Twitter now lets anyone request a verified account
theverge.com
theverge.com
I think it happened in the past hour.
Given that they've had suspend him multiple times in the past it's amazing that he still had an account. Pathetic it took Twitter so long.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/19/12221452/ghostbusters-lesl...
That's what the article implies, anyhow.
Maybe Twitter will implement some system to hide new/anonymous/unvouched users from messaging more popular users. Or give them filtering capabilities. As the target in this case says, "Twitter I understand you got free speech I get it. But there has to be some guidelines when you let spread like that."
Shit, that's still going on? Fuuuuuuuck....
But, he holds opinions which are anathema to the people who implement Twitters censorship policy.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/twitters-new-safety-cou...
FTA:
> They think their right never to see something that upsets them outweighs the historic, hard-fought-for freedom of people to say and write what lies in their hearts and minds.
To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, who do you trust to censor the media you read? My answer is "No one, I'm an adult."
Some people believe that we can only achieve safe political discourse via censorship. They are either unaware that censorship affects political discourse, or they plan on using their control of censorship to control the political discourse.
You can cry about your freedom all you want, but you're in someone else's sandbox. You play by their rules, unless you're trying to say that society should compel speech on private actors.
Well.. proof would be nice. i.e. proof that Milo instigated and/or coordinated a campaign of harassment against her.
The only evidence being offered is for Milo calling her names. Which is not evidence of harassment.
> You may think think that doxing and constant harassment both online and off is "political discourse," but it's not.
You're projecting. It's a tell.
You'll note that I didn't make any such claim. So why are you attacking me for a claim I didn't make? Could it be that you think anyone who disagrees with you must support doxxing and harassment?
It's easier to label people as "evil", than to think rationally about your own position. Or to treat someone else in a discussion as a human being who deserves respect.
> You can cry about your freedom all you want, but you're in someone else's sandbox.
Yeah, label me a crybaby. It's the 5 year-old attitude towards online discussion. You don't use facts, evidence, logic, or common decency. Just "You're a big poopy head".
Please go look at Twitters code of conduct. And then look at the high profile people they've banned. How many have violated the code of conduct?
As a hint: People that the censors don't like seem to get banned a lot... even when they don't engage in ban-worthy behavior.
The censors absolutely abuse their power to further their own political agenda. They ignore the rules that they created. And you support them.
It's not just that it's Twitters sandbox. It's that they don't follow the rules they created. It's entirely reasonable to point out their hypocrisy, and to call it censoring of political discourse.
Any reasonable person would agree. i.e. A person whose first argument is not to label someone else as a shitlord who supports doxxing and harassment.
At least the irony of this statement isn't lost on one of us.
There is no reason for you to be surprised at this.
You don't seem to understand my position. I'll explain using simple words.
I'm not upset that Milo got banned.
I am upset that there is no evidence that Milo violated the Twitter rules.
I do advocate banning people who violate rules of conduct.
When I have proof that people have violated rules of conduct, I ban them.
If you advocate for Milo being banned, please show evidence as to which tweet violated the Twitter rules. If there are none, then Milo should not have been banned.
If you still support Milo being banned, despite a total lack of evicence, then yes... you support censors who ignore the rules that they created. People who abuse their power to further their own political agenda.
So basically do a split between users known enough to not be abused and everyone else? Not a great solution. They've already got policies to deal with abuse (https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311), but they don't act on it very often. They should just decide if they want to go "full free speech" like reddit, or actually have some rules and enforce them. Right now they fail both sides.
>"full free speech" like reddit
Reddit went sorta censorious didn't they? Decided any sub that made fun of fat people was not allowed and applied that sitewide (killed new subreddits with different people, if they shared the same topic). Created a system that requires signing up and verifying email just to get a read-only view of certain subreddits? (For instance, r/blackfathers, a subreddit which had _no_ content, was quarantined, so you can't even see that it has no content unless you verify and login.) There's no justification for requiring a verified email account to view content, except to serve as a chilling effect.
It's totally their right, just they shouldn't be held up as a bastion of free speech. Even 4chan surpasses them on that account.
I got in a well mannered Twitter argument - as a pacifist I was arguing that violence is never the answer, against a tweet promoting violence by a fairly popular Twitter user. They thew some foul language my way before blocking me. Fine, they don't want to talk to me. I can live with that.
The kicker though was I subsequently found a number of other completely unrelated things like @PicardTips blocking me as well. It took me a while to understand what had happened. I tried emailing @PicardTips to no avail. Sigh.
A world where expressing an opinion any other person finds offensive leads to blacklisting isn't a world I want to live in.
So I think they did you a favour.
You had to have dug through thousands of tweets to find it. As I said, fine, they can block me, for in your opinion being logical and analytical, which is very strongly connected to nearly all my views.
That causing me to be blocked from other things that don't even have a direct beef me though is plainly unjustified.
Maybe I'm atypical, but that was like 30 seconds of lookup time. Profile has Twitter link. Twitter search https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Adonatj%20violence&src=ty... turns up, what, seven results? Including https://twitter.com/donatj/status/441687625154691072, the tweet from two years ago you mentioned upthread.
Since you were responding to this tweet, https://twitter.com/christinelove/status/441680446150041600, wherein someone is trying to help their friend beg for money in order to try to avoid dying from cancer, I'm not clear why you felt it was appropriate to shoehorn in your own political commentary?
To put a fine point on it, they very strictly only wanted $$$, or failing that, retweet/like activity which would boost their signal to get the message to someone more likely to give them $$$.
That's as logical and analytical read of the message as I can come up with.
Consider the options - do you really, in your heart of hearts, think this tweet - is a call to reasonable debate on the topic of healthcare reform, taxation, etc? Like, seriously, did you think that? Real question, no sarcasm.
The lady with the friend with cancer, who you engaged in a way that she (and I, for that matter, and I have reason to suspect the two of us are not unique in our reading of your actions) considered inappropriate, seems likely to have a similar enough set of experiences to mine that she formed the same opinion as I did.
Given that, to anyone with this set of experiences and way of reading the situation, you give the impression of being an insensitive blowhard (not namecalling, just trying to explain the reaction), it would make sense for people who have a low threshhold for dealing with people like the type of person you appear to be, to have nothing to do with you. Again, rational actors making rational decisions about how to improve their lives and spend their time.
If sharing blocklists is an effective way for likeminded people to create a shared experience on a platform that they prefer to have, it seems like a course of action with very few downsides.
Compare and contrast that method (quietly ignoring/blocking someone you and/or your peer group and extended networks), with, for example, sending thousands of explicitly and enthusiastically racist, sexist, and frankly tasteless messages at someone to drive them off the platform.
In your logical and analytical read of the situation, doesn't it make sense to do the least harmful, least energy-intensive thing that achieves your desired result? In this case, not dealing with someone on Twitter whom you don't want to deal with?
I mean, it sucks that you can't read your preferred source of Picard memes (or whatever) without opening up your browser / changing your twitter name / or taking some other slightly-greater-than-normal-effort to do so. I totally emphasize with the enormity of that inconvenience, and really, perhaps more importantly, the indignity of suffering semi-public consequences for your previous statements.
But I'm having trouble agreeing that it's worse than, say, having some random dude pop up on the interwebs and try to school you on why crowdfunding is, in fact, exactly how healthcare should be paid for, when your friend is dying of cancer.
----
ETA - Okay, I take some of that back. Friend was not dying. Friend had received successful treatment for cancer, and was being stuck with the full medical bills due to denial of claims for all related treatment by the provider of his medical insurance plan. Friend was attempting to avoid imminent bankruptcy and credit ruination, not death, at the time of your comments.
That's what I get for skimming the Evite!
Or has that idea been done before?
The original tweet is as follows:
> Man, y'all, American health care is some fucked up shit
I don't see how anyoe could possibly infer any of your comments below from that.
> Since you were responding to this tweet [^ above ^] wherein someone is trying to help their friend beg for money in order to try to avoid dying from cancer, I'm not clear why you felt it was appropriate to shoehorn in your own political commentary?
No part of that implies a single word of what you said. No one would ever interpret that from that text, ever. The original tweet is PURELY political commentary. If you post political commentary on the internet, expect that someone to disagree with you. I feel like I was polite about my disagreement, expecially so as far as Twitter goes.
There is no mention of it being a friend. Period. There is no mention of "hey help this guy". There is zero of the context you imply. The context you are adding is purely from her later defense of her profane attacks against me.
Without the non-existant context, it is a political Tweet with a link of an example. An example that I thought was a cool idea, essentially kickstarting your cancer treatment. I was arguing that what this guy was doing was actually a great idea.
So to answer your question "Like, seriously, did you think that? Real question, no sarcasm." As none of the context you implied was actually there, yes, absolutely. I still do. You post a political tweet, expect a political response.
It encourages shallow mindedness, ignorance and echo chambers - where you only hear only ever what you want to hear. It literally 'Fox News's Twitter.
Surely, it's great for the bottom line of the company; people hate to be told they're wrong, even when they absolutely are. It's honestly this kind of thinking though that's lead to the strong polarization of the country.
I'd much rather have people yelling at me non-stop that I'm wrong, and take the time to rationally consider their positions. I'm assuredly in the minority.
Are blocklists good for Twitters bottom line? Undoubtably. Is it good for the overall health of society, never having to hear that you're wrong? No way.
[citation needed] I see how some users could want some filtering or limited groups. That's fine. But what I responded to is "some system to hide new/anonymous/unvouched users from messaging more popular users". That's literally a "you're not popular enough for us to care about harassment" situation.
That exists already, new accounts don't trigger notifications to anybody.
If someone posted to HN a viral news article that used obviously faked tweets to show that Elon Musk is an admirer of Hitler, no one would be surprised if that account (and the article's site domain) ended up permabanned from HN.
It sets a terrible precedent as far as what Twitter is willing to take a hard stance on.
Personally I think it would be great if these things could be settled in courts with due process. Harassment is a crime and nothing would please me more than to see some of these harassers serve time.
But what's the other way? Twitter becomes non-neutral arbiter of what is right and wrong? One person's rebel is another's terrorist. One person's mob is another's protest. If Twitter starts to get involved in some censorship, it raises the obvious question from members of why that one thing they don't like wasn't censored. The only viable way for a free platform is all or nothing. Can't half way free speech.
There has never been a successful platform without moderation. Even 4chan moderates. Even 8chan. Without it, you quickly get a cesspool of trolls. And then you have nothing but a cesspool.
If it's bad enough that it's illegal then there are legal procedures to be followed. As little as I generally trust judges, there's at least far more oversight than having some random PR rep make the call in secret.
My point is, no one really believes in absolutism.
There's no reason a judge would need to get in on something like this, especially since Milo likely would be culpable by association under the US justice system, the result ultimately being the same. Personally, I don't like the idea of having to get the government involved in all online transactions - I'd like a place to say what I want where the worst that can happen is I get banned - it's not that I plan to say horrible things, it's that I don't trust when automated systems merge with state/federal law. (see: DMCA and youtube). Systems, even non-computer ones, can be gamed.
The US justice system has pretty much been gamed by this point, and it's a pretty expensive game to play. For someone like Milo, if Breitbart wanted to, they could bankroll him so he could play. For an individual like me? I can't afford to play the game. I don't want it to come to this, where you have to be able to afford participating in discussions online. You don't even have to say anything particularly egregious (or anything at all) to be the target of someone just fucking around with the systems.
I'd rather that the ramification for stuff like this was kept to accounts on websites instead of going to the courts.
I agree with that in a sense, but that's not currently the case. The question isn't public court or private company "court", it's whether there should be a private company "court" in addition to the public ones (which, mind you, can already get involved).
At least there is some degree of transparency and public influence on the public ones.
And I do disagree that the transparency that is given in US courts is even useful. The jury process, for example, has nothing to do with justice and all about how easily influenced an individual juror is. It's a horrible component of the US legal system that should have been abolished a long time ago, or at least reformed. Likewise, Judges frequently will cowtow to personal prejudices or outside influences; even if appeals can eventually resolve the issue, this gets back to being able to afford to play, which is not a good system. Even if the legal costs are awarded at the end of the case, there's still the entire time while the case is being processed, lawyers who may not be willing to participate until that time, etc. It's an unacceptable solution in most cases.
Twitter isn't your town square. They have legally set out T&Cs that specify what you are and aren't allowed to do using their service.
Abuse damages Twitter's reputation so it's totally fair for them to shut it down.
And yet, that's what they want to seem like they are. Until something like this happens...
They want to be as close to being a town square as it's possible for a commercial service to be... but there'll always be differences in behaviour caused by anonymity, and scale.
Perhaps more importantly, if the town square turns into a huge argument, and all the reasonable people go home, the town square doesn't have to explain what happened to its shareholders.
Sure, if you want to set up a non-profit or p2p social network (or contribute to an existing one) then good luck getting widespread adoption.
I sympathise, in the social networking world you're bound to the low common denominator of the group you want to talk to.
As a niche user you have a set of opinions that may or may not be bourne out by evidence of majority behaviour. The majority seems to without fail opt for profit-making services because they're usually higher quality & the conditions are broadly considered acceptable.
Edit: Corrected "down-sides" to "conditions" because I don't consider them entirely negative.
If they never have impeded on peoples abilities to have meaningful conversations and exchanging of ideas, then what exactly is the problem? If all you want to do is fling poo, go to the zoo (rhyme unintended).
Its a mall full of insane rentacops and the teens they hunt. The kids, good and bad, just want to hang out, almost no one goes there other than to hang out, but the mall owners are solely interested in selling $300 jeans to your mom.
I was simply pointing out that for a brief time, Twitter was a unique Internet platform: both well known (celebrities and politicians use it) and free of censorship. Plenty of sites are censorship free but they are esoteric and laregly unknown to the general population. I admired that Twitter was a popular platform with unrestricted free speech.
Bit late for that, they already did.
As the general public becomes more online-hate-speech-savvy we're bound to see more and more people adopting that strategy.
It was supposed to be sarcastic. Right?
Although Leslie also advocates/boasts about the exact same behaviour.
Whole ordeal just highlighted how Twitter's Safety Council needs to teach high profile twitter users more about how trolls/harassers act on the internet. If someone says awful things to you the worst way to act is starting to reply with curse words and your momma jokes to every single one because you're just proving they're getting a rise out of you, they'll retweet your response and their followers will see they can also get a rise out of you.
She pretty much poured gasoline on a match then wondered why she was engulfed in flames. What makes more sense? Teaching people how to deal with these harassers + report and move on, or expect twitter to pick up the pieces and babysit every celebrity who falls for the harassers bait then desperately try to ban users that are popping up out of nowhere and trying to decide if a user is a harasser or a sympathiser, several times Leslie told people sympathetic to her to f--- off (are they harassers in Twitters eyes?).
But this is a private company with their relevant terms and conditions, and not a court of law. They are therefor not required to publicize private company data.
Lord have mercy…white people shit
— Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) February 9, 2015I ask because you make it sound like it's a tool they deploy regularly or at least occasionally, where as far as I know it's only happened once, to this one account.
Someone sent them to @nero, and he retweeted a few of them. This caused a lot conservatives and gay people on Twitter to get angry at Leslie Jones.
Twitter then banned @nero for the fourth time this year.
What's funny is that Leslie has actually posted racist things before and hasn't been banned for it. http://i.imgur.com/EawuVV2.png
> Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.
> directly attack other people on the basis of race
?
> directly attack other people
?
You think Twitter Legal looked this over and thought "We like the ban against attacking other people based on race but let's throw in an adjective...like, directly, to spice up that sentence"
People have been free to spout on Twitter, including what they thought about breakfast or about what they think about the world including racial politics and theories. There's a difference between saying what's on your mind -- e.g. "Fuck Asia" -- and attacking someone because of their race, e.g. "Someone ought to kick your ass for being Asian"
The person in question didn't say the equivalent of 'duck Asia'. They said the the equivalent of 'fuck Asians'. You're probably aware of this.
Saying "white people smh" is as racist as "black people smh" is.
I heard he incited the harassment and I presume that refers to those fake tweets from 4chan. Did anyone save a copy of them?
This latest change is moot for milo as his account was banned today.
http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/07/19/breaking-milo-suspe...
Wouldn't this make arab spring style twitter revolutions impossible. How do you criticize your govt in countries where you could go to jail for what you say online. Just wondering if this has something to do with their notorious saudi investor.
For example:
> an account may be verified if it is determined to be of public interest.
> We want to make it even easier for people to find creators and influencers on Twitter so it makes sense for us to let people apply for verification
Looking around I find that apart from journalists (who can get verified with just a few hundred followers) few "real" people with less than 20,000 followers seem to be verified.
Even if you are "important" (eg a politician, actor, businessman) then it seems to be rare the be verified at that level.
Above 100,000 followers it seems very rare not to have the blue tick. All of the top 100 are verified. I did find https://twitter.com/joshingstern who has over a million followers and is unverified plus the odd person over 100,000
So random guess I'd say 20,000 minimum to bother applying and 100,000 to guarantee being accepted.
http://sproutsocial.com/insights/verified-accounts-using-twi...
How would that benefit them?
Namely, now people can self-assert to be 'important'; relevant quote here:
> "We want to make it even easier for people to find creators and influencers on Twitter so it makes sense for us to let people apply for verification"
These creators and influencers are the drivers of most of the user engagement to Twitter. By changing this process to be requestable instead of the Hollywood Principle ('don't call us, we'll call you'), they can gauge the level of interest that people will have in a premium level of service -- which, as of right now, is free, but selective.
It helps inflating the number of users without even twitter putting a hand in it.
A few that I know of:
A contemporary social network implies a profile, an asymmetric social graph between users, personal status history, an aggregate friend feed, and a content management system where users can upload and share media.
Rich media chat apps can approximate some of these usecases but they aren't the same thing.
What makes Twitter better than the niche social graph/network tools presented?
People are actually using it.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12127190 and marked it off-topic.