
Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists - username3
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/npc-twitter-ban.html
======
ericdykstra
One thing I really like about Twitter is that you can choose to follow who you
want. If you don't want to see memes making fun of you, just don't follow
accounts that post/retweet these memes.

It's sad that Twitter is banning satire accounts. I'm against all censorship
of lawful speech, and condemn Twitter and any social media platform that
participates in this kind of censorship.

~~~
heavenlyhash
For the 1,000,000th time: you can't shout "fire" in a crowded theater and call
it "satire" either.

~~~
nailer
Do you think pointing out someone else appears to have stock opinions and
doesn't actually think about the world around them is "shouting fire in a
crowded theatre"?

~~~
pcbro141
Spreading the wrong voting day is. The mockery is fine, but I don't see
anything ridiculous about Twitter not tolerating voter suppression campaigns
on their platform.

~~~
nailer
Do you think:
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/10/17/business/17NPC/17...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/10/17/business/17NPC/17NPC-
superJumbo.jpg) looks like a source of trustworthy information?

~~~
pcbro141
I guess Twitter took a zero-tolerance stance against voter suppression
campaigns, whether the accounts involved are clearly satirical or not. They
just flat out don't want people using their platform to spread the wrong
election date, even if spreading the wrong election date is just 'trolling' or
'satire' or 'expressing my opinion on the liberals' to some. Again, I don't
find that stance ridiculous.

~~~
castlecrasher2
Equating joke accounts spreading the wrong election date with voter
suppression is just laughable. How could anyone possibly believe an NPC
Twitter account? How stupid would they have to be?

------
fromthestart
This meme is originally based on the idea that not all people have an inner
voice, and the supposition that people without an inner voice may be less
likely to introspect and think critically.

I think the ban is a little ridiculous and likely has more to do with it's
origin on a so called "far right" website than anything else.

~~~
michaelflux
But with that said, what isn't 'far right' these days ...

I'm just counting down the days until Bernie is called far right because he's
not throwing bricks through Starbucks' windows.

~~~
simonsarris
Bernie is anti open borders, calling it basic globalist shilling. _" It would
make everybody in America poorer—you’re doing away with the concept of a
nation state"_

I bet if you repeated his opinion but didn't use his name on Facebook, some,
uh, [leftward people with very reflexive opinions] would show up to argue with
you.

~~~
atomi
To be fair, immigration has been a mainstay of American hegemony. I don't
think anyone supports doing away with borders, just that our immigration laws
shouldn't be so draconian as to have things like children in detention camps
and people spending days in deserts to seek economic opportunity.

------
rhema
A long time ago, I was told "don't feed the trolls". It's hard to see how this
publicity (e.g. the NYT) is not feeding the trolls. There is no doubt that
this campaign, whatever motivations, was successful. At the same time, social
media platforms are more at the ready to ban pranksters, bots, etc. That might
be the only approach that works when the majority of society participates.

(1) don't feed the troll, but it grows despite most people trying to ignore
it. (2) ban the troll, and give them the NYT press they wanted in the first
place

Not a lot of good options here.

~~~
sp332
That approach only works for people who are "acting out" and trying to get
attention online. The meaning of "troll" has changed. It doesn't work for
people who are conducting harassment campaigns or spreading misinformation. It
kinda doesn't work for anyone you're interacting with on a personal, non-
anonymous basis anyway. If someone is behaving badly in a company or even in a
casual group, you don't just ignore them.

~~~
rhema
"If someone is behaving badly in a company or even in a casual group, you
don't just ignore them."

I think I agree, but it goes against the grain of what people previously
thought you should do on the internet.

>harassment campaigns or spreading misinformation

I am genuinely curious about the flora of the NPC movement. I mean, this
territory between meme and organized campaign is really interesting and it's
sad it comes at the cost of society.

------
jf-
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I’d prefer if this culture war crap were
kept off HN. There are plenty of other places to discuss this, just because
Twitter is involved doesn’t mean it’s related to tech.

~~~
atq2119
Yeah, this thread has degraded extremely rapidly in terms of comments. And
luckily it just disappeared off the front page :)

~~~
michaelflux
> this thread has degraded extremely rapidly

The internet in a nutshell.

------
jessaustin
The Right used to abhor postmodernism, and were properly mocked by the Left
whenever they whinged about it.

Now the Right have embraced postmodernism, and the Left have no idea how to
respond.

~~~
Nasrudith
That happened back with George W. Bush ironically and really ended it for the
postmodernist side. There was one interesting article about it.

[http://clubtroppo.com.au/2012/02/22/george-bush-bruno-
latour...](http://clubtroppo.com.au/2012/02/22/george-bush-bruno-latour-and-
the-end-of-postmodernism/)

Being disengaged with reality because it doesn't say what you want it to isn't
a good thing but some delusions are more harmful than others.

~~~
jessaustin
Great link, with great links! I'll be avidly reading those over the next few
days. "...Latour can actually write well when he wants to." Golden!

The PoMo "side" is not exactly the Leftist side, however. If reformed PoMo
enthusiasts expect all this to go away now that they've seen the error of
their ways, they will be disappointed. The discourse from 4chan etc is not
only a reaction to a particular political circumstance, but also to the
experience of real people in economic, advertising, media, social, etc arenas.
The channers have found something that empowers them to speak back to dominant
narratives that exclude them, and they're not going to give it up just because
e.g. Latour has changed his mind.

------
wpietri
I confess this campaign is a puzzlement to me. There are a bunch of people all
repeating the same idea as a way of critiquing people they believe are... all
repeating the same ideas?

~~~
michaelflux
Originally yes, that was the joke, people just repeating the same buzzwords
and catch phrases in response to anything as game NPCs do.

However as with all the memes over the last few days, it quickly turns from
that into 'well those people are reacting exactly how we thought they would,
just keep posting it if it triggers them'.

e.g. take Pepe - the only reason it caught on was because the left took the
bait and lost their shit over it. The only reason this NPC thing took off was
because the same people took the bait and are loosing their shit over it. It
doesn't matter what the meme is, what it's about, or what it represents. The
right keeps making jokes, the left keeps taking the bait, the right sees that
and keeps feeding them more and more.

~~~
anjc
> "well those people are reacting exactly how we thought they would"

Almost like NPCs...

~~~
michaelflux
Exactly that.

Right: Hey you guys just keep repeating the same thing.

Left: You're a racist

Left: You're a racist

Left: You're a racist nazi

Left: You're a nazi racist

Left: You're dehumanising us you racist

Right: Well hell, make 5000 more of these if they're getting such a great
engagement rate.

------
7dare
> Evidence suggests that these are mostly just attention-starved gamers
> looking to impress one another

What is the link with gaming I'm missing here? Is 4chan simply associated by
gaming defacto? I don't see anything else about video games or any evidence of
these people being gamers in the article...

~~~
ericdykstra
"Gamers" and "Gamergate" is a generic boogeyman that media outlets can use to
direct their anger at. See "Why Young Men of Color Are Joining White-
Supremacist Groups" [1] for another example.

The obvious answer to "Why are non-whites joining white supremacist groups"
might be "They're not white supremacist groups, they're just mislabeled by
people who call everyone they disagree with nazis."

The article explains that it is, however, Gamergate and Ayn Rand that are
turning non-white people towards white supremacy, even though Gamergate and
Ayn Rand don't have an opinion on racial superiority as far as I know.

edit: It looks like I triggered the NPC downvote algorithm. I hope the next
patch gives them dialogue choices.

[1] [http://archive.is/P0X3D](http://archive.is/P0X3D)

~~~
whywhywhywhy
To me, the real explanation for a lot of this bizarre nonsense is because
journalists are spending all day on Twitter which in reality isn't the real
world it's technically just a very popular internet forum with a few famous
users and they've begun to not understand that what happens on the internet
forum Twitter does not represent what's actually happening in the real world.

This is how internet forum drama gets mistaken as actually something people in
the real world actually think about.

Once you start to see this it becomes so strange that you can even tell when a
journalist is a Twitter addict just from some of the terms and thinking they
start to include in their articles.

There is very much a Twitter hivemind heavy users start to tap into, and
unlike say Reddit users or even 4chan users they mistake Twitter as being the
real world and the hivemind as reality.

~~~
ericdykstra
Indeed. When ~journalists~ spend their whole day on Twitter, it means their
resolution of the world is incredibly minute.

Think about the most significant events from 2005. If you're looking back at
that resolution, the small day-to-day stuff gets filtered out. The signal to
noise ratio of what's actually significant is pretty good.

These journalists are literally involved in the _minute to minute_. They
wouldn't even notice the signal if it kicked them in the head, because they
live in the noise.

~~~
castlecrasher2
>They wouldn't even notice the signal if it kicked them in the head, because
they live in the noise.

This is a pretty apt description for that entire group, really. Many people
live exclusively in the consumer world and have largely abandoned foundations
of society like building a family or participating in local community, and I
think it manifests in the internet tribalism we see.

~~~
ericdykstra
Indeed; it's unfortunate, really.

I step in and out of engaging in political discourse online, but spend most of
my time outside of it. I only come back to test my (hopefully) improved
perspective to see how my worldview holds up against the critiques that the
internet throws at me.

I'm about due to another half year or more recess away from social media,
though. It definitely wears on you.

------
Fellshard
A few observations.

1\. Why did NYT get a special scoop on who's been banned, and why? That makes
it more likely to be perceived as an act of signaling more than one of genuine
enforcement.

2\. Streisand Effect, in several ways. The reaction by Twitter also serves to
put blood in the water, letting those trolls know that the tactic hit a soft
spot, and encouraging them to hit it more aggressively.

3\. Where's the line between this and satire? I'm seeing: a. Blatant hyperbole
b. Obvious markers that the account is a part of the satire: hyperbolic or
downright silly account names, and a distinctive avatar

------
josteink
How about they proceed to ban bots instead?

That would IMO make twitter much more useful, but of course it would kill 95%
of their “user base” and traffic.

~~~
OldJackHinson
Well, part of the basis of this "campaign" is that the people they are
satirizing are indistinguishable from "bots"...

~~~
rc_bhg
4chan is too stupid to tell the difference between a bot and a liberal

------
booleandilemma
The fact that NYT even asks the question “Are these Russian bots?” kind of
fuels this meme, imo.

Their answer is “probably not”.

~~~
fireflash38
You might know that internet trolls from reddit/4chan aren't likely to be
russian (at least for this meme in particular), but most (especially older)
people are not familiar with the various internet cultures. It's a question I
can definitely see my parents asking.

------
smsm42
Something that caught my eye there is serious discussion about whether jokes
about November 7 voting (that I hear every election I've witnesses in US, bar
none) is interfering with election and "giving false voting information" and
whether it justifies removing the account. Which got me thinking - do I really
want people that don't know which day is the voting day and trusting random
twitter account with crudely drawn meme as an avatar with this information -
do I really want them voting _that much_? It looks to me that if such people
show up on November 7, it would only be for the best for everybody.

------
beauzero
...as someone who is oblivious to these things (only knew it was a "thing"
last night)...can someone explain why this is harmful and not just people
wasting time?

~~~
rc_bhg
It's basically propaganda. Propaganda is generally agreed to be a bad thing
for a true democracy.

~~~
qubax
Actually, propaganda is agreed to be a good thing for a democracy. It's why we
have free press and free speech laws.

Many of the founders ran printing presses or newspapers to push their own
propaganda. The most prominent being alexander hamilton and the NY Post.

What is bad for democracy is censorship ( aka one sided propaganda ).

------
forgottenpass
>Aren’t you giving these trolls the attention they’re seeking by writing about
them in The New York Times? Yes, probably. But understanding how these things
happen, and how easily joke memes can escape the internet’s seedy underbelly
and morph into actual tools of influence, is part of understanding the
mechanics of modern politics.

Laudable goal. Yet they shot themselves in the foot. Instead of focusing on
"everyone falls into the trap of substituting popular rhetoric in the place of
critical thinking" they had too much of what could be dismissed as "orange man
supporter bad."

------
CosmicBagel
I have a hard time believing these troll accounts had a significant impact on
anyone's voting decions. Dumb meme, but seems like an over reaction.

------
anjc
The speed at which the media have rounded against this meme is breathtaking.
Are some memes inherently powerful and just need to be controlled? Why are
they powerful? How much longer can 30 year old boomers be let sip Monsters
outdoors? It's not right.

~~~
adamnemecek
Memes are propaganda on steroids.

~~~
706f6f70
Could say the same about most journalism today as well.

------
kirykl
These should be treated as similar to political cartoons.

------
gldev3
"Pro-trump" What the f? Don't we have professionals anymore? Why is this news?
Why is this so innacurate i thought the NY Times was a decent source of
information. These people know nothing.

------
mkumm6
Banning all those accounts based on a tiny minority of tweets promoting fake
election dates seems like totally bs reasoning. If their reasoning for the
bans was actually a policy against "dehumanizing speech" as some have said,
then why not ban everyone who tries to dehumanize a Trump supporter with an
accusation of them being a "Russian bot?" Or what about dehumanizing language
against opponents like racist/sexist/Nazi/homophobic/transophobic etc?

Also.. I think this meme has a grain of truth to it - I don't know about the
political aspect, but as to people's minds generating the same content and
repeating the same phrases over and over: it seems as if our popular media is
pretty limited in the things journalists and TV hosts are "allowed" to cover
and say. Late night hosts all seem the same. That's one reason I enjoy 4chan,
because the content is so diverse.

------
jessaustin
It's _interesting_ that this Twitter ban gets all this attention, while a far
more civically damaging coordinated mass-ban by Twitter and Facebook has
largely escaped notice. [0] If one were a cynic, one might suggest that there
is only enough space in the news cycle for one group of unsympathetic ban
victims.

[0] [https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/10/13/internet-
censorship-...](https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/10/13/internet-censorship-
just-took-an-unprecedented-leap-forward-and-hardly-anyone-noticed/)

------
mikeatlas
The appropriate title should have included:

 _" The accounts violated Twitter’s rules against “intentionally misleading
election-related content."_

------
spaceflunky
Banned for "voter suppression"? Really?

As if a bunch of people are going to get disenfranchised because a stupid joke
tweet? Come on. If you don't vote because of that one tweet maybe you aren't
educated enough to be voting in the first place.

Furthermore, why not just ban that one tweet? Banning the entire meme because
one tweet only goes to further the narrative that anything right wing is being
systematically suppressed on the internet.

Congrats on throwing the trolls a giant hunk of red meat, Twitter.

------
ds0
Evan James has a good writeup on the sort of anxieties around society that
sprung up the NPC meme [0]. There's a portion which I think has a kernel of
truth, although it is definitely generous to the kind of people that
immaturely lashed out and made very low-effort twitter accounts which wound up
propagating the meme:

>The far right can be profoundly intuitive creatures, who feel more deeply
than cursory glances suggest. The NPC meme is a response to something real,
something that snarky liberals, and even leftists, increasingly fail to
notice. In short, it is a tragicomic acknowledgment that things are not OK,
that we are all NPCs (to one degree or another) because we are all in bondage.

I think the idea that people repeat samey platitudes they hear on TV or read
online without much further thought is certainly a legitimate concern. The
meme brought up a good point about mass consumer culture, but from there, it
attained its own populism: a thousand voices telling a thousand other voices
that they're following a script.

As someone who admittedly spends a lot of time on 4chan (an online addiction I
have sustained for ten years), I was present to witness its snowballing on the
imageboard. What I found interesting then was that the crux of the discussion
around the meme focused on the idea that few people have an inner monologue
[1].

[0] [https://jacobitemag.com/2018/10/02/empty-
realm/](https://jacobitemag.com/2018/10/02/empty-realm/) [1]
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/pristine-inner-
exper...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/pristine-inner-
experience/201110/not-everyone-conducts-inner-speech)

~~~
kazagistar
It confuses me, because "don't take things at face value" and "don't just
follow a script" is, well, postmodernism. It's also anticapitalism. It's also
a commentary about peoples reverence of traditional gender roles and
religions. Actually, I totally fail to see why it's a conservative meme at
all, unless it's being repeated without any attempt to consider broader
implications.

~~~
yorwba
> I totally fail to see why it's a conservative meme at all

It's not a conservative meme. 4chan trolls != conservatives != The Right !=
Republicans != ... Almost nothing fits neatly into a bipolar spectrum of "us
vs them" and 4chan culture is mostly about being where the normal people don't
want to go.

On /b/ you can find posts complaining about Jews controlling the economy,
trans people swapping pictures, memes about niggers cucking white bois, incest
fantasies, celebrations of school shootings, people claiming their favorite
anime characters as waifu/husbando, complaints about how this is all cancer
and needs to stop ...

There is no unified message that would fit into mainstream politics.

~~~
castlecrasher2
And yet people here and the NYT are labeling this "far right" and even alt-
right. It's laughable.

------
adamnemecek
Cmon the meme is kinda funny.

~~~
rc_bhg
It's also kind of stupid. As in, very tiny amounts the things that the "joke"
tries to attack are based in reality. Its as if they cannot accept that large
numbers of progressive or liberal minded people exist.

~~~
alcio
if Twitter were to ban stupid content from its website, not much would remain
; the stupidity of this can't be used as a reason to explain the bans.

------
fenwick67
"let's show how unthinking this other group is with a snowclone meme"

------
frou_dh
Not sure how to feel about this one. Waiting for John Oliver's take.

~~~
yAnonymous
I'm with you on that. Eagerly waiting to be fed my opinion and then post about
it on FB and Twitter. My friends are going to love it and I will feel
appreciated.

------
malvosenior
> _Last week, a trolling campaign organized by right-wing internet users
> spilled over onto Twitter._

So Twitter bans a bunch of satire accounts for political reasons and the New
York Times applauds the decision. This makes me incredibly sad but I guess
it's to be expected.

If your political position is so weak that some jokes can damage it, maybe
it's time to take a deep inward look. I don't see anyone calling on SNL to ban
Trump impersonations.

~~~
Retric
For spreading incorrect election information.

Plenty of far right twitter accounts, these where designed to get banned for
publicity.

~~~
malvosenior
> _these where designed to get banned for publicity._

I don't think they were. I think they were designed to be funny and
characterize a particular ideology.

As I said in the other comment, this article gives one extremely mild example
of incorrect election information and says "a few" of the accounts were
participating in that. Why would you ban all of them, including the accounts
not spreading misinformation?

~~~
Retric
Not all of these accounts where banned. But, it's likely they where banning
multiple sock puppets from the same users.

------
rustcharm
NY times characterizing these protesters as far/right or as “attention starved
gamers” is also odd.

------
mdimec4
ROFL

------
lostgame
I love the last question ‘Aren’t you giving these trolls the attention they’re
seeking by writing about them in The New York Times?’

I thought the same thing. Interesting to see right-wing business coming out of
*chan-land. I’d always seen it as more of a left-wing place.

~~~
Carlton87
Y'all went so far left *chan-land is now considered right.

~~~
beaconstudios
*chan land is chaotic neutral and always has been. Authoritarians just can't handle chaotic. A projection of a high dimensional vector (politics) onto a line (left - right) is always going to be a goof.

------
andun
This is HN so you might appreciate this version: (SFW)

[https://i.imgur.com/aPaBYCt.png](https://i.imgur.com/aPaBYCt.png)

------
comesee
Great honest accurate article. NPC meme is the funniest thing since Ugandan
knuckles

------
dandersh
I must admit, it has been entertaining watching how the meme's proponents have
acted as if they have uncovered some great Truth of the human experience, when
in fact it's nothing more than the tired old "I am a critical thinking
individual while those who disagree with me are not." wrapped in video game
nomenclature.

I suspect that deep down this was an attempt at coining a "new" SJW after the
term had gone mainstream.

~~~
comesee
It's a joke

