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

posted by Fnord666 on Friday November 17 2017, @12:39PM   
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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Original Submission

• Re:SJWs always double down Re:SJWs always double down (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:43PM (2 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:43PM (#598165)

  They are destroying any tattered illusion of neutrality that Twitter had left. They directly damaging their own business, chasing people away to the competition, ...

  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].

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• Re:SJWs always double down (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:59PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:59PM (#598175)

  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.

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• Re:SJWs always double down (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday November 17 2017, @02:39PM

  by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Friday November 17 2017, @02:39PM (#598187) Homepage

  But the stock price didn't rise *because* of this decision, nor did it even rise *after* its decision. It rose because Twitter said it was cutting costs, which always drives stock prices up. However, the rise this year is utterly pathetic compared to the S&P500 which otherwise reflects the bubble we're in rather well. There's no reason to believe that Twitter isn't a sick and fragile company given the evidence presented.

  --
  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

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