I wonder if their A/B test showed that this was somehow "solving" the "spam of spam reports" problem. It would be fairy naive but I could envision a world where they tested this out, saw fewer (but more detailed) spam reports and concluded that the prior distribution of spam reports was itself not reliable (e.g overcounted the problem).
This is obviously self-serving but seems like it may at least be a "consistent" world view where they aren't totally cynical.
It's just bad UX and confusing. Consider this question "Who is this report for?". Here are the options:
1. Myself
2. Someone else or a specific group of people
-- This Tweet is directed at or mentions someone else or a specific group of people — like racial or religious groups.
Everyone on Twitter
3. This Tweet isn’t targeting a specific person or group, but it affects everyone on Twitter — like misleading info or sensitive content.
For the same Vitalik spam tweet you see everywhere, I'm guessing 3, but its kind of weird question
Then "Everyone on Twitter is being ..."
1. Attacked because of their identity
2. Slurs, misgendering, racist or sexist stereotypes, encouraging others to harass, sending hateful imagery
Harassed or intimidated with violence
3. Sexual harassment, group harassment, insults or name calling, posting private info, threatening to expose private info, violent event denial, violent threats, celebration of violent acts
4. Spammed
5. Posting malicious links, misusing hashtags, fake engagement, repetitive replies, Retweets, or Direct Messages.
Shown content related to or encouraged to self-harm
6. Shown misleading info
7. Offered tips or currency — or encouraged to send them — in a way that’s deceptive or promotes or causes harm
I guess spammed, but I'm pretty sure its a malicious link and misleading, so either 4 or 5 or 6
Then, "How is @... doing this?"
1. Posting misleading or deceptive links, leading to scams, phishing, or other malicious links
2. Misusing hashtags, such as unrelated hashtags and large number of hashtags
3. Sending a lot of aggressive, unwanted, repetitive or unrelated replies, Retweets, or Direct Messages
4. Fake engagement, such as aggressively Retweeting or buying and selling Likes, replies, or other Twitter features
5. Using multiple accounts to interact or coordinate with other people to manipulate accounts, Tweets, or other Twitter features
6. Following and then unfollowing large numbers of accounts so to inflate follower count
7. Something else
I guess its a deceptive link, but I'm not sure because I didn't click on it. I also didn't click 5 on the previous step which was "posting malicious links", I clicked spammed. But he's also using repetitive or unrelated replies so maybe 3 as well? And almost certainly the person running the scam is using multiple accounts.
That's a lot of words to read every time, and I'm pretty sure it has changed since I started reporting stuff regularly.
These questions are the kind of questions you put up when you want to funnel some (or most) of the reports into the trash can.
One thing Twitter certainly has to deal with is hordes of people reporting tweets, even if they're "ok" - I have to believe every single Trump tweet received hundreds if not thousands of reports immediately upon posting.
This is obviously self-serving but seems like it may at least be a "consistent" world view where they aren't totally cynical.