Stay Ahead of Twitter Insults by Checking Your Lists
Twitter insults are never fun. And it can happen to you if you are already a well-known figure with this blue checkmark of authenticity, new to the world of online jokes, or if you came up with a single tweet that blew beyond your wildest expectations. Or, of course, if you are a woman.
Earlier, we covered techniques you can use to cleanse your Twitter feed of the most obnoxious users, including letting you know all the bullshit they spew and turning them off when they invade your digital bubble . My Twitter travels this weekend also led me to a great conversation with Heidi N. Moore , a former business editor for Mashable and a Wall Street Journal reporter.
Her advice? Keep a close eye on the lists that other Twitter users have added you to by clicking the icon in the upper right corner of the website, clicking Lists, and then Member. (Likewise, on the Twitter app, click your image, click Lists, and then click Member.)
If you find yourself unwittingly entering a bunch of terrifying and hateful lists, an easy way to remove yourself from them is to click or tap the list maker and block it. Not only will you disappear from the specified lists, but you will also receive the added bonus of ensuring that the terrible user behind the list cannot interact with you on Twitter (at least from that account).
Unfortunately, there’s no way to permanently prevent Twitter users from adding you to lists – a feature I’d like to see someday in the Privacy & Security section of its settings. In the meantime, Moore has some other helpful tips to help you fight Twitter trolls, including:
- Making your account private and reporting anyone sharing screenshots of your tweets should be a violation of Twitter’s policies .
- If you are publicly tweeting about a controversial topic, consider censoring certain words in your tweets to make it harder for bots and users to target you after the fact. (eg “Tr” instead of “Trump”)
- Regularly select obvious troll accounts from your “followers” lists: accounts without photos, without biographies, all the same retweets (for example, political), etc. You can also use Twitter settings to block notifications from these types of Accounts. While that won’t stop them from following you, if you don’t protect your profile, it will at least make it harder for them to let you down.
- Be ruthless with your blocking. As Moore describes: “Set yourself some rules so you don’t waste time thinking about what to do. I install * any * * R * sist * nce accounts and M * GA accounts because they often engage in targeted harassment of women and spread them. “
- If you find that one account is causing you a lot of grief and, even worse, the account owner is putting together an online gang to harass you, you can use a browser extension like Twitter Block Chain to block all of that account’s followers. Make yourself invisible to those who support online harassment.