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Twitter: Our Blue Check Marks Aren't Just About "Verification"

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.

mrpg writes:

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/

realDonaldTrump writes:

"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, @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