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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: 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?