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Twitter Lists Risks and Worries

October 18th, 2009 | Blogging, How-To, Social Media, Social Networking, Tools


twitter lists example image social media gurus

Twitter brings out Lists. Lists is a way to organize Twitter users.  Users can be people you follow or people you don’t. Lists can be public or private. List names can be just about anything, as spaces become dashes, and the words just string together.

Lists makes Twitter users curators.  A list is like a gallery of people you’ve grouped together, either for private use, or to share in public, that have a common theme. Themes can be as simple as being in the list. Lists I’ve formed include the example above, social media gurus, but could be based on location, profession, or expertise.  Heck, you could make a list of ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’ people. Hopefully you don’t and if you do, you make it private.

The last example points out just one potential problem with lists, Negative Labeling. Negative Labeling occurs even involuntarily when you group folks as Hillbillies, Hoes, or whatever. You can’t assume no one will see that list.

Negative labeling can also cross the line into the illegal.  It’s borderline, in my opinion, to put together a list of politicians you believe are taking bribes. Likewise a list of neighbors you suspect of cheating on their wives might not be prudent.

Another problem with lists is Outing. Outing commonly refers to outing a secret, and most often is used to refer to gays. Your list of gay friends, the one you make public, may unintentionally out someone to family, friends, or coworkers. Yeah, no big deal to you maybe, but that might cost someone a relationship.

Outing can also be a problem with regard to location. At least a few of my contacts don’t publish a location on their Twitter profile because they are avoiding someone.  It could be an ex-boyfriend, an estranged family member or they could be very private.  Location outing them as being in a certain neighborhood may cause no end of problems.

There are many other ways of Outing or Negative Labeling someone besides the examples I’ve given. Likely folks are already constructing lists such as these.

My lists are focused on location, skills, and other groupings, such as my Master Mind group.  Locations I’ve included are St. Louis, Chicago, DC and more.  Ultimately I see myself adding lists of fellow game players, such as XBox Live folks, or lists of origami enthusiasts.

What will you do with your lists? Will you be responsible? Childish? Or do you even agree it makes a difference?

Whose in your list?

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  • http://versadave.com/ Versa Dave

    Thanks for the write-up Todd.

  • http://www.frogblog.biz Fred H Schlegel

    Another reason why folks who communicate openly on various platforms need to have a healthy understanding of Libel laws and hopefully respect for ethical behavior.

    While it wouldn't necessarily be illegal to create a list of “politicians who take bribes” you very easily could be sued for libel over the issue – even if only a few people ever see your list. As you move from public figures like politicians (where for libel you must be wrong and malicious) to private folks like most of us the level of proof necessary to prove libel/slander is reduced.

    Good points. Thank you.

  • http://toddrjordan.com/thebroadbrush tojosan

    Libel & more are my Lists concerns. I can see it getting way out of hand as well with students and bullies and cliques. That'll start taking place immediately.

  • johnesmith

    Excellent description of how “muddy” the ethical boundaries have become with the increasing use of online social networking tools. I think that the availablity of information and the ease with which we can manipulate it has pushed us past a very important question: “Should we be sharing this information?”.

    Just because we can access, collect, and publish something, does not mean that we have either the legal or the ethical right to do so. As you pointed out, we can easily create an object that is geographically based, but how do we determine that everyone included in this object is willing to have their location publicized by someone other than themselves.

    This is where I see the real issue. When someone else takes my information and does something with it, I no longer contorl how, when, or where information relating to me is used.

    This is a problem of common courtesy, respect for others, and will eventually become a legal issue. Someone somewhere will do what you have described and something bad will happen, out of which will arise a precedent-setting legal process.

  • http://toddrjordan.com/thebroadbrush tojosan

    Told you so?! Yeah, maybe I'll get to say that. Hopefully more in the future than less though.

    I'm working the geography thing but now am considering a private list version of each as well for those that don't want to be outed.

    Also I'm avoiding labels that aren't useful to me personally, such as gay or hetero. Likewise, ethnicity isn't a big concern of mine, but ethnic interests or cooking might be.

    Thanks for stopping by.

  • http://2qsolutions.wordpress.com/ Steve Smart

    Thanks for posting. I'm just learning to use lists, and learning to make better use of TweetDeck.

  • http://2qsolutions.wordpress.com/ Steve Smart

    Thanks for posting. I'm just learning to use lists, and learning to make better use of TweetDeck.

  • http://www.toddrjordan.com/thebroadbrush/2009/10/opt-in-and-opt-out-twitter-lists/ Twitter Lists opt in opt out | The Broad Brush

    [...] Let’s look at an Internet example along Twitter lists is going to be a fun feature, but right now it’s not opt anything. If you’re added to a list, or add someone to a list, that’s just the way it is. This will be a problem. [...]

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