A simple way to kill off Twitter trolls

@th3j35t3r writes on his blog:

Simply put. If Jim is blocked by John, Jim can no longer even utter Johns handle/twittername in a tweet. If he attempts to the tweet simply doesn’t process or gets sinkholed. Period. The end. Forever, or until John unblocks him. This approach would not infringe on Jim’s ‘freedom of speech’, he can still say whatever he likes, but he can’t include John. This approach would be self-policing essentially allowing users to decide if they are being abused or harassed and allowing them to take immediate actions without relying on Twitter to minimize the problem effectively. This approach would not be an overhead on Twitters current infrastructure and would require NOTHING by way of extra storage capacity.

Trolls are the ugly side of Twitter, but @th3j35t3r’s proposal seems very elegant to me.

So how about it Twitter?

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Find out more, and check out his amusing flowchart, by reading @th3j35t3r’s blog post.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

4 comments on “A simple way to kill off Twitter trolls”

  1. Gary Stuart Wicks

    Hardly a solution, many are blocked without ever interacting with a user, or even the user blocks the wrong @ inadvertently, how could they raise this with them?

    Also, this doesn't take account of Customer Service accounts manned by many, one user could block many harming the reputation of the company as they go blissfully forward with no complaints; back to the drawing board.

    1. Stephen · in reply to Gary Stuart Wicks

      Preliminary only allow blocking, in this way, of non-company accounts.

      1. Gary Stuart Wicks · in reply to Stephen

        Thereby creating the overhead that the original suggestion says it shall not create.

  2. John Keogh

    That's no use. Jim needs to be punished for his horrific, violent threats or racism. Jim should be incarcerated and banned from the net for life, or until he realizes other people have a right to life too.

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