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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: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @04:28PM (5 children)
You can get blocked for posting FBI statistics as a bar graph: https://i.redd.it/5m1jdqzbpiyz.png [i.redd.it]
For such doubleplusungood crimethink, you lose nearly all account ability (tweet, retweet, follow, like) until 12 hours after you delete the tweet (speech suppressed) and reveal your phone number. Asking for a phone number is strangely abusive in this modern world; it is used to track and identify you in the real world. The SJW accounts get to keep their anonymity, but other political accounts don't.
It takes a lot less to lose a blue checkmark, and many people are fully losing accounts. Suppose you point out some 100% factual yet uncomfortable truth about a SJW-preferred group. Often, that'll do it. Kiss your account goodbye, to one degree or another.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @05:53PM (3 children)
No one's speech is being suppressed. It's Twitter - it's their platform and they get to set the rules. If they bother enough people with their ToS then competitors will start to eat Twitter's marketshare. That's the way it works. That's the way it's supposed to work.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:08PM (1 child)
Their speech on the platform is being suppressed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:38PM
No it isn't. They can't have a special blue badge. Boo boo. Even if they are banned from any SM platform, they are free to speak in any forum that will tolerate them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:16PM
...Except they claim common carrier protection.
Which means they claim that it is impossible for them to control their content.
Hmmm....
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @07:39PM
That's not what we're talking about though. I agree that they should be able to spread as much bullshit as they like. But they don't need a special little blue star that gives them special ability to spread it better. No platform and so on.
-Love, ants_in_pants