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.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:25PM (2 children)
Or we'll end up with Alt-Prez [enca.com].
Do not put it past this man.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:07PM
The woman's face was flat and covered in blood, as if her nose had been smashed in. She had been thoroughly utilized. Despite this, all the nearby men walking down the sidewalk would simply look at her, smile, and nod, as though they were witnessing something right and proper. Yes, this was part of the restoration of men's rights.
Later that day, a corpse replaced the woman.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:20PM
We already have Bizarro Prez and Bizarro Congrezz. We don't need any Alt Gov.
http://superman.wikia.com/wiki/Bizarro [wikia.com]
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:41PM (11 children)
Go figure.
VIMs are for 2 kinds of person:
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:11PM (3 children)
1 old grandma smacks a disobedient kid and Liberals declare it the 4th reich. It HAS to be, because otherwise they wouldn't satisfy their own gigantic egos via imagining themselves as noble freedom fighters. So therefore Trump must equal Hitler, Bush is Hitler, Reagan is Hitler, Nixon is Hitler, Rutherford B Hayes is Hitler, Hitler is two Hitlers.....
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:37PM
You made the ridiculous comparison to the 4th Reich and then began dismantling that comparison.
It's easy to win arguments when you make them up yourself, eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:45PM
Is that you Adolph?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:00PM
I hate that flyover states were allowed on the internet.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:53PM (4 children)
What about the Emacs haters?
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 03 2018, @07:08PM
Don't they fall into the first group?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday February 03 2018, @07:25PM (2 children)
I guess the 3rd party here is the Nano folks :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)
How do you pronounce that, anyway? I use it because https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okpb0-VWntk [youtube.com]
Alright, JK - I only watched it because the chick was nice looking - who was she again? :^)
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 2) by leftover on Sunday February 04 2018, @01:07AM
Pam Dawber. She was indeed cute.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:33AM
And I always assumed vim was for Emacs haters … :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @01:36PM
Wow, I knew the vim/emacs thing had some bad blood but THIS is something else!
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:48PM
The dems have picked up on their dirty game since their wimpy sniveling after the 2000 election.
The reps made it so easy. Just had to replace Obama with Trump and "Kenyan Muslim" with "racist, climate killing Nazi".
Resist!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:39PM (2 children)
Are they sure about not being the alt-Evil Empire to an Evil Empire instead?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:11PM (1 child)
This is pure Chicongo Politics. Only a nigger would mod me SPAM.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:20PM
Another stupid post by fuckwit ET. Not surprising at all, best she can come up with.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:24PM
Being Twitter, the whole thing, even if puffed up to the size of a tempest, would not fill a teakettle.
It's not the "character limit" that's the problem, but the "relevance of the typical message on that medium" that is statistically zero.
There have been moments of brightness, but they are incapable of bringing up the average value above zero unless you work with more digits of precision than make any sense.
If you acknowledge that "Twitter (& Twit Tweet Twatter Twoot Twitler)" etc. is not the basis of the story (something that should be done for the vast majority of "Twitter" stories), it becomes something along the lines of this:
"The public statements of many science-oriented or science-following government agencies have been censored on political, not scientific, grounds by the current presidential administration, which is acknowledged by all sides to firmly believe that if they think something strongly enough, it doesn't matter if it happens to not be remotely true. A loose association of individuals within these affected agencies, along with random people not connected in any way to any government agency, have taken to issuing statements on the agencies' behalf, mostly by means of anonymous online posting. You can read some of those at the locations listed below." (Insert list from article.) "As always, please remember that just because someone says something really confidently, that does not make the something in question true, relevant, or useful."
The story isn't about Twitter, though Twitter figures into it in a minor way. That is true of nearly every story written in such a way as to indicate that it's about "Twitter."
Pretending these stories are about Twitter, so frequently done, is sort of akin to saying that a story is about "AT&T" because someone said something stupid to someone else over a telephone connection carried by that carrier's network.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 03 2018, @08:10PM (4 children)
Today, you can have your fake news flavored in any way you like. You can custom order your fake news with left or right hand threads, so that you can screw it into any skull. You can have it large or small, to fit any skull. Technology is simply amazing. We couldn't have done any of this stuff when I was a kid!
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 2, Troll) by bzipitidoo on Sunday February 04 2018, @02:22AM (3 children)
ftfy.
Alt.gov is a fantastic idea. They are opposed to the lying, propaganda, and corruption that currently infests top US leadership, and fight back with facts. They actually have respect for science. They have inside access to government data and firsthand knowledge of any attempted censorship, so their information ought to be a bit better than Joe Citizen's.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:44AM (2 children)
"They are opposed to the lying, propaganda, and corruption that currently infests top US leadership," but they were fine with the lying, propaganda, and corruption of the previous administration. Got it.
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @08:50PM (1 child)
There was no Alt-gov during the previous admin. I think you lost it, Runaway, and in did not get it.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 05 2018, @10:54PM
With the previous administration, there were the birthers. With this administration, we have no birthers, but we have alt-everything-under-the-sun. Fruitcakes, all of you.
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 4, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:47PM
Oh, the irony.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:57PM (2 children)
Every one of these is off-topic and rambling. Most are commie nonsense, and the rest are darn close.
(Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:07PM
Commie nonsense? What do you think the "Deep State" is? The State Department is full of covert devotees of Mithra! And the attempt by the Idiot God-Emperor to silence the voices of science and reason, and the reality-based community is always on topic, and now you have got me rambling. Nice AC! Very Intelligent AC! It's OK, there's nothing wrong with being a Trump voter! Step just a little bit closer . . .
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday February 05 2018, @03:59PM
Eh, it's no less off-topic or rambling than your comment!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @05:52AM
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...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @02:43AM
No one actually uses twitter.