
Twitter now lets anyone request a verified account - protomyth
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/19/12227490/twitter-opening-verified-account-user-form
======
dublinben
I wonder if this means they will stop using the removal of verification as way
of punishing controversial users.[0]

[0] [https://twitter.com/nero](https://twitter.com/nero)

~~~
sergiotapia
For those out of the loop, 4chan started posting mocked Tweets from Leslie
Jones saying all sorts of racist and homophobic things.

Someone sent them to @nero, and he retweeted a few of them. This caused a lot
conservatives and gay people on Twitter to get angry at Leslie Jones.

Twitter then banned @nero for the fourth time this year.

What's funny is that Leslie has actually posted racist things before and
hasn't been banned for it.
[http://i.imgur.com/EawuVV2.png](http://i.imgur.com/EawuVV2.png)

~~~
danso
Why would she be banned for posting "racist things"? That's not against
Twitter's content policy:

> _Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or
> threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin,
> sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age,
> disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose
> is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories._

[https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311](https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311)

~~~
nailer
Did you miss:

> directly attack other people on the basis of race

?

~~~
ryanbrunner
That's not the same as "posting racist things". None of the example tweets
directly attacked an individual on the basis of race.

~~~
StavrosK
Are you saying that "black people are lazy and barely people" isn't racist,
for example? It doesn't directly attack an individual on the basis of race.

Saying "white people smh" is as racist as "black people smh" is.

------
dominotw
I am assuming twitter would start suppressing non-verifed accounts in
replies/searches ect.

Wouldn't this make arab spring style twitter revolutions impossible. How do
you criticize your govt in countries where you could go to jail for what you
say online. Just wondering if this has something to do with their notorious
saudi investor.

~~~
mark242
Yeah; $10 says there's a preference coming "Only show notifications from
verified accounts" or "Only allow verified accounts to follow" etc etc.

~~~
jonknee
Notification filters are already a feature of verified accounts.

[http://sproutsocial.com/insights/verified-accounts-using-
twi...](http://sproutsocial.com/insights/verified-accounts-using-twitter-
features/)

------
niftich
This could eventually factor into Twitter's monetization strategy.

Namely, now people can self-assert to be 'important'; relevant quote here:

> "We want to make it even easier for people to find creators and influencers
> on Twitter so it makes sense for us to let people apply for verification"

These creators and influencers are the drivers of most of the user engagement
to Twitter. By changing this process to be requestable instead of the
Hollywood Principle ('don't call us, we'll call you'), they can gauge the
level of interest that people will have in a premium level of service --
which, as of right now, is free, but selective.

~~~
tenpies
It also creates an incentive for people to use their real information and fill
in all those additional fields that people love ignoring (date of birth, phone
number). Advertisers will be quite pleased.

------
kilroy123
I know this is horrible, but one of my goals was to get that checkmark next to
my name one day.

~~~
throwanem
Now it's easier than ever, and just as meaningful!

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chejazi
Twitter desperately needs this. There are far too many garbage (spam/bot)
accounts on their service. I think this will help people filter out such noise
a lot easier - looking forward to it!

~~~
dvhh
I don't think it is really an issue for Twitter unless real user leave "en
masse" due to spam.

It helps inflating the number of users without even twitter putting a hand in
it.

------
known
"There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and
posthumously." \--Thomas Sowell

------
bitmapbrother
I'm surprised Twitter didn't try to monetize this feature. I'm sure there are
a lot of people that would pay to have that "verified" icon.

~~~
richev
I've have happily paid $5; anything to help Twitter monetize without having to
rely solely on ad revenue...

~~~
majewsky
Agreed. I'd happily pay, say, $2 a month for Twitter if it made them stop
packing on more bullshit features and ads.

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nikolay
Clueless Twitter again - sell verification for $99.95 for the first year and
$9.95/year thereafter.

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mxuribe
I think this is too little, too late...or at the very least too late. I'm
heading towards more and more decentralized means of posting and
communicating...you know, where I can control my own fate at least a tad more.
Good luck to twitter, but this is _so yesterday_. ;-)

~~~
mmel
Are there decentralized social media platforms? What do you mean by
decentralized? Posting on individual websites with different accounts?

~~~
Sylos
Yeah, there are decentralized social networks.

A few that I know of:

[https://diasporafoundation.org/](https://diasporafoundation.org/)

[https://gnu.io/social/](https://gnu.io/social/)

[http://friendica.com/](http://friendica.com/)

[https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/)

~~~
spdustin
Let me add to the question: Any such network that is actually used by more
than very niche peer groups, that wouldn't be just as well served by IRC,
Slack or Matrix or Discord?

~~~
niftich
You list two open chat protocols and two proprietary services based around
rich media chat. Despite bells and whistles, these are all fundamentally about
chat and presence.

A contemporary social network implies a profile, an asymmetric social graph
between users, personal status history, an aggregate friend feed, and a
content management system where users can upload and share media.

Rich media chat apps can approximate some of these usecases but they aren't
the same thing.

~~~
spdustin
With respect, I disagree; IRC with a bouncer and a bot would serve those
functions handily. The other chat platforms also have mechanisms for groups,
sharing files and metadata, and creating social "graphs" via the use of
channels. I submit that they're no worse than the options listed.

What makes Twitter better than the niche social graph/network tools presented?

People are actually using it.

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jarofgreen
It sounds like they are basically going for a Real Name policy? I wonder how
that will go, as problems with that have been well documented on other
platforms.

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awt
Lesson: don't be a twitter share cropper.

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Asooka
_cough_ HackerNews _cough_ hellbans with no warning _cough_.

~~~
dang
Your account isn't banned. Except in cases of spammers and serial trolls we
nearly always tell people publicly that we've banned them.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12127190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12127190)
and marked it off-topic.

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cloudjacker
verification futures plummeting in asian session

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hclivess
Leslie just banned me on Twitter lol

