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Comment by dionidium | Hacker News Reader

> Blue checkmarks "used to mean trustworthy sources of information," Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton said.

Obviously you can write a law that says anything you want, but as an aesthetic matter, this strikes me as pretty ridiculous. A company makes up a thing called a "blue checkmark" and then, what, it has to mean the same thing for the rest of all time? It's not like the new Twitter lied about what was happening. They said plainly that they were changing the checkmark system to mean something new. Why would anybody cheer a government stepping in to say, "no, sorry, you can't do that?"

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As much as we would like otherwise, law is a subjective tool. We implement objectivity as much as is feasible, e.g. using careful wording and precedent, but ultimately it would be a fool's errand to attempt to make it 100% objective/deterministic.

All this to say, we tend to oversimplify in our criticisms when more objectivity would have given us a result we agree with.

We tend to agree that we want laws to stop businesses from "tricking people". The specifics vary widely, but the goal itself is unavoidably subjective, so there will always be some subjectivity in its application.

In the United States we have a long, foundational legal tradition in support of Free Speech and free enterprise for this very reason.

The bar is set very high precisely because we know where things go when it's not.

This specific case wouldn't clear a low bar, much less a high one. I, too, have been turned off by Musk's behavior over the last year, but the idea that this case has nothing to do with that is risible.

To be fair, US free speech laws have never grappled with as concentrated publishing/social ownership as we have now.

There is no credible accusation that X itself is tricking people here, so your comment is a non sequitur. If particular accounts are posting fraudulent information, then go after those through regular legal channels. The platform is not the problem here.

> There is no credible accusation that X itself is tricking people here.

That is a purely subjective opinion, since I have talked to elderly people who assumed “blue checkmark = celebrity” and was therefore confused why there are so many such interactions on trivial posts.

Ignorant people sometimes have stupid thoughts. This is not an actual problem, or anything that governments or media companies need to fix.

Even under previous Twitter management, there were a lot of verified accounts who weren't celebrities by any reasonable definition. So only a moron would have ever believed that "blue checkmark = celebrity". We can't protect morons from themselves and it's pointless to even try.

> Ignorant people sometimes have stupid thoughts. This is not an actual problem, or anything that governments or media companies need to fix.

The European Union thinks that it is an actual problem though, one that governments or media companies need to fix.

Calling people stupid is a common and low-quality excuse to not regulate. It's part of how societies start to fail. If some percentage of people are mistaken about something, the reality of that is all that matters, regardless of how stupid you personally think those people are.

Nah. There's no evidence to support your claim. You're just making things up to try to find a plausible, friendly sounding excuse to justify government censorship. Citation needed.

Life is hard. It's even harder when you're stupid. Government regulation can never change that reality.

>government censorship

If I trick someone I get a fine, if a multi billion company do that is censorship?

The multi billion company hasn't tricked anyone here so your comment makes no sense.

Whoa, there's nothing trivial about ten thousand mechanical turks wishing each other good morning on a loop bub

There's at least a little bit of strawman-ing going on here.

The regulators are not insisting that blue checkmarks mean what they've always meant. Secondly xitter hasn't been transparent about changes to blue checkmarks. There was a long period of time when blue checkmarks were given or even forced upon credible sources at Elon's whim while he sold them to hucksters and frauds. Even if blue checkmarks had been that debased throughout their existence, there's still plenty of basis for regulators to find that they are deceptive.

That quote is not from the article?

And in any case, the fine does not seem to be about the blue checkmarks at all.

The worst part isn't that a company makes up a designation and is forced to stick with it by regulators. A designation could have been designed from the beginning specifically to head off regulators.

The worst part is that it is simply a lie. Blue checkmark never meant "trustworthy source of information," and most people who had blue checkmarks were not trustworthy sources of information. Thierry Breton is spreading misinformation here, but that would not have ever been grounds to remove his checkmark.

Blue checkmarks were an arbitrary piece of gamified tat given by twitter when it felt like it, and now it's a paid piece of gamified tat that can be revoked whenever Musk feels like it.

At best checkmarks were "verified" accounts. That meant that most likely party with access to account had identifiable identity connected to it. Say celebrity or real business. For any given value of celebrity also big enough "influencer" counting.

Now would celebrities, influencer or company marketing accounts always be trustworthy sources? For more cynical almost never...

Nope, its just that the current Eu establishment doesnt like how its narrative about the Gaza genocide or the Ukraine War was challenged by including even its own press, so they want control and censorship. The countries that are pushing for this are persecuting people for protesting the Ukraine war or the Gaza genocide. Also there's the thing with the current Eu commission president's secret whatsapp chat with Pfizer lobbyists, which has become a major issue that reached the top European court recently.

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