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
Related Stories
As reported by The Huffington Post:
New rules implemented on Twitter Monday have led to the suspensions of accounts belonging to prominent neo-Nazis, white nationalists and other far-right extremists.
[...] "You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people," states Twitter's rule for "violent extremist groups," which went into effect Monday.
"This includes, but is not limited to, threatening or promoting terrorism," the rule continues. "You also may not affiliate with organizations that – whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform – use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes."
[...] The "alt-right ― a loose association of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, assorted racists, fascists, and other far-right elements that has used Twitter for years to organize and recruit ― anticipated today's "purge," with many preparing to make the jump to Gab, a largely rules-free micro-blogging platform used primarily by white nationalists.
Related: Twitter: Our Blue Check Marks Aren't Just About "Verification"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday November 17 2017, @01:16PM (17 children)
From the Twitter description of verified accounts: "The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic. ... Twitter reserves the right to remove verification at any time without notice. Reasons for removal may reflect behaviors on and off Twitter...
It ought to be a simple marker: The person behind this account is who they say they are. Twitter as a neutral platform. Instead, they have now made it into: "We, Twitter, approve of this person's actions and views".
This is a clear case of SJWs "doubling down". They are destroying any tattered illusion of neutrality that Twitter had left. They directly damaging their own business, chasing people away to the competition, because of their political views.
I do believe Twitter will come to regret this decision.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:43PM (2 children)
Don't take it personally, just good business. Weren't you one in the free-market mob?
A very sensible business decision for their stockholders, stock markets applaud [reuters.com].
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:59PM
Notice how he is not calling for an entity that claims a monopoly on the "legitimate" use of force to come and threaten them to reinstate the blue checkmark on a certain group on pain of death? Reads more like he is letting a certain viewpoint be known in order to provide information so that a self-correcting and voluntary process may take its course.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday November 17 2017, @02:39PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday November 17 2017, @02:22PM (4 children)
Someone ought to drop Sargon at this point in the thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76gHHMjqOPM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @07:53PM (3 children)
This is true. It's pretty common for people to get banned from r/The_Donald, or stormfront or various chatrooms, for having incorrect opinions. And if they're not banned they're swamped with harrassment and non-arguments. People really need to step out of their safe spaces every once in a while.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:04PM (2 children)
Those places are explicitly partisan. The_Donald in particular bills itself as a continuous online Trump rally. It's also only a small part of reddit.
Likewise, a communist place like /r/LateStageCapitalism would be expected to ban capitalists.
The trouble here is that whole platforms, billed as general social media for everybody, are shutting down opinion that the SJWs hate. It's all of Twitter, all of Facebook, all of YouTube, and so on. This isn't about something like a facebook group tossing people out. It's the whole damn site.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @09:27PM (1 child)
So, your problem is with the marketing of those platforms being inaccurate?
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:37PM
I could sort of like that.
First, they admit the truth. Then, competitors can point to that flaw. Also, any protections for user-provided content are toast: by openly exercising editorial control, they get to be liable for stuff the users post. Fun times!
Obviously I'd rather they cut that shit out, but being open about it and liable for it would be the next best thing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:24PM (6 children)
I don't like twitter, but I DO like seeing it trigger idiots! I read through their rules and there is nothing SJW about it. They prohibit posts encouraging violence and self-harm, big whoop. I've said before, we need decentralized systems if we want our privacy and autonomy back. Do you get angry at news stations bleeping out swear words? Why not? Oh right, cause you're a disingenuous ass.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @04:18PM (5 children)
This trivial wrongthink gets your account blocked from everything but browsing and direct messages to followers. You are forced to dox yourself, revealing a phone number that can be used to track you in additional ways, and you are forced to delete the tweet:
https://i.redd.it/5m1jdqzbpiyz.png [i.redd.it]
Much less will get your blue checkmark yanked. Anything factual and honest about Islam is toast. You can't be pro-Trump unless you are Trump.
They went after Robinson, Baked Alaska, and Purposeful Wife just this week.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @08:50PM
lol [twitter.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:40PM (3 children)
You explain why I don't like Twitter. I think they're in the wrong and the issues with bots and disinformation campaigns will only be solved by society as a whole catching on that yes people / organizations / countries do engage in massive propaganda campaigns. Of course I got modded flamebait, but it is still true. All the triggered conservative rage is hypocritical in the extreme when the usual response has always been "private company can censor whatever they want!"
Maybe if conservative types weren't so frequently hypocritical I wouldn't find such schadenfreude in it. Don't mind that I promoted free systems and said I don't like twitter, just get your emotional fix in by downmodding someone calling out your crap!
On a tangent, similar response to all the idiotic anti net neutrality comments. Those morons will start screaming bloody murder when true censorship begins. At least with NN most conservatives and ibertarians get what's going on and don't support it.
As for your example, I find it a pretty tame bit of hateful racism. You may not see it as racism, but that just shows your own ignorance.
1. BLM is mad about police murdering black people, a long standing tradition with plenty of video evidence.
2. BLM is mad about systemic racism of which that twitter post is a great example.
3. That post not only misleads the reader about what BLM is about but also tries to place all the blame on black people with obvious racial overtones. Not a raging example of a hateful message, but definitely in the ballpark.
I don't agree with censorship and think that Twitter would better serve society perhaps by making it easy to find opposing viewpoints. Say a "similar tweets" and "opposing tweets" list. Make it easy for everyone to escape the echo chamber. They should stir up discussion, not stop it. Also, they shouldn't be hypocritical douchebags that only remove the hateful speech they don't like while giving even more disturbing stuff a total pass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @12:27PM (2 children)
If the post tells what is NOT true, then yes. Does it?
But if it's telling the truth you'd like to suppress - then you, sir, are not just worse than any liar out there. You'd be worse than any overt fascist; because an open enemy of the society is less danger than an insidious one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @02:59PM (1 child)
Hello dummy, I bet you support trump even though it is clear he is a conman, liar, and very likely a massive criminal. You being as blind as the person posting on twitter isn't my fault.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @07:23PM
When choosing between those, the one with less rabid followers IS preferred, my dear SJW. The more your ilk runs around pestering people, the more Trump you'll get.
(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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @05:40PM
Nazis on one kind dissing nazis of another kind. Boohoo!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lx on Friday November 17 2017, @01:16PM (9 children)
They are up in arms because of a checkmark, when an outright ban for rule violations would br more fitting?
Fuck Nazis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:24PM (8 children)
Eh? What's a Nazi?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 17 2017, @01:46PM
I don't know, maybe something 9 would fuck?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Informative) by J_Darnley on Friday November 17 2017, @02:24PM
A member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. A long gone political party from Germany.
(Score: 4, Funny) by choose another one on Friday November 17 2017, @02:55PM (1 child)
Obviously a nazi is someone with a blue checkmark...
Now, pink triangles, yellow stars, etc. they're different, but the common factor is that they're a way of identifying someone as different/special.
Apparently some of the nazis are not special anymore and have been downgraded, by having their checkmark removed, to be just like the rest of us. They're upset that they are now viewed as normal people rather than part of the nazi elite. The rest of the nazi elite are pleased that these people have been kicked out, because they believed in the wrong things and so they clearly belong down with the the scum/rabble. It is vitally important to believe in the right things when you are part of the nazi elite...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:05PM
Clearly, less important that having a blue checkmark.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:48PM
It was a while back. Here's the abridged edition:
Nazis: #yesallaryans
Jews: #notalljews
Nazis: kekekekekekekekekekeke
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @06:30PM (1 child)
Apparently, anyone who isn't a Maoist.
BTW, lx's post didn't sufficiently and directly praise Mao. He's a Nazi too.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @06:47PM
No love for Pol Pot? :-(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @11:41PM
Someone who isn't a jewish psychopathic murderer or a slave of the jewish rats.
Redefining words and ideas to make them lose their meaning. That is how Newspeak is being implemented.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @03:58PM (25 children)
It's not like anyone's speech is actually being curtailed in any way. Nazis are still allowed to spread their bullshit on twitter, just like before, they just don't get a little blue star that says they're special.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @05:49PM (16 children)
What Nazis? Who is advocating for that warped form of Communism now a days? I have lived in the US for 25 years now and I have not met a single Nazi. Your milage may very, but to me they seem like something akin to the boogeyman.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @07:46PM (15 children)
It amuses me when people pretend nazis don't exist. They definitely do, it's straight delusional to think otherwise.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Friday November 17 2017, @09:10PM (4 children)
Where?? I've never seen one, or meet anyone that claimed to be one (maybe they're just in hiding because everyone hates nazis). Where are the Nazis? Only on the internet as far as I can tell. I've met plenty of people that have anti-Semitic views, but mostly they're other minorities, not Aryan or even white. I've met plenty of people with fascist tendencies, but they're all over the map racially and politically. So where are the swastika, blond hair, blue eyes, heil Hitler nazis?
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @09:25PM (3 children)
"on the internet" is exactly where we're talking about. Nobody is open about that kind of shit except skinheads, and they're not exactly the types that most people interact with on a daily basis.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Friday November 17 2017, @10:37PM (2 children)
So really, you don't know if they exist at all. These could all be sock puppet trolls getting people riled up about imaginary nazis lurking in the dark corners of the internet, while the powers that be fuck us harder. I'm not concerned about cowards who hide on the internet or trolls who say nasty shit.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Saturday November 18 2017, @03:13AM (1 child)
they hold rallies. Here's some pictures! https://duckduckgo.com/?q=neo-nazi+rally&t=ffab&iax=images&ia=images [duckduckgo.com]
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Saturday November 18 2017, @03:23AM
oh, and they also kill people in America -- almost as much as muslim extremists(compared to antifa who have killed, exactly, zero)
http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf [gao.gov]
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 2) by qzm on Friday November 17 2017, @09:26PM (9 children)
Rednecks certainly exist, and a bunch of them seem to think its 'cool' to think they are Nazis (in their thinking it seems to fit in with the gunrack in the back of the truck I guess), however I suspect they would actually be pretty shocked to have known what actual Nazis were, and how they would have reacted to those rednecks (hint: strong family and moral views were a core part of the Nazi ideology, as was an absolute respect for authority and law, for their version of moral anyway).
then of course you have the American 'left' (which is in a race with the rest of american politics to the finishline of a totalitarian state it seems) who consider anyone to their right to be a Nazi, again with zero apparent knowledge of what a Nazi actually was (hint: it was a strongly centralist party, quite possibly to the left of the Dems these days)
I am pretty sure that the rest of the world see most of the American 'Nazis' as, well, Americans...
Calling people a Nazi now is pretty much exactly the same as calling people a Commie under McCarthyism - perhaps some of the people making those claims should brush up on their history and consider how that is viewed these days.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @09:51PM (8 children)
Have you ever met someone on the far left? Aside from neo-nazis(which are notable for being exactly aryan-worshipping, swastika-toting, jew-hating national socialists), "nazi" is an insult applied to fascists(authoritarian racists) of any color. It's not an academic term, and it doesn't need to be, just like how nobody in real life cares about whether you're a Maxist-Leninist or a Trotskyist, you're just a commie.
Also, wrt the nazis being a strongly centralist party: pure historical revisionism. They weren't economically one way or another but their ideology was singularly reactionary and right-wing.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @10:11PM (3 children)
Nazis gained appreciation and power in part by violently fighting communists in the streets. Compared to communists, the Nazis were certainly on the right.
Nazis still favored all-encompassing big government, including government control of much of industry. Nazis made joining a union a requirement; there was no right-to-work law under the Nazis.
That puts them well to the left of Bernie Sanders. They might be "right" of Antifa, but Antifa is hardly normal mainstream American political opinion. Nazi beliefs are clearly to the left of mainstream American political thought.
Nazis also liked to have a scapegoat. Jews were pretty much the 1% of the day. Blaming the Jews was rather like how today people blame the whites, the males, the Christians, and similar. Oh, and the American/European left is getting back toward hating Jews, supporting people who want to exterminate Jews. Look who supports Israel and who doesn't. Look who welcomes Muslims into places like France, where Jews have recently enjoyed a few decades of relative safety.
Fascism is less well-defined, but pretty similar. It is "right" of communism, and that's about it.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Saturday November 18 2017, @03:44AM (2 children)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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".
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.
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
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday November 20 2017, @04:43PM (3 children)
This is another word that has lost all meaning to me from overuse. What is "reactionary" supposed to actually mean, other than "I don't like them"?
One of Hitler's obsessions was anti-communism. One of communism's obsessions was anti-capitalist. Is communism considered "reactionary," too?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday November 20 2017, @04:45PM
So basically it means "conservative." As contrasted with liberal? Fucking useless term.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Wednesday November 22 2017, @12:16AM (1 child)
I literally don't understand what point you're trying to make here.
Anyway, it basically means a desire to keep society the way it is, or to change it back to the way it used to be. Anti-progress is a good way of putting it.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday November 22 2017, @03:50PM
Progress can be good or bad. But people seem to always use "reactionary" with a negative connotation.
Hey, Hitler was taking aggressive and proactive action towards "the Jewish problem." That's "progress," right?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Friday November 17 2017, @06:18PM (1 child)
You will be banned from Twitter for posting inconvenient facts that challenge the SJW hugbox narrative. Don't let that reality get in the way of you calling people that disagree with you nazis.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Friday November 17 2017, @07:37PM
Hey, I call em as I see em.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 17 2017, @04:19PM (3 children)
First, I do not have any of FaceTwit. So I may be speaking out of turn.
IMO, Twitter's "blue star" should be an indication of verification. Nothing more. Not an endorsement.
Part of that neutrality is that they should not pick and choose who they will verify. But that would mean they probably need to get into the business of charging a significant fee in order to do the verification.
If they are not (already) charging a significant fee to do verification, then I don't have a problem with them picking and choosing whom they will bother to verify for free. If you want Twitter to expend effort to verify you, then you should pay for it. Sort of like a verified domain name certificate.
I don't have a problem with Twitter banning accounts that repeatedly engage in bad behavior after a warning. But I think it might work better for Twitter to not tie the blue star to the bad behavior question. If the bad behavior warrants removing the blue star, it probably should warrant account cancellation.
Nazis can create their own anti-social network platform.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @05:07PM
Twitter doesn't care what you or the Nazis think. You have no say in what Twitter does. Twitter demonstrates every other month with yet another stupid drama that they don't care what you think. Don't like it? Perhaps create and/or join a decentralized social network.
A while back, hyperlinks were how you got from one profile to another, and I believe we called them webpages instead of profiles. Webrings were the groups you could join. Obviously that fell out of favor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @05:58PM
Quite right there mate. "I have no idea what I'm talking about but I want my views to be taken seriously"? You want to be able to chime on something you don't use and don't like. Well, not only does free speech mean you get to do just that, you can do it on Twitter if you so choose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @05:29PM
Rainbow Flag for liberals, Black Swastika for conservatives, and Blue Checkmark for people don't DGAF.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday November 17 2017, @04:49PM
These idiots are complaining that people perceive accounts receiving preferential treatment as receiving preferential treatment? Then how about you DON'T FUCKING DO THAT??
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by meustrus on Friday November 17 2017, @05:41PM (1 child)
What I don't get about the blue badge is why Twitter seems to be giving them out for free. We're talking about public figures with PR budgets, after all. Why not pay for the privilege? It would certainly clear up a lot about whether Twitter endorses the recipients, not to mention aiding the process of verification and making some headway on their revenue problem. I expect paying customers to get preferential treatment.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Friday November 17 2017, @07:26PM
Twitter, if it weren't for us, they wouldn't be here. They wouldn’t exist. They should pay us. Like it or don’t like it, people have backed Twitter. What I really mind though is we back it at tremendous expense. We get nothing for it. The primary reason we are with Twitter is because we need to get our message out. Now, we don’t need that so much. And, if we let our people really go, we wouldn’t need Twitter at all. And we could let everybody else fight it out. Look, Twitter is going to be in big trouble pretty soon. And they’re going to need help. I think Twitter is a major target, a major target.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Friday November 17 2017, @06:20PM (1 child)
Follow the money. In Twitter's case, it's a pretty interesting rabbit hole. Twitter is and has always been fully infiltrated by people that hate freedom and free expression.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @08:06PM
CTRL-F "Soliya" [archive.is]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @07:23PM
https://xkcd.com/1914/ [xkcd.com] "Twitter Verification"