
Herman Cain's verified twitter account shares posthumous attack on Biden/Harris - anonymfus
https://www.newsweek.com/hermain-cain-tweet-posthumous-ad-joe-biden-kamala-harris-1524804
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dchuk
Sure seems like Twitter should lock verified accounts of individuals once the
individual is deceased

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adrianmonk
There could be some legitimate value in having accounts continue to operate.
This situation is a bad example, but suppose a famous person dies and the
deceased's family or attorney wants to give updates to existing Twitter
followers on the deceased's last wishes, funeral arrangements, circumstances
of their death, etc.

Some possible approaches:

(1) Leave the account open but take away Verified status.

(2) Update accounts to a new state like Verified-Estate or Verified-Family to
indicate the account is official, but in a different way. (Or add a separate
Deceased status, orthogonal so that an account could be marked as both
Verified and Deceased.)

(3) Allow certain specific people (deceased's lawyer, spouse, executor of
their estate, etc.) to create a dedicated memorial account, and automatically
make the followers of deceased's account followers of this new account.

I think any of these approaches could handle the current situation. #1 would
leave it as a ghost account. A political organization shouldn't meet the
criteria for #2 or #3.

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rchaud
I believe they've since changed the name on the account to "The Cain Gang",
although the handle is still "@THEhermaincain". Still disrespectful when you
consider the meaning of chain gangs in American history.

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scohesc
Disrespectful to whom?

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happytoexplain
Can you elaborate? The parent didn't say it was disrespectful toward
individuals, though they may have meant Cain, since he was black. But
regardless of whether that intention is true, the parent's point (that making
a pun explicitly about chain gangs to label your social/political group is
disrespectful) seems like a reasonable opinion, that you may challenge
specifically.

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adrianmonk
I have no opinion on whether it _actually is_ disrespectful, and I'm not
weighing in on that.

However, as a point of conversational order, if someone states that something
is disrespectful, it's better if they say who they think is being
disrespected. Otherwise, the statement is so vague and ill-defined it's hard
to know whether to agree or disagree.

In other words, if you don't know what is actually meant, how can you
challenge it specifically? The only way I know is to guess at all the possible
meanings, then address all of them case by case, which seems a little silly.

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coldcode
Whats to stop someone from getting a verified account for someone and them
selling it to the highest bidder? Should Twitter now require that an account
no longer from the verified person/org be reverified?

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CodexArcanum
I mean, yes? If you're going to offer a feature that officially marks accounts
that have proven their identity, then you need to revoke that marker when the
identity changes. If that seems overly complicated, maybe the idea of
officially verified accounts is problematic and complicated in other
unaddressed ways?

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mvidal01
Do the terms of service cover this?

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hstaab
Why is this on HN?

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Pfhreak
It's a story about technology using the social capital of someone who is
deceased. If someone wrote a posthumous editorial in the NYT and signed it
with their name, or released an album of new music (not newly discovered or
remastered works) we might similarly want to talk about what it means to have
a dead person somehow still presenting content.

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bzb4
I mean, his name was Cain...

