#twitter rolls back a change designed to counter abuse after complaints it encouraged abuse
Earlier today Twitter announced, via its Twitter Safety account, that it would no longer notify users when another user added them to a list. “We want you to get notifications that matter,” the company said. The implication was that list notifications don’t matter — and given that lists are an all-but-hidden feature of the Twitter app, for the majority of users they probably don’t.
But the fact that the change was announced from the safety account suggests the change had another purpose. Twitter’s endlessly inventive and malicious troll accounts had been using list notifications to harass users. If you tweeted something in support of Hillary Clinton, for example, I might add you to the list “stupid piece of trash,” and you would receive…
