A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate, and Twitter verified it
cnn.com
cnn.com
Twitter internal system/process of verifying accounts is fundamentally broken...why don’t they open this to everyone and people can apply with their official ID?!
They can add/create another Check mark for celebrities..but verified real accounts of people should be for everyone.
Twitter is a public sphere and They should be able to identify real accounts easily.
I don’t want to waste my time talking to accounts under pseudonyms..
It's just another way to separate people arbitrarily for no real reason.
The more complicated reality of how the checkmark works is that Twitter wants to have things both ways: the checkmarks promote accounts, and Twitter benefits from the increased engagement resulting from promoted accounts, and promoted accounts benefit from the exclusivity of the checkmark. But promoting accounts also puts Twitter on the hook, perceptually, for what some of those accounts say, so Twitter also has a fig leaf notion of the checkmark as simply a "verification system". But it's obviously not that.
The fact some people crave being famous enough to merit a checkmark is not a problem with checkmarks. People chase status of all kinds.
It's no longer for simply verifying authenticity.
His profile claimed he was a Buzzfeed reporter IIRC. Although he was being satirical, he didn’t indicate such, and this causes problems because the whole point of the checkmark is to signal that this person is who they say they are (including any claims in their bio). Since the average random person doesn’t even know who Milo is, they may see his verified profile and attribute his inflammatory comments to Buzzfeed staff members.
Twitter has many examples of taking enforcement actions for silly reasons, but this one actually made sense given that logic.
Twitter knew who Milo was, they'd verified his identity, and although he broke the rules, removing the checkmark told his followers one thing: "we now know anyone Twitter verifies is someone they agree with politically". This puts them on the hook for everybody who's verified.
It should be a verification only. If they didn't like what he said then they should've removed the account.
But i agree, in practice it's a "twitter endorses this account" indicator.
I'm positive Twitter would allow a mainstream-supporting liberal (i.e. someone who vocally supported Clinton or supports Buttigieg or Biden or Bloomberg) to slide on this, like any time someone would jokingly pretend they're part of Fox News. Stephen Colbert, if he had a Twitter account that was equivalent to his satirical character on his Comedy Central show, would be adored and absolutely allowed to get a nice fat bluecheck on his hypothetical Twitter.
> a pseudonym doesn't mean it's not a conversation not worth having
You are arguing against a point of view that you made up by taking a statement out of context. That is wholly dishonest (and/or lazily indifferent to raising more noise).
The discussion is about verified identity and what that means. Whether you think it is valuable to discuss the finer points of my family with someone (lets say... pretending to be my grandfather) via a twitter blue checkmark is irrelevant to the discussion.
Real names aren't required here. You can call yourself whatever you want.
In actual practice, the community does appear to care whether or not it knows who the hell you actually are. It does appear to correlate to some degree to ranking on the leader board.
There's a leader board?
So I wrote a ranty personal blog post about that at some point and went through the top names on the leader board. My point was: How do I hide my identity to hide my gender and also establish a professional reputation? This doesn't work. If you know my name, you can readily infer my gender.
I posted for years under a two letter handle that can be mistaken for a feminist handle though it wasn't intended to be any such thing and I had it six weeks before it occurred to me anyone might see it that way. It was supposed to be initials from some handle I had elsewhere and I typoed it.
I had blog posts on a personal blog explaining my handle and that it wasn't a feminist handle. After I finally hit the leader board, I became extremely uncomfortable with continuing to use that handle.
I felt there were too many eyes on me and if I needed to explain it, it wasn't a good handle under which to have that kind of visibility. So I changed to my actual first and middle name.
The first week or two, I got accused of trying to pull a fast one and trick people and ridiculous stuff like that. After that settled down, HN treated me dramatically better than it ever had under my previous handle.
Obviously, there are many confounding factors and you can't definitively prove that it's any one thing. But I think if you are establishing a relationship with a community, there is no clear distinction between "I choose to behave X way because of how I expect that to impact me." and "Other people behave X way towards me." Those things create a feedback loop and you can't completely tease out how much people find them credible because they know their name and reputation, so they upvote it and how much people make an effort to say good things.
I don't think I behave differently since changing my handle, but I certainly have a much more positive experience of the forum since changing it. So that influences my feeling that other people do care about such things.
I've been here more than ten years. I literally spent years doing all the stuff people say to do here to network, get taken seriously, etc.
It wasn't working because I got treated differently by essentially everyone due to my gender.
I was literally homeless for nearly six years and frequently going hungry while being blown off and told sexism wasn't a real problem.
You no doubt mean well. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Given that I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board, it doesn't appear to be me mishandling things. All the evidence suggests that I'm the most successful openly female member here in terms of getting accepted by the community, etc. And it has seriously sucked in a "The rampant sexism is going to help kill me" kind of way and this has been true for a great many years.
It's only in recent months that I'm beginning to get anything resembling what I wanted all along out if it. I'm quite clear this is largely due to my gender.
It's not really anything I care to discuss further. It gets me a great deal of flak to talk about all that. I've really gone to substantial pains under enormously difficult circumstance to minimize the focus on my gender and the BS I had to deal with because of it while being accused of making a big deal out of nothing, etc ad nauseum.
What did you want out of it?
Twitter is: 1. Used by the mainstream almost globally (HN is used by the fringe) 2. Real-time global messages in all languages 3. Used by the president
I can go on but to because of these reasons the value of tweet cannot be based on the actual conversation.
HN iS different because of the hard work of YC partners and the caliber of HN community. HN would have been occupied by thugs long time ago to do astroturfing on behalf of big companies. Here is an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22383746
They could probably even make money off it.
When it first came out, it was like a pseudo endorsement, then it was a prestige thing.
It doesn't seem to really do anything except stoke elitism.
Twitter started using it for endorsements -- and taking the blue check away from controversial people with unpopular views. That makes little sense to me.
For me, at the moment, I'm genuinely concerned about the rise of bots and their impact on online discourse. I'd love to see measures put in place to flag or prevent their use. You only have to look at some of the comments on a Trump/thunberg/Sanders post.
Or integrating https://botometer.iuni.iu.edu/#!/ Intro Twitters service or building their own _and turning it on my default_
Certainly doesn't have to be the verified account direction, but, something needs to be done.
I'm all for identity verification and having a strong online identity (e.g. I really like Keybase and Estonian PKI), but being identified shouldn't mean one can be trusted.
In this case the "normal" checkmark will lose any meaning and the new "celebrity" checkmark will be what people are after and it will be gamed just the same way as the current checkmark is.
No, it would mean 'this is a real person, and this is their real name', which is something that is currently impossoble to determine for 99% of twitter accounts today. Wether or not people want to game the 'celebrity' mark is irrelevant to that.
The current blue checkmark is being sought after because of its exclusivity, if this disappears then the attention-seekers will cling onto something different to make themselves look special and supposedly better than you.
Also, the reason the current checkmark is both exclusive and yet this fake politician was able to get one is because Twitter wants to maintain good relationships with powerful and/or popular people, and the exclusive checkmark is kind of a welcome gift. Removing the exclusivity would totally nullify its utility as a gift, which is why they keep the whole verification system in place despite being completely broken (as this incident proves yet again) and spew some BS about working on improving it just to buy themselves time.
There are established KYC processes followed by every serious company, like a bank. Yes, there is no straightforward api, but that is irrelevant.
Banning real people would actually have an effect, as you could only sell your ID once.that would massively drive up the cost of using fake account to post propaganda. People can sell out in real life for real, you can bribe real voters too ( and sometimes even officials!)
In this case they could admit the current system is broken and retire it completely (until they come up with a better solution). They don't, and just make up BS reasons to buy time because it turns out the system as it currently stands is good for them. The exclusivity (even more so now that the system is supposedly on hold, so you can't apply for verification as a layman even if you do meet the criteria like being impersonated, etc) is a feature that Twitter wants to preserve without admitting it.
> There are established KYC processes followed by every serious company, like a bank.
Banks' KYC processes operate within a way narrower set of constraints than a social network:
* They are usually limited to the local country, so the main process only have to support the most common forms of ID available in the area (edge-cases such as foreigners can go through a fallback, more manual process). A social network will on the other hand need to support every single possible form of ID.
* The bank can invest much more money into the verification process than a social network which would be lucky to make a few bucks a month per user.
* Conventional banks use physical branches to open accounts, so it raises the risk for a potential attacker as they would now need to show up in person with their fake ID and the fake document has to match their looks. This significantly raises the cost of the attack and the potential risk the attacker incurs in carrying it out. Social networks can't do this.
* Even for online banks where you can open an account online, you at least need to provide a mailing address to receive the card associated with the account so you can spend the money. So while you might indeed be able to trick an online bank into opening you an account with a fake ID, you wouldn't be able to use it until you somehow collect the card. This again significantly raises the cost of the attack and requires the attacker to be local (or have an accomplice) and take more risk than a fully online attack carried out from behind an anonymization service such as Tor.
> as you could only sell your ID once
There's a ton of people out there that have never even heard of the social network, couldn't care less about it, but would be happy to get some $$$ in exchange of something that is very unlikely to affect them directly (if they don't use the social network they most likely wouldn't even know or care about their identity's reputation on it). The potential stigma associated with loaning your account will become less of an issue if the practice becomes mainstream and everyone is doing it. In fact I'd argue it's already mainstream in the form of being an "influencer", and a lot of people, especially younger ones want to be one. In fact, people want to become one so much they apparently post fake sponsored content nowadays: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/influ...
> that would massively drive up the cost of using fake account to post propaganda
In a third-world country you could convince people to do pretty much anything for what is pocket money for us. What's the solution then? You can't just ban these countries or make their verification have less weight than let's say a US verification without getting accusations of racism/xenophobia/etc and a huge PR disaster on your hands.
Colleagues of mine have created just such a system: IRMA. Short for I Reveal My Attributes.
The way it works: The government (or anyone else) can approve an attribute of yours, e.g. "over 18". You can then choose to share this verified attribute with whomever requests it.
The requestor can then see who verified that you have the requested attribute.
More info: https://privacybydesign.foundation/irma-explanation/
Nope, doesnt make any sense.
> I don’t want to waste my time talking to accounts under pseudonyms..
I've been thinking about this a lot after newspapers started demanding full names.
What I think I see is that full name policies correlate with more toxicity. This might sound counterintuitive at first but there is a really simple explanation:
- Smart people are careful.
- Less smart people care less.
- The same goes for people who have extremely strong opinions.
- Finally a lot of trolls can live just fine with a made up name that resembles a real one.
Full name policies optimize for trolls, dumb people and people who have very strong opinions.
If real name policies was a good idea, Facebook and the comments in online newspapers should be nice and HN, lobste.rs and Ars Technica should be really ugly and dumb.
The opposite would actually be more true.
Probably has something to do with there being no apparent rhyme nor reason behind their verification process nor criteria. This says to me that they simply don't know what they're doing (with it) and that "knowing someone" will continue to be the main driver for acceptance in the program.
And people look down at cowboy coding...
You can see here https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit... that they used to accept requests but it is now "on hold"
Is your name Maram? Is there some way I can find your name?
To me twitter is just another service from a private corporation that I can choose to use or not. Is it "public sphere" because they make everything searchable and readable from the public internet?
What makes an account real on this platform? do you mean that the text is written by a human and not a bot?
(half a page down)
[Picture of the student in his school]
But if he/his parents think he can stay anonymous, I doubt it'd work. A schoolmate or a parent's colleague might talk about him on social media, and his identity could "go viral" real quickly.
He simply doesn't want to share his name.
I've not put a lot of thought into how this editorial decision needs to be changed in the face of newer tech (reverse image search, facial recognition, etc).
Likely the details will become public information as a matter of course as the investigation and possible court case evolve, but “no issue” seems a stretch.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/28/milwau...
edit: *added "or who the victim is"
Ethical issues, yes. Legal issues, no.
In the Untied States, publishing the name of a murder victim is not illegal. It's a matter of public record.
It happens. I remember when I worked in newsrooms very occasionally the surviving spouse of a serviceman wouldn't want the death publicized. It was unusual, but it happens.
Of course, they are still verifying accounts somehow—apparently not in any way that's intelligent or sane.
[1] https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit...
Removing verification from people who violate TOS or spread messages that Twitter does not want to endorse is deliberate but unrelated.
One which means “we sanction this person/their twitter persona” and another which means, “this twitter persona belongs to or is controlled by the person who it claims to be.”
We don’t need this muddled confusing system.
They are deliberately keeping the verification mark vague, so that people "misunderstand" it and so Twitter can claim publically that they aren't really endorsing anyone (but remove the mark from people they don't want to endorse).
If they believe the person has violated their policies, then they should just ban them. If they don't want them having a blue checkmark when the ban expires, then they should ban them for life. Leaving them in this weird limbo without a blue checkmark turns it into something more like "Twitter's badge of approval", and feels petty and vaguely dystopian. I think it should just be "Twitter's badge of this-account-is-not-an-impersonator".
As another poster said, if they truly insist on this badge of approval, then they should have two checkmarks: one for verification, and one for "we consider this person a respectable, trustworthy, and upstanding member of the Twitter community" or whatever.
But then, Twitter realised it could make money from the increased engagement blue check marked accounts generate. So it became exclusive. And then when they realised they'd be publicly/socially liable when celebrities said things Twitter the company didn't like, Twitter threatened removal of the check mark. So the check mark became Twitters stamp of approval to use, and be popular on, their platform.
The blue check mark should only ever have been a way to say "the name and identity I claim to have on their profile has been verified". That should be open to Leonardo DeCaprio, and John Smith down the street.
No. A publisher can have biases. You would not appreciate any utility changing your service because of biases.
To me, it highlights how incumbent social media companies are easy targets for manipulation. They were never designed to disseminate truths; they were designed to amplify parrots and promote their own growth by capitalizing on trends like "going viral".
Their definition of verification includes public interest, and if the public is not interested in someone problematic, why would Twitter verify them in the first place?
You are right. I guess that it would be more accurate to talk about xenophobic and racist content providers instead of 'problematic'. Naming them for what they are makes it way more clear.
The legal system sides with you. Platforms are not forced to accept members that go against the platform core values or economic interests. Tweeter brand is tied to the people that uses the service.
It’s merely not the same subset of the public that shares, confirms, and amplifies the political biases of Twitter’s staff.
>>...that a teenager using next to no resources was able to quickly create a fake candidate in his free time and get it verified by Twitter raises questions about the company's preparedness ...
Raises questions? On the contrary - it settles any questions about about their preparedness.
>>The creation of a fake candidate account is in violation of our rules and the account has been permanently suspended
So the punishment for not existing is, you get banned. That's actually their response.
Next up: teenager uploads photo of all legitimate candidates to ThisPersonIsNotReal.com and gets them all perma-banned from Twitter...
Ha yea...If you expected introspection, you don’t know Twitter the company very well.
I really hope SV moves past this “surely we have an obligation to direct society” thing and gets back to hackers and geeks doing cool things. Not holding my breathe though.
I'm not sure what you are talking about, they verified/allow at least one very problematic public figure (donald trump)
An article about some others: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/484453-twitter-falling...
The account was already verified right from the start.
I love this. He did the equivalent of creating your own wikipedia entry, that you then cite.
I would recommend looking at alternatives because it's truly mindless to put your verification eggs into Twitter Inc's proverbial basket.
The choice of article is telling: that's worse for them than verifying some who isn't actually a candidate. Maybe Keybase could help them with this problem?
Verification badges are bestowed upon you from above, they are not something people can actively ask for.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
It would be broken if I could create an account for a real politician and it would be verified.
I don't see why Twitter should all of a sudden be saddled with the responsibility of getting everything right. The mainstream media shirked that responsibility a long time ago, and so did the government.
Voting is a core function of democracy, so its the governments job to publish a true, up-to-date, and accessible list of who the current 2020 candidates are. And voters responsibility to know and spread the word about that list.
Time has shown that outsourcing crucial functions of democracy to corporations with misaligned incentives does not work well.
The problem is that Twitter made a big deal about verifying candidates and partnered with a third-party organization to do so. Because of that, people believe that if a candidate is verified by Twitter, they are the genuine article. There is no need for them to be suspicious because the Twitter account has been professionally vetted already.
No one forced Twitter to take on that role. The problem is Twitter claiming to verify candidates, but doing a shitty job of it. The better alternatives are (i) Twitter not claiming to verify anyone or (ii) Twitter doing a good job of verifying the identity of candidates. What they are doing is the worst possible course of action.