweet was written in, allowing the company to roll the changes out globally all at once.

At the same time, decisions made by algorithms can also go disastrously awry, and can be difficult for outsiders to understand. Dorsey said Twitter is conscious of that and would invest in making sure the product communicated about how it makes decisions. The company will also consider issuing reports on the enforcement actions it takes across the platform, said Del Harvey, the company’s vice president of trust and safety.

The moves are meant to address Twitter’s longstanding struggle to rein in abusive accounts. The company has made several high-profile moves over the past two years to make the service feel more civil, but continues to draw criticism for its opaque policies and inconsistent enforcement.

The changes, which will roll out to all users globally this week, come two months after Twitter issued a request for proposals from researchers and academics to help the company measure the health of public conversations on the site. The company received 230 such proposals, product manager David Gasca said, and Twitter will announce its next steps with those proposals within the next several weeks.

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