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Had Enough Alt-Right? Try Alt-Gov!

posted by janrinok on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-can't-be-silenced dept.

aristarchus writes:

From a fine publication, The Modern Farmer, an intriguing exposé!

Twitter, specifically, has been a source of contention. It all started when the official National Park Service account was asked to stop tweeting after it shared photos that compared the crowd size of Trump's inauguration to the crowd size of Obama's inauguration in 2009. Then the official Badlands National Park Twitter went rogue and started tweeting facts about climate change. The tweets were later removed and blamed on "a former employee who was not authorized to use the park's account."

Since those tweets were removed, over 40 "alt" or "rogue" Twitter accounts have sprouted up to fill in for many agencies and National Parks. Some of them already have a pretty big following—currently, AltUSNatParkService has more than 1.27 million followers. So far we're seeing climate facts, inspirational quotes about the environment, cute photos of animals, and a lot of snark (this is Twitter, after all).

TFA includes the a few of the more interesting ones, including:

  • AltEPA: He can take our official Twitter but he'll never take our FREEDOM. Unofficial EPA #resistance. #factsmatter. If loving science is wrong, we don't wanna be right. #factsmatter
  • AltUSForestService: The unofficial, and unsanctioned, #Resistance team for the U.S. Forest Service. Not an official Forest Service account, not publicly funded, citizen run. Read it while you can! https://t.co/rTbMl0n3Zc
  • AltUSDA: Resisting the censorship of facts and science. Truth wins in the end. Read the USDA Climate Change Solutions page while you still can: https://t.co/99G1M2zuYG #resist #science #climatechange.
  • AltFDA: Uncensored FDA
  • AltUSFWS: The Alt U.S. Fish Wildlife Service (AltUSFWS) is dedicated to the conservation, protection and enhancement of fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats

Being Twitter, some of these seem to have difficulty staying on-topic and seem to think that anything is fair game.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @05:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @05:52AM (#632819)

    Being Twitter, some of these seem to have difficulty staying on-topic and seem to think that anything is fair game.

    And there you have it, 'Being Twitter'
    At some point not long after it appeared I had a look at Twitter, was not impressed, so much noise, so little signal...I've been told it's still the same.
    At work and IRL, the only people I know who regularly use Twitter are 'political' animals, going by observation and conversations with them, one of them uses it primarily as a 'release valve', all the invective and bile he should be throwing at his immediate manager for being a prick at work that day/week but, as he doesn't have the balls to do that to said manager's face (a somewhat 'career limiting' move), he unloads it all on whatever poor twitterloonie he first comes across on Twitter that evening whose political leanings and postings don't match his own.

    I'm assuming he's not atypical.

    IMHO, from all I've seen and heard, Twitter is just another internet 'arena' for chimps to throw shit at each other, and I really do have to look askance at anyone using it as a 'channel' for 'truth', sure, there *might* be some Orangutans there as well, but there's so many feckin chimps and so much shit..

    Ok, ok, so I'm not part of Twitters 'demographic' and I don't grok it...