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Comment by ProAm | Hacker News Reader

Twitter has nothing to do with national security. Official national communication comes from offical government offices through official communication channels and/or on official letterhead. Twitter is a social message board, whether people want to believe that or not. Nothing said on twitter has to be true or accurate or authentic.

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You're thinking of a decade ago, when people made fun of Twitter for being frivolous but harmless:

Example: Supernews, on the topic of Twitter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Ff2X_3P_4

Today, numerous important organizations and projects have blown off the original distributed Web architecture and email, and embraced Twitter and/or Facebook as their primary public communication channels.

Why embrace something you dont control, cannot trust, and can have turned off at any moment? Just because people are there? Ease of convenience outweighs accountability and control? Seems very short sighted when its just as easy to post official communication on your own media and tweet links to it?

You are underestimating the level of ease/convenience and overestimating the simplicity of managing "your own media".

For example, think about your Town-Name House of Pizza. It really is a lot to ask for that operation to also include a sys admin and in-house hardware on top of everything else. Why bother when you can just put your menu, hours, closures, and grubhub/chownow/whatever link on Facebook for free and get the same result?

For sure I agree, but you get what you pay for?

I appreciate it more when people are willing to do the work.

Several government agencies would disagree with you.

Including the White House. "The President is the President of the United States, so they're considered official statements by the President of the United States"

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/trump-tweets-off...

You're making a serious is-ought confusion here. Everything in your post is obviously how the world should be, but is just as obviously not how it currently is.

> but is just as obviously definitely not how it is.

I think yesterdays events prove otherwise?

  I see what you mean though, but society is largely *dumb* if they get official news from unofficial sources it's their fault no?

> I think yesterdays events prove otherwise?

Can you elaborate?

> I see what you mean though, but society is largely dumb if they get official news from unofficial sources it's their fault no?

What does fault have to do with anything though?

> Can you elaborate?

The fact that high profile accounts were posting content not from the 'owner' of those accounts.

> Fault

A fool and his money and soon parted. These people are foolish.

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/government_says_trum...

When the government itself says “our tweets are official statements”, it’s not that people are dumb for getting official news from Twitter. The government is using Twitter for exactly that purpose. Donald Trump’s Twitter account is not “unofficial sources”, it is the definition of an official source according to the president himself.

The president says a lot of things that are untrue.

The bulk of Twitter users don't know this. And it became more than a "social message board" once the general public realized they couldn't trust the media to be unbiased.

Individual lack of critical thinking is a national problem then?

Speaking as someone who frequently digs themselves into holes when they discover they’re wrong, I would recommend stopping while the hole is only extremely deep.

The federal government of the United States conducts official foreign policy over Twitter. End of story, straight from the horse’s mouth. That has national security implications when Twitter gets hacked.

I disagree, but that is okay.

This is naive. Whether you like it or not, the president of USA frequently tweets, and many of his tweets contain news that has not yet been released through official channels. Multiple former Trump staffers have learned about their own dismissals from Trump tweets. He also tweets inflammatory things about other world leaders ("little rocket man") and influences market participants ("I LOVE GOYA").

At a certain point I think cashing out investment funds which benefit from the current administration's policies qualifies as being complicit with those policies.

We should either reject those gains or re-invest them directly in initiatives countering the staggering disregard for human health, education, and well-being, currently being done.

If you honestly think it's as simple as that, risk your own money then donate any gains to those causes.

I can't stop thinking about what would happen if someone steals Trumps Twitter account and starts sending fake tweets. I am sure the White House would classify it as a security issue.

Yeah, you do realize that Trump's main means of policing is Twitter, right?

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