
Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/opinion/digital-nazi-hunter-trump.html
======
kevin_b_er
This is now an internet classic.

Here's an article from 2014 where critics of Vietnam's government were hit
with "report abuse" spam to silence them.
[https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6083647/facebook-s-
report-...](https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6083647/facebook-s-report-abuse-
button-has-become-a-tool-of-global-oppression)

Or perhaps you've heard of "Youtube Heroes"?
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2016/09/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2016/09/23/new-youtube-offensive-on-offensiveness-offends-so-many-it-
disables-comments/)

All you need is an appropriate mob to target politics it doesn't like to shut
it down with these automated social media systems. And it can always be abused
by your enemies.

------
Osseric
“A large number of people have blocked you in response to high volumes of
untargeted, unsolicited, or duplicative content or engagements from your
account,” we were informed. This was true; Impostor Buster had been blocked by
many neo-Nazis. “A large number of spam complaints have been filed against
you.” Yes, by neo-Nazis. “You send large numbers of unsolicited replies or
mentions.” Yes, to neo-Nazis.

What are the accuracy metrics of the bot? Is he really sure that the bot is
only sending stuff to neo-Nazis? Are you allowed to spam someone because they
hold a morally reprehensible position?

~~~
CalChris
It wasn't simply the _morally reprehensible position_. It was also the act of
impersonation. The bot identified impersonation.

~~~
Osseric
Ok, so does impersonation allow you to be spammed? It seems like impersonation
is non-consequential, or at least hard to measure. Especially on such an
ephemeral platform.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
Your sympathies are very telling.

~~~
subjectsigma
Are you seriously insinuating this user is a neo-Nazi because he's trying to
have a polite conversation about what is and is not ethical? That's shameful.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
Of course not. Why would you jump to that conclusion? When you see someone
with a "Thin Blue Line" decal on their car, do you assume that he/she is a
police officer who murders minorities? No, but you know where their allegiance
rests.

As CalChris said:

>If you are going to dismiss impersonation on such an ephemeral platform, why
do you care about spamming?

Maybe you didn't read enough of the replies to understand the context. I don't
know.

------
creaghpatr
Couldn't the bot just report the imposter accounts instead of engage them?
Pretty sure it's against TOS to impersonate someone without declaring it a
parody account.

~~~
GuB-42
The problem is that the bot has only a single voice against a whole community.

Twitter trusts the numbers, in a sense, it is very democratic. Trolls are
simply very good at strategic voting.

------
finnthehuman
>I’d received the second-most abuse of any Jewish journalist on Twitter during
the campaign cycle. [...] As a result, I’ve become something of an
unintentional expert on alt-right trolls and their tactics.

Red flag: Blind man about to describe elephant.

Not to be hasty, I didn't stop reading there.

I stopped reading once I found out the author thinks he's moving the needle by
ineptly fighting a blatantly-obvious disinformation campaign. On Twitter.

~~~
marviel
> I’d received the second-most abuse of any Jewish journalist on Twitter
> during the campaign cycle. [...] As a result, I’ve become something of an
> unintentional expert on alt-right trolls and their tactics.

> Red flag: Blind man about to describe elephant.

Must one be an alt-right troll to describe one? But not to be hasty I'll skip
that point for now...

> I stopped reading once I found out the author thinks he's moving the needle
> by ineptly fighting a blatantly-obvious disinformation campaign. On Twitter.

... how is this blatantly obvious to the average user? It's simply not.

The article describes duplicating a Twitter account by picture, name, and bio.
Pic, bio and subject matter is about as deep as most people would go to
identify a Twitter account as belonging to a given person.

I wager that even a large portion of the busy people _on this site_ wouldn't
do any further due diligence to determine whether or not the targeted Twitter
account was fake, or real, and thus would have horrible opinions of the author
of this article.

~~~
finnthehuman
>Must one be an alt-right troll to describe one?

No, but this smells like the journos that in 2016, lurked /pol/ for a few
hours and tried to work backwards to form a grand unified theory of Trump's
win. Granted, that's more time than I've spent on /pol/, but it strikes me as
what Matt Taibbi once called (paraphrasing) the lazy-sportswriter approach to
political reporting.

>how is this blatantly obvious to the average user? It's simply not

It's obvious by the standards of internet propaganda campaigns. I'll admit
that's not something typical users are even on guard against...

>Pic, bio and subject matter is about as deep as most people would go to
identify a Twitter account as belonging to a given person.

Yeah, but the amount of stock people already put into Twitter users has never
made any sense, either. I know there is a hypothetical ideal where a Twitter
user you don't already know personally can be seen as less suspicious than
"random Internet person," but that's not the world we live in. Even verified
twitter users doesn't verify anything more than precisely which moron a set of
brain-droppings came from. That doesn't make them right, or even make Twitter
a useful way to take the temperature of society.

Twitter perpetrates the lie that the platform can be modified to deliver the
platform it can never realistically be. Both in the practices of the business
named Twitter, and the actions of mass of users that have some of their
professional value and/or fame tied to the idea of Twitter managing to find
the mythical usefulness and trustworthiness among strangers long assumed to be
impossible in large scale (online or IRL).

This is all a meandering tangent about Twitter's place in society, but informs
my previous statements about this article.

------
anabis
Should Twitter also freeze Trump parody accounts?

Maybe saying parody on the profile makes it OK. Those anti-Semitic impostor
accounts are probably still effective under that rule, since most people will
not check a users profile.

~~~
ry_ry
Parody accounts are generally satirical, often humorous, and fairly open about
their deception.

Pretending to be jewish, to say unpleasant things and trick unsuspecting
people into believing this is the view of a 'Jewish person' (quotes because
the whole concept is very reductive at both ends of the interaction) is
neither.

I would also say the issue almost certainly isn't limited to Jew-impersonators
either, but since that's what the article is about I used that example.

------
sean_anandale
Compare & contrast to "fellow white people".

------
drawnwren
This seems like a legitimate use case for the DMCA. Why not just use the bot
to issue DMCA notices? These accounts are clearly violating copyright.

~~~
drawnwren
Alternatively, Grass Roots the posting. Twitter's problem is that the bot is
posting, so set up a third party site that identifies tweets and ask
legitimate users to respond to them.

------
kbvk
So it's okay to spam people if you don't like what they do?

~~~
hateduser2
If what they do is actively and solely intendedto be hostile to you (without
provocation), yes.

------
CalChris
Mods, can you look into why this and the Obama articles were flagged?

~~~
dang
A bunch of users flagged it and a bunch of other users vouched for it. These
were legit users so I assume it is a legit difference of opinion about whether
the articles belong on HN.

In case anyone is wondering, moderators didn't penalize either of the
articles. We did ban the garden-variety trolls that showed up in this thread.

------
rgejman
Why was this article flagged?

~~~
abritinthebay
HN has a surprisingly strong alt-right contingent, they’re just more subtle
about it than Reddit.

~~~
NelsonMinar
"Alt-right" is a surprisingly polite term for "Nazi sympathizer"

~~~
abritinthebay
I’m using it mostly as a catch all from “actually a fucking Nazi” all the way
to “trolling 4chan type college kid”

But yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

