Hacker News Reader

Comment by lawnchair_larry | Hacker News Reader

If you’re referring to Milo, it was stripped for violating the terms of the checkmark, not for being controversial.

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.

View on HN

But that's still an issue.

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.

You can "should" all you want, but it's not verification only. If it was, anyone could get verified. It's endorsement, and nobody wants to endorse Milo Yiannapoulos.

According to twitter themselves, "The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic." https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/twitter-ve...

But i agree, in practice it's a "twitter endorses this account" indicator.

You and others keep repeating what others have shown is obviously not true. Whatever the stated reasons for the blue checkmark are, it is clear that, in practice, it is not just verification.

As the person who you're replying to said, it was for verification. Milo does not work at Buzzfeed, but Milo claims to work at Buzzfeed on twitter. This resulted in the loss of the checkmark because Milo working at Buzzfeed is unverified.

It’s like you didn’t even read my response. No, it had nothing to do with his politics and it had nothing to do with not liking what he said. It was because he was impersonating a buzzfeed reporter while wearing a verified identity marker.

We all know that twitter would recognize satire as satire if it comes from someone whose politics agree with theirs.

We in fact do not know that and Twitter routinely bans satirical liberal accounts. Twitter moderation is bad. But, of course, good moderation would also eject Milo Yiannopolous; no serious company wants that guy around. He's banned from Facebook too. These people get banned from everywhere. Is it Laura Loomer that's banned from Uber Eats?

Are you just referring to far-left like Sanders supporters, rather than mainstream liberals? Which ones exactly get banned?

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.

Milo’s followers do seem to believe that, but it’s not a reasonable conclusion; lots of people who Twitter doesn’t agree with politically have blue checks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com