Very short story about abuse and harassment on social media. I once did a session at a conference just called, “Horrors of Social Media” which was basically just me recounting stories from social media history, including stuff I knew from behind the scenes at various services.

You know the kind of thing - at one end, the endless September when Usenet had to deal with a massive influx of new people after AOL opened the doors and every group got overwhelmed, through to the revenge porn and the hate speech and the beheading videos and the doxxing.

Some of the stuff you hear second or third hand is really creepy but hard to prevent - like the people who just ostentatiously like pictures of a woman wearing a seatbelt over their breasts. Some of it is just straight down the line terrorist planning or directing hate.

Anyway, I was doing this session because so many new social creators don’t know these stories. Also because there are all these utopian people out there who think that social spaces would be better if they were unmoderated. It’s exceptionally rare that they are.

And as I’m coming up to give the talk, this guy walks up to me. He’s in his mid-thirties, white, straight, cis, athletic, big beard, tanned, wearing a hat, t-shirt and shorts. And he asks what the talk is about, so I tell him.

And with his broad, open, friendly face he just turns towards me, standing legs wide and puts his hands on his hips and says loudly and confidently, “I dunno, Tom... I’ve never had *any* trouble on social media...”

Most of the time, these are the people who build your social products - people with absolutely zero experience of being harassed, abused or traumatized, who have always felt safe, who have always had money and who have lots of ambition and startlingly little empathy.

(It takes a while for them to start seeing the crap that some of their users experience, many end up thinking they’re optimizing for growth and money - although mostly toxic environments end up failing. Some never learn.)