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from the sometimes-a-cigar-is-just-a-cigar dept.
A Twitter rules update rolled out on Wednesday to address the site's "verification" system, and it attached a new set of standards to any user whose account receives a "blue check mark."
Twitter's "verification" system is used to confirm accounts of celebrities and other accounts of "public interest." However, the feature has long straddled a blurry line between identity confirmation and "elite" user status, especially since verified accounts receive heightened visibility and perks such as content filters. That issue returned to the headlines last week when Twitter gave a blue check mark to white nationalist Jason Kessler. Kessler is best known as an organizer of the Unite The Right white-supremacist rally, but before then, he had racked up a significant record of online hate propagation, particularly with anti-Semitic rhetoric about "cultural Marxism."
"Twitter on Wednesday removed the 'verification' checkmarks from the accounts of a number of white nationalists and far-right activists -- in a move that critics say could have a chilling effect on free speech." http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/11/16/twitter-targets-white-nationalists-and-far-right-activists-in-de-verification-purge.html
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday November 17 2017, @01:16PM (17 children)
From the Twitter description of verified accounts: "The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic. ... Twitter reserves the right to remove verification at any time without notice. Reasons for removal may reflect behaviors on and off Twitter...
It ought to be a simple marker: The person behind this account is who they say they are. Twitter as a neutral platform. Instead, they have now made it into: "We, Twitter, approve of this person's actions and views".
This is a clear case of SJWs "doubling down". They are destroying any tattered illusion of neutrality that Twitter had left. They directly damaging their own business, chasing people away to the competition, because of their political views.
I do believe Twitter will come to regret this decision.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:43PM (2 children)
Don't take it personally, just good business. Weren't you one in the free-market mob?
A very sensible business decision for their stockholders, stock markets applaud [reuters.com].
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:59PM
Notice how he is not calling for an entity that claims a monopoly on the "legitimate" use of force to come and threaten them to reinstate the blue checkmark on a certain group on pain of death? Reads more like he is letting a certain viewpoint be known in order to provide information so that a self-correcting and voluntary process may take its course.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday November 17 2017, @02:39PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday November 17 2017, @02:22PM (4 children)
Someone ought to drop Sargon at this point in the thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76gHHMjqOPM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @07:53PM (3 children)
This is true. It's pretty common for people to get banned from r/The_Donald, or stormfront or various chatrooms, for having incorrect opinions. And if they're not banned they're swamped with harrassment and non-arguments. People really need to step out of their safe spaces every once in a while.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:04PM (2 children)
Those places are explicitly partisan. The_Donald in particular bills itself as a continuous online Trump rally. It's also only a small part of reddit.
Likewise, a communist place like /r/LateStageCapitalism would be expected to ban capitalists.
The trouble here is that whole platforms, billed as general social media for everybody, are shutting down opinion that the SJWs hate. It's all of Twitter, all of Facebook, all of YouTube, and so on. This isn't about something like a facebook group tossing people out. It's the whole damn site.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @09:27PM (1 child)
So, your problem is with the marketing of those platforms being inaccurate?
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:37PM
I could sort of like that.
First, they admit the truth. Then, competitors can point to that flaw. Also, any protections for user-provided content are toast: by openly exercising editorial control, they get to be liable for stuff the users post. Fun times!
Obviously I'd rather they cut that shit out, but being open about it and liable for it would be the next best thing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:24PM (6 children)
I don't like twitter, but I DO like seeing it trigger idiots! I read through their rules and there is nothing SJW about it. They prohibit posts encouraging violence and self-harm, big whoop. I've said before, we need decentralized systems if we want our privacy and autonomy back. Do you get angry at news stations bleeping out swear words? Why not? Oh right, cause you're a disingenuous ass.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @04:18PM (5 children)
This trivial wrongthink gets your account blocked from everything but browsing and direct messages to followers. You are forced to dox yourself, revealing a phone number that can be used to track you in additional ways, and you are forced to delete the tweet:
https://i.redd.it/5m1jdqzbpiyz.png [i.redd.it]
Much less will get your blue checkmark yanked. Anything factual and honest about Islam is toast. You can't be pro-Trump unless you are Trump.
They went after Robinson, Baked Alaska, and Purposeful Wife just this week.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @08:50PM
lol [twitter.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:40PM (3 children)
You explain why I don't like Twitter. I think they're in the wrong and the issues with bots and disinformation campaigns will only be solved by society as a whole catching on that yes people / organizations / countries do engage in massive propaganda campaigns. Of course I got modded flamebait, but it is still true. All the triggered conservative rage is hypocritical in the extreme when the usual response has always been "private company can censor whatever they want!"
Maybe if conservative types weren't so frequently hypocritical I wouldn't find such schadenfreude in it. Don't mind that I promoted free systems and said I don't like twitter, just get your emotional fix in by downmodding someone calling out your crap!
On a tangent, similar response to all the idiotic anti net neutrality comments. Those morons will start screaming bloody murder when true censorship begins. At least with NN most conservatives and ibertarians get what's going on and don't support it.
As for your example, I find it a pretty tame bit of hateful racism. You may not see it as racism, but that just shows your own ignorance.
1. BLM is mad about police murdering black people, a long standing tradition with plenty of video evidence.
2. BLM is mad about systemic racism of which that twitter post is a great example.
3. That post not only misleads the reader about what BLM is about but also tries to place all the blame on black people with obvious racial overtones. Not a raging example of a hateful message, but definitely in the ballpark.
I don't agree with censorship and think that Twitter would better serve society perhaps by making it easy to find opposing viewpoints. Say a "similar tweets" and "opposing tweets" list. Make it easy for everyone to escape the echo chamber. They should stir up discussion, not stop it. Also, they shouldn't be hypocritical douchebags that only remove the hateful speech they don't like while giving even more disturbing stuff a total pass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @12:27PM (2 children)
If the post tells what is NOT true, then yes. Does it?
But if it's telling the truth you'd like to suppress - then you, sir, are not just worse than any liar out there. You'd be worse than any overt fascist; because an open enemy of the society is less danger than an insidious one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @02:59PM (1 child)
Hello dummy, I bet you support trump even though it is clear he is a conman, liar, and very likely a massive criminal. You being as blind as the person posting on twitter isn't my fault.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @07:23PM
When choosing between those, the one with less rabid followers IS preferred, my dear SJW. The more your ilk runs around pestering people, the more Trump you'll get.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Friday November 17 2017, @05:38PM
Would you care to back up your assertions that a) Twitter had a "tattered illusion of neutrality", and b) Twitter is run by SJWs? Those two statements seems to be directly at odds with each other.
If your point is that SJWs outside of Twitter are destroying the perception of Twitter's neutrality, that would make sense. Not just because it would be self-consistent, but because Twitter as a platform is a hotbed of the kind of activity that SJWs especially hate: trolling, harassment, and the spreading of alt-right perspectives. SJWs want the first two to stop completely, and they want Twitter to take a contestable political stance on the last one. Asserting that the blue badge is an endorsement of the user that receives it serves the last goal directly and drives up visibility for the first two. And if Twitter dies for failure to defend itself on those terms, that definitely serves the goals of outside SJWs.
But if your point is that SJWs inside of Twitter are destroying Twitter's perception of neutrality, then how exactly do you explain Kessler's blue badge? It seems to me that the people inside Twitter are just trying to defend themselves on business principles. They're not doing a very good job, but then again Twitter isn't exactly known for being good at business.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @05:40PM
Nazis on one kind dissing nazis of another kind. Boohoo!