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posted by Fnord666 on Friday November 17 2017, @12:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the sometimes-a-cigar-is-just-a-cigar dept.
Both mrpg and realDonaldTrump write in with stories about an update to Twitter's verification system.

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."

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/twitter-our-blue-check-marks-arent-just-about-verification/

"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


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  • (Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Saturday November 18 2017, @03:44AM (2 children)

    by ants_in_pants (6665) on Saturday November 18 2017, @03:44AM (#598553)

    Nazis still favored all-encompassing big government, including government control of much of industry

    I don't think having an all-ecompassing government is at all synonymous with being left-wing. If you look at the material actions of the American government, they're heavily involved with the economic process, especially in wartime. They contract military companies, give them a huge number of requirements, and done. Or they subsidize the shit out of everything.

    Oh, and the American/European left is getting back toward hating Jews

    Really? I've never personally met an anti-semite, and I've met *a lot* of left-wingers. People who are anti-Israel, sure, but I know ethnic jews who are more anti-Israel than I am.

    Look who welcomes Muslims into places like France, where Jews have recently enjoyed a few decades of relative safety.

    So, allowing muslims in a place is anti-jew? This is a tenuous link.

    And you ignored the key points of nazi ideology -- building an ethnostate, returning to a glorious past, and intense nationalism. All of those are very reactionary positions.

    Fascism is less well-defined, but pretty similar. It is "right" of communism, and that's about it.

    Actually, I consider there to be heavy overlap between statist communism and fascism. "Red fascism" as it's called.

    --
    -Love, ants_in_pants
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @05:01AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @05:01AM (#598572)

    So if "building an ethnostate, returning to a glorious past, and intense nationalism" is it, then lots of places qualify. Counting unsatisfied dreams of nationhood as nationalism:

    Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Palestine, Hawaii, South Ossetia, Hong Kong, and Bolivia all qualify.

    No, really that isn't it. Those aren't left/right attributes. You can have them on both sides.

    Having the all-encompassing big government is pretty much the definition of being on the left. Yes, there is the theoretical big happy commune, but that always turns into prison camps. Everybody, right and left, buys stuff for war. In war, everybody compromises their beliefs to survive, so the right doing commie stuff (price/wage controls, etc.) doesn't really make them commie. The left does commie stuff willingly, with or without a war; this is what they like.

    • (Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Saturday November 18 2017, @09:06PM

      by ants_in_pants (6665) on Saturday November 18 2017, @09:06PM (#598755)

      I agree that right-wing nationalistic movements are generally on the right. All those places certainly have that particular attribute, although nationalism itself is not contituent of being "right".

      Having the all-encompassing big government is pretty much the definition of being on the left.

      Not historically, theoretically, or in any real way. I consider myself left-wing, I have all the left-wing opinions, and I'd rather there be no government at all.

      Everybody, right and left, buys stuff for war.

      so you admit that just because the German state was heavily involved in its military-industrial complex doesn't mean it was left-wing?

      Yourt post displays a complete lack of understanding of anything about ideology -- on either the left or the right. Just because people talk about it in America that way doesn't mean it is that way.

      --
      -Love, ants_in_pants