In response to my report, Twitter sent this reply. My responses are in italics:
It appears your report relates to Tweets that display “RT” next to your username, along with name-calling or potentially inflammatory content. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. [Thank you for that]
Retweets on Twitter.com are published with a unique logo, as well as a footnoted link to the user that originally published the content. The official retweet feature is described here:
http://support.twitter.com/entries/77606
This feature allows users to click-through to the original Tweet and is the officially-supported method of retweeting as it guarantees the authenticity and source of the shared Tweet. Individual Tweets like the ones you described may follow other user-innovated conventions and are not considered to be in violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service. We don’t suspend or remove user content based solely on these reports. We recommend you block the users in question to prevent these users from following you; we also won’t deliver any @replies from blocked users to your @reply tab.
Twitter provides a platform for its users to share and receive a wide range of ideas and content, and we greatly value and respect our users’ expression. Because of these principles, we do not actively monitor users’ content and will not edit or remove user content, except in cases of violations of our Terms of Service.
In other words, be careful what you wish for (quoted Retweets), because you might get it, and more. And we’re sorry, but we’re not going to do much more than we’ve already done. Reputation? Meh.
Courtney Love might be able to pursue a defamation suit and win, but I’m not a public figure, just someone whose reputation matters.
Which means I have some choices to make, I guess.
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