Twitter Employee Revealed Identity of User to WaPo Reporter | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Employee Revealed Identity of User to WaPo Reporter

spectatorworld.com

74 pointsfortran7762 comments

This seems a major red flag if true.

1. Twitter internal security seems loose enough that employees can access personal information (email and verification mobile phone number; probably geolocation too) without any form of internal vetting.

2. It is more troubling that the person of interest is stated as a former employee. It isn't evident whether the employee was working at Twitter during this episode or had already left the company. Given the wording of the article, it seems someone pulled some strings with the ex-employer.

The takeaway from this shouldn't be the account holder's doxxing, but rather that any person with the right contacts can access private Twitter information without a judicial warrant.

This article seems like fake news. I can’t find any other source corroborating a “former Twitter employee revealing her identity”, not even in this very article. Everywhere else is reporting that her identity was already voluntarily public. The only real overstep here appears to be speaking to the individual’s relatives, which was presumably voluntary on their part as well, despite the non-amicability of the conversation.

EDIT: Found a (non-reputable) source corroborating the claim. I guess the doxxer did so publicly and this reporter piggy-backed off that? It’s gray, but I don’t know if that qualifies as a breach of journalistic integrity. It even seems that the identity was posted publicly (then later removed) within the very same channel if this source is to be trusted.

https://thepostmillennial.com/german-government-funds-resear...

> First, let it be clear that I hate WaPo and the left.

Don't be apologetic. We can all thrive well if differences are amicable.

I personally feel Washington Post is a good / respectable news outlet. But that shouldn't weigh over. If they did something questionable in this matter, all the reason this should be dealt firmly and a precedent set.

My issue is entirely on the veracity of the modus operandi. If it is true then Twitter has a massive problem with internal security. And for that matter, it would be good to see some other corroboration on this particular information.

> I hate the left, but I can’t find wrongdoing by WaPo here

How about doxxing some stupid social media account, like that is even remotely a good expenditure of their resources? Write about it if you must, but why attack the owner?

There’s no national interest here, vs something like the content of a certain elected official’s son’s laptop with references to giving the “big guy” his cut.

Why is it so important we know who runs some stupid meme account, but they can squash huge issues with impunity?

The accounts posts were cited in a state legislature as evidence and they’ve been interviewed by media personalities with huge audiences. Not exactly the average stupid meme account.

The other parts of this are dumb, but Washington Post which is suppose to be respectable, publicly posted "We did not publish or link to any details about her personal life.”

Then corrected to say “We linked to publicly available professional information and ultimately deemed it unnecessary.”

If they can't get the facts about things THEY did right, how can the be trusted to report honestly and accurately.

One would think that all parties involved are supposed to be respectful.

Media is never respectable. It's always been hungry hacks scrapping over whatever would grab headlines.

In the past they've only been honest and accurate, accountable, because of public pressure. Either through competition or the courts. Now there's really no competition. And haven't all the courts been loaded? I exaggerate. A little.

> In the past they've only been honest and accurate

Huh -_-a.

So my understanding is this is an account that simply reposts (unedited) hyper-liberal/leftist videos uploaded to tik tok?

How exactly was this a problem?

Meanwhile, the implications here are scary. If you’re truly wanting to be a social dissident vs the establishment these days they can’t see your IP/cookies/keychain. You’ll need a totally fresh device/iCloud account and never interact with these services without a VPN via VPS, maybe more than that. I suppose if you get too big of a following some NSA boomerbot will leak your life’s story to NYT despite these protections.

Not advocating for censorship here, but isn't the problem obvious?

Making cringe compilations of the "other side" crates a distorted selective image.

One that is easier to dismiss and hate. With how humans process information, it's essentially equivalent to misinformation.

It's not anything new or innovative though, "SJW cringe compilations" have been popular for the last decade. But they created some people with a really warped understanding of social justice movements, and I know because sometimes I make the mistake of arguing with them.

Ok? So make a redneck cringe compilation. I’m sure plenty of those exist on YouTube. Hell we have “idiots in cars #63767” going strong.

The difference is powerful politically-connected groups don’t start hunting you down via insider baseball like this if you make fun of the right people.

The answer to misinformation is not more misinformation; that aside, it's not usually the left who claims the "free marketplace of ideas" will sort everything out.

Wouldn’t your viewpoint ban all the left wing comedians? Wait, ok I agree with you now.

Disambgiuating who is who, gives you this idea: powerful well connected groups hunt you down if you make fun of them.

Obviously if you attack someone, there is going to be some repercussion. If you are like me, and have no stake in this fight, then why defend either side?

> Making cringe compilations of the "other side" crates a distorted selective image.

That’s what almost every single media outlet has been doing about enemy/unfriendly foreign states since forever. People seem to be completely fine with that.

That's very unspecific, but in a "you seem to be thinking of something specific" way.

I'm not sure what your point is, most people who watch Libs of Tik Tok also seem completely fine with that. I didn't say humans are not biased, in fact I said they're too biased.

The point is making cringe compilations (figuratively speaking) to create distorted selective images is literally among the MOs of WaPo and the like. Libs of TikTok is a more extreme, less disguised and closer to home version of that.

Narrativizing is always part of media.

You figure that one out without even trying as a trans person, fact checking studies is one of the more frequent activities when I argue with people. Most are resistant to it to the point where they lock down into "everyone who disagrees with me is biased", which is probably actually true (without the "who disagrees with me" part), but their weighing is once again informed by their bias. And often it is impossible to untangle. Libs of Tik Tok, other than most media outlets, makes this much worse.

In my experience, the number of things reported that didn't happen or are outright misinfo in my field are overwhelmingly far right sources, sometimes trickling down into rainbow press (ironicly named so) or more serious center-left outlets.

>Making cringe compilations of the "other side" crates a distorted selective image.

Isn't this essentially all Reddit is at this point though? And to a lesser extent, leftwing media and rightwing media do the same. How often will CNN or FOX have a coherent debate with knowledgeable people representing differing sides of an issue?

If you bothered to look at it you'd see it doesn't just repost the videos. It frames them in a very negative way. It's also very popular if you look at the amount of activity under every post. The worst part is Fox News routinely use them (a Twitter account, mind you) as the source for their news pieces.

> If you bothered to look at it you'd see it doesn't just repost the videos. It frames them in a very negative way.

Are they or are they not copies of content posted by the original authors of them speaking in their own words about topics they chose?

If I film a video of myself in a furry costume espousing the virtues of the red army and post it for all the world to see I can’t complain when I end up on someone’s cringe compilation.

Taking a step back, listen to what you’re saying. In essence, it’s just that we devote the resources of national media orgs to unmasking pseudonymous social media users who don’t… _frame_ things in ways the establishment would like?

>Fox News

Who cares about them?

They are not. Like I said, they add their own framing.

Sure, you can't complain. But it's sad wearing some costume wins you a spot on a cringe comp whereas being discriminatory toward groups of people doesn't just get ridiculed but is actively celebrated.

I'm not talking about the establishment or defending doxxing. I'm responding to your original comment on "how this is a problem." The account owner shouldn't have been deanonymized, but the account shouldn't have been so popular to begin with.

Fox news is the biggest news network by far, so lots of people care.

But the question was whether the videos are edited. Are they? I don't know the account and don't care for the content posted but this is a pretty important distinction.

No, they are not edited, just accompanied by smart arsed comments

> But it's sad wearing some costume wins you a spot on a cringe comp whereas being discriminatory toward groups of people doesn't just get ridiculed but is actively celebrated.

This dichotomy isn’t based on reality. Posting a joke about AIDS in Africa on twitter can get you banned (and cost you your job!). That’s worse than being included in a cringe compilation, doncha think?

"Frames them in a very negative way" is overly charitable. Often she just calls the subject of the video a pedophile and identifies their place of work.

100%. They've doxxed hundreds of teachers, children (literal 14-15 year olds) and just regular people, accused them of grooming, ruined countless careers and lives.

The hypocrisy is strong with this one.

They are publicly broadcasting themselves. Hear no evil, see no evil.

When did journalists become so radicalized? Am I under the misguided assumption that there was a time when journalists cared about integrity and reporting the news (and not becoming the news)? It certainly feels like journalists are more explicitly weaponized now.

Radicalized? No, just incentivized to get a story by any means necessary, or go homeless. Here we have a case of a reporter harassing random people to try to flush out the owner of the tiktok account, and accepting obviously illegally-obtained data. We'll probably see a lot more of this in the future, since there's seemingly no downside to trying it.

They have always been this way. The difference is who today's journalists are and what their class represents and supports.

> sourced by a former Twitter employee

Really missing a key word from the title there, OP.

That’s worse, means he still had access

There's a _lot_ of assuming happening on this post so far. My understanding was the Twitter account previously had different handles, including her real name. I don't think that level of sleuthing requires internal access, using old/archived tweets can unmask the account.

You’re correct but even if Twitter is not responsible here, I’d still like to hear the reporter clarify why she thought the real name of the owner of the account was newsworthy (if that’s indeed what happened, it seems corroboration is scarce thus far)

It says the information was sourced from a former twitter employee. That might just mean that they knew that the twitter server has some endpoint that literally sends you a list of all the alt accounts(at least, per [0]) and they all share a single user id

[0] https://twitter.com/travisbrown/status/1515218000001081346

It's unfortunate that this was flagged. There's the boring political angle, but it does seem pretty relevant and interesting that a major tech company's employee would use their access to personal data to dox someone.

Is there maybe an alternative source?

Except this isn't a current employee, but a former employee, who has basic knowledge of the Twitter public API. It lists former nicknames for your account, even if you now regret them, and they make it easier to do sleuthing on you.

Since the article doesn't list those important details, it's easy for people to get the wrong idea, instead of getting useful information: It's deceptive enough to qualify as clickbait. So yes, it's flagged for good reason.

I don't believe this is part of Twitter's public API, just accessible without authorization (not an expert in Twitter's API, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong; based on a quick browse of its documentation). That's similar to using SQLI to extract information.

Can you point to another article that explains all that? Or do you have some unique knowledge of the situation?

Not saying you’re wrong but we need a better article if this one is incorrect.

The reason this story has such traction is that Taylor Lorenz had an interview a few weeks ago where she broke down crying because of alleged harassment and doxxing by other Twitter users (posting her contact info).

So... there's a rich element of hypocrisy to this episode.

I'm not interested in the left/right politics here; I'm interested in the statement that twitter employees will reveal customer info to reporters!

The article says "former" twitter employee, not current.

Isn't that worse? Even the current employees shouldn't have access to this information. Let alone former ones.

How does that improve or change things? Not a rhetorical question; I’m confused by the vagueness in the article.

Was the employee current at the time of info sharing, and is now “former”? Or did they retain access to systems after leaving the company? Or did they pass info from a friend still working at twitter? In any of these cases it’s still troubling.

It’s my understanding that this was a former employee not acting in official capacity; who likely violated their NDA.

This still reflects poorly on Twitter infosec if they’re not offboarding users with that kind of access immediately upon their ceasing to be employed by Twitter.

This was not a case of inappropriate access. This employee learned the identity of the account holder while working at Twitter. They later left the company.

You can't erase confidential information from people's memory during "offboarding". That's where the NDA comes in.

Taylor Lorenz is a journalist and what she was doing ( finding out the true identity of the twitter account) is a fundamental part of her job.

Reply guys harassing women and reporters on twitter are not journalists.

Where is the hypocrisy?

> Taylor Lorenz is a journalist and what she was doing ( finding out the true identity of the twitter account

Um, what the fuck? It’s the job of “journalists” to find and dox pseudonymous social media accounts and link their professional info?

Please tell me this is sarcasm/satire I missed

> Um, what the fuck? It’s the job of “journalists” to find and dox pseudonymous social media accounts and link their professional info?

Yeah.

> Libs of TikTok has become a powerful force online, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation & influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage.

> Every formalized ethical code for journalists asks reporters to weigh privacy/harm against the public interest. The public interest in attribution of this account - an influential activist operating at significant scale - is overwheliming

https://twitter.com/jason_a_w/status/1516458690198474752

Taylor could have published an article about the alleged harm the account is doing.

Taylor perhaps could have even doxxed the account if the writer was in fact a public figure: that would be newsworthy.

Taylor doxxing the identity of what turns out to be a completely unknown private citizen is not newsworthy; it adds nothing of value to the story, other than allowing this person to be harassed and intimidated for her views and actions.

Her decrying her own harassment, while enabling the harassment of others, is pure hypocrisy.

Headline is misleading and doesn't reflect the headline for the article.

Former employee. That’s far worse, it means he still had access via an active employee to get the info from a… current employee.

I am genuinely curious why there are no other big outlets carrying this story. It’s a pretty big allegation against twitter’s security infrastructure, not to mention a journalist who has written for some of the largest papers

Semi-related: how old does your account need to be to vouch for flagged content?

Journalists are not held to the same standards as everyone else, and this is not the first time nor the last time they will overstep their boundaries. Just because someone’s a journalist does it make their behavior correct or even just.

> It is true that Libs of TikTok has amassed numerous followers on Twitter by reposting videos of left-wing insanity on the social media app TikTok.

I almost didn’t realize this was a biased source until they added in that line. The fact that it’s a former employee and not current employee like the headline suggested might have slipped by if the article had been more subtle

Yes, the Spectator is pretty above-average right populists.

Most notably they employ Douglas Murray, purveyor of the finest bad takes, including climate change denial.

I mean, in their defense some of what they shared was pretty far out there. This isn’t Bernie stuff, it’s furry red army level.

> former Twitter employee

So did it actually have anything to do with Twitter and their systems? Or was that just put in there to fuel the obvious bias from this right wing politics site?

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