I Think Staff Tweets Need To Go

"The NYPD are white supremacists and the system needs to be dismantled." - Abby Russell

I'm sorry fam. I cant do it anymore. As a family member of to NYPD officers who lost their lives on 9/11 trying to save as many people, of any color, religion or creed, I am absolutely crushed to see this bold and pronounced on what has for a decade been my absolute favorite website on the internet, my escape when life is crap, when I have nowhere else to go. I'm done.

Im not equating my hurt with what is going on in this country right now. Lives are being destroyed. Businesses are being ruined. And people are being killed. Things need to change, for the sake of every American and every human. But please people, think about what you type. Staffers: your words carry weight with a lot of people, weather you realize it or not. Fellow duders: I have considered many of you friends, and a few of you close to family. I will miss you all. Goodbye GiantBomb

I know that staff tweets have been an issue for some people in the past and there has been a ticket in to make that module optional. There's a lot of other site-critical tickets for the engineers to deal with but it's on their docket to handle at some point.

Perhaps users should be able to choose whether or not staff tweets are visible when viewing Giant Bomb.

That would alleviate issues like this.

Oof, that's one helluva tweet. My staff tweet thingy has been glitched out for ages but I never looked at it anyway, Twitter's such a pointless, hateful mess imo. I'd love the option to turn that stuff off in future but it's not a huge issue for me, I can ignore it just fine.

Leaving the site over it seems extreme (inflammatory tweets are nothing new) but you do you duder, I get it.

I've never really felt like that module of the site provides any real value to be honest anyway. So I would throw my vote in on making it optional if for no other reason than to save me space on the page or to provide alternative options that may be more valuable to me. I never get anything out of it aside from a random sentence from a staff member that I usually can't follow without having the context of seeing it on twitter. Which if I wanted to, I'd have a twitter and follow them. If it was an easy way to see commentary or opinions on on things that the staff member is involved in on the site, that'd be great, but as it is it just gets filled with random one offs as most people's twitters do.

And while I support the individual staff members' of giant bomb and their right to have an opinion on a major issue and for the ability of others to find out what they believe if they're interested, I can't help but find myself wondering if we've made a reaching assumption that every tweet is relevant and needed on the front page of a gaming website.

You should be able to disable staff tweet either way, but that quote doesn't appear on the homepage at all, so you'd need to click through to see it.

Counterpoint: Plaster that and tweets like it everywhere.

Agreed. I generally don't mind the tweets and click on them occasionally. But they don't add much and it might be better to just put the staff's Twitter tags there if you want to follow them (or maybe just make a Staff page with bios and links). Or just put the official account on the front page, as there's the occasional problem of "wait, when was this announced" and turns out it was posted on Twitter only.

Frankly, if I want to follow Alex or whoever I can just follow them externally. Although it seems like much of the staff is using it less and less, anyway.

Keep in mind that a Tweet like that directly feels like the opinion of Giant Bomb dot com. Even if there's a rational discussion under there, no one on the site is going to see it outside of the initial post. Basically all I saw was what the OP posted above.

I use Twitter quite a lot and I don’t really feel that the module adds much to the front page either. Maybe a list of most recent Wiki edits, most recent reviews or even something funny like a random Wiki fact from a randomly selected game would be better. The staff are obviously also human beings and have a right to express their concerns and thoughts on social media like anyone else. So for the sake of everyone it is probably best to just not show Staff tweets and just limit it to the official GB account only.

A while ago, the company I work for posted social media guidelines in the hall as part of a teamwork/create an inclusive workplace push. The guidelines on Twitter were simple, but ones I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing with:

• Step 1: Think before you Tweet.
• Step 2: Don't.

Twitter in general is The Worst (TM), and particularly on this site it doesn't feel like it served a useful purpose. I can't remember the last time I found something useful on that feed. It's all out-of-context stuff, attempts at "edgy" humor that I personally find extremely unfunny, or some link that requires me to click through to the entire timeline to understand.

And while it is at the bottom of the page, and it is something I could just ignore, it feels like that space could be used for something more constructive.

@drinkmoxie: That tweet has nothing to do with games and is a personal, off topic post that doesn't represent GB as a whole. But it's on the front page of the site.

The censorship discussion with swearing was directly about the content of the site. The staff has an online presence, but their Twitter opinions have very little to do with the site or its content.

The OP has an understandable reason for being sensitive to the subject regardless of who's right/wrong and who agrees/disagrees, and most of everyone else is just expressing that they don't really get anything out of the feature since the people who want to follow tweets can just go follow tweets and Rory mentioned that they've thought about making it optional. No reason to put words into people's mouths with quotes of what you imagine people are saying.

@cornfed40: ACAB

Staff can say whatever they want. Many staff have posted political tweets in the past. If you've seen the footage out there and can't understand why the NYPD is a white supremacist org, then its not Abby's fault.

@cabelhigh: Sure, just as much as AAAB (All Americans Are Bastards) in the eyes of the rest of the world.

@mikewhy: Yeah seems fair.

I would like to see it go or be optional too. Whenever I do happen to glance over to that box I only ever see Ben/Abby/Rorie using it. Never really read the tweets either since they are mostly just URL's but getting rid of them would be good for me since it would just remove some clutter from what I fell is an already cluttered front page.

Also wow! what an extremely ignorant tweet by Abby.

And just soon after their display pictures starting showing correctly...

@zombie2011: Fuck are you on about. Do I need to link the hundreds of videos from the protests that prove her point or are you going go stay ignorant?

Here's the thing: Abby's right and she's using her platform right.

Gosh, with everything going on right now and with everything that happened historically I can't understand why anyone would still give the benefit of the doubt to police force and not to the protesters.

If anything I'm glad she's speaking up because the usual silence we get from most public personas on the subject is way more offensive to me than anything Abby said here. If you think her tweets are inflammatory, maybe check out the history of the NYPD for counter-arguments or anything?

There's thousands of more offensive jokes on this websites (Brad Volgar's famous joke, Jeff talking about Flint during a Division livestream, them playing Cards Against Humanity, etc.) but most of the audience (me included) are OK with them. Why would political statements like these warrant the staff to censor themselves? If anything I'd like them to be more open about that stuff.

Edit: Adding this here, if you've got some family history with police forces (as I do), why are you not more angry at how police are using their powers right now? It's not because you knew people in the police that were trying to do right that it erases everything else police forces did wrong. If anything they are shitting on their own work more than anyone else.

Also, good for Abby, she's right. And the Staff Tweets feature is useful for me (I don't use twitter).

@drinkmoxie: what are you even trying to say here? people who swear and like swearing are pro cop violence? lol

@stephen_von_cloud: The idea that someone on the left can adopt the language of the right and think it's okay just because they're on the other side is ridiculously cringeworthy.

Seems like a fine idea to make that tweet section optional, but considering that the section of the tweet quoted by OP doesn't even show up on the site (you need to click through to Twitter to see the entire tweet) it sure does seem like you're saying you just don't want the staff to tweet.

This is weird to me, since you Americans are theoretically supposed to be in love with the idea of free speech, but even still I have good news for you! It's really easy to pretend that Twitter doesn't exist or to not engage with it! Like, really easy!

You clicked through to a different website and saw that quote, it was not 'bold and pronounced' on giantbomb.com. Getting rid of the staff tweets section isn't going to solve this problem for you, that's on you. It is entirely possible that other upsetting things may be tweeted in the future that do show up on the front page so sure, make the tweet section optional! Makes no sense in this specific scenario though.

@zeik: adopt the language of the right.......what are you TALKING about? Calling cops white supremacists is the opposite of the language of the right

@cabelhigh: I'm talking to the guy calling people "snowflakes". That's one of right's favorite little buzzwords, and it's not suddenly more acceptable coming from someone on the left.

@zeik: lol my dude its clearly a subversion of the way the right uses it. Most people use it because the right is so obsessed with calling people snowflakes but are so fragile themselves. Come on.

@cabelhigh: And that's fucking stupid. You just put yourself on their level and look just as pathetic.

But I'll leave it at that, because I don't intend to derail this any further.

I forgot the tweet section was even there. The site is now designed in such a way that there's really no reason for me to do anything but click "live", "latest videos", or "forums" at the top. I don't think I've scrolled below the first row of videos in months.

So, yeah. Seems a bit useless regardless of content.

Wow, this sure as shit devolved quickly. Implying that all cops are white supremacists is inaccurate and unhelpful, indiscriminate hate does nothing at all to highlight the actual issues and the OP only ever expressed a wish not to see the tweets on the frontpage.

Some of you need to get a little perspective and think about what any of this is gonna achieve other than further fracture your already unstable society. Don't @ me, I don't give a shit.

To say a person's individual perspective and opinion has no place on a personality based website seems super ignorant and code for "I wish this person I don't agree with would shut up."

The systematic oppression of people of color absolutely has a place in discussion about games. About movies. About comics.

Or should this site only cover studios and companies where no people of color are employed?

Because if a game studio has POC in their staff, then the rights of those people are 100% on-topic when it comes to games discussion. Their perspectives as artists, writers, programmers literally shape and create the games being discussed and influence every single one of those aspects. Stop trying to silence people seeking justice for others. ACAB.

At the request of the thread starter I'm going to lock this thread. As I mentioned above we have a ticket in to make the staff tweets module optional and that will be worked on when an engineer has time for it. Be good to each other.