
Twitter says it will judge verified users’ offline behavior - neo4sure
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16667668/twitter-verification-removal-judge-offline-behavior
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Crontab
Twitter either needs to use verified status for its intended purpose, or get
rid of it. I am not aware of anyone who thought that verified status was an
endorsement from Twitter.

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dragonwriter
How is anyone but Twitter the judge of the “intended purpose” of a Twitter-
created and -assigned label?

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Crontab
Because of the plain english meaning of the word verified. They should have
chosen a different word or phrase if they were seeking for it to mean
something else.

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dragonwriter
You seem to not be using the word “intended” with it's plain English meaning,
using it instead to mean what on more common use of the language might be
described as “externally perceived”.

Which is ironic, given the subject of your criticism.

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cgore
This is just an insane level of censorship, I don't care if they are literally
for-real Nazis. It's not the place of corporations to pick and choose who
should have Freedom of Speech.

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dragonwriter
Corporations themselves (or the natural persons for which they are
abstractions created to serve) have freedom of speech, and controlling what
speech they relay, and how they present the speech they do relay, is an
exercise of that freedom.

Asserting that they should not be able to do so is, in fact, an argument
against freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is _not_ an entitlement to have other people use their
resources to further your speech irrespective of their own preferences.

~~~
lovich
I'm fine with corporations picking and choosing who can talk on their services
but I feel like there needs to be more responsibility with it. You can either
have an agnostic platform that only removes things with a legal order and the
company is indemnified from legal consequences from it's users posts, or you
decide to take specific actions but now you are responsible for the content.

Getting the legal benefits of being a modern public square but then also being
able to silence people to improve your profit margin is where this seems to be
the problem

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terminus
I see a lot of people arguing about free speech and censorship here.

I'm not sure how anybody is being censored here -- given that we are only
debating verification. People are not deprived off their speech. Second, for
instance in the cases of people penalized after this new policy, some of them
(Jason Kessler for instance) were responsible for real world violence.

I personally think that this was a long overdue move for twitter. We've fought
long and hard to discredit neo-Nazi ideas and ideals and to welcome them back
in the town square as if anything they have to say is worth listening to is
just absurd.

I think Sartre said it best:

    
    
      "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of 
      the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks 
      are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing 
      themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use 
      words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-
      Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with 
      discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit 
      the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in 
      acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by 
      sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you 
      press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, 
      loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument 
      is past."

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mankash666
So puzzle me this - Twitter, FB, etc. are profitable because of user's data.
Flexing power beyond the normal, even beyond government for that matter, to
impose "morality" on users & the content they generate, which, mind you, is
the source of their income, and existence is insanity.

That said, we need to take back control from the big platforms & corporations
- dominant channels of public discourse shouldn't be subject to random whims &
fancies, regardless of public/private ownership. You don't want to see Nazi
content on Twitter, don't follow Nazis. Or, request a content filter from
Twitter, though that still doesn't eliminate Nazis from the world - it just
puts you deeper in your echo chamber. But punitive action against people you
disagree with is simply unacceptable!

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terminus
> But punitive action against people you disagree with is simply unacceptable!

Where your argument falls down is in just reducing this to "people you
disagree with." Nazis (even lately) have been responsible for more than just
polite disagreements.

For instance Jason Kessler one of the neo-Nazis/white-supremacists was
involved in the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville which devolved into violence
and one death.

Free speech absolutism [1] is good, but I draw the line at speech leading to
violence.

[1] Sidepoint, but framing this as a free speech question is IMO disingenuous
because nobody's speech is being taken away here. Just verification from
twitter.

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mankash666
Decertification is certainly a violation of free speech. It's a way for
Twitter to de-legitimize people who'd previously proved their legitimacy the
Twitter.

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terminus
Yes, and as I said above: good for Twitter.

However, I notice that you don't have much to say about my argument against
speech leading to violence. What do you think about that.

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toomuchtodo
There is no constructive argument to be had and will only result in thread
detachment and a stern warning by an HN mod. Let’s move on to a more
productive line of discourse.

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terminus
Thanks for the suggestion. You are right of course.

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officemonkey
If they used the "verified user" for it's intended purpose "This
account/person is who they claim to be" then I'm fine with Neo-Nazis getting
the verified user checkmark.

The problem is Twitter doesn't "verify" people equally. There should be a
process that is the same for "Donald Trump," "Kim Kardassian West," and "My
child's fifth grade teacher."

Since they can't or won't do that, becoming verified also involves a bit of
Wikipedia's Notable policy. Except that it seems to favor high-traffic
accounts. (So no checkmark for my kid's teacher, but yes checkmark for neo-
Nazis.)

So now they aren't really "verfiying" users, they're just rewarding high-
traffic users that are notable.

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659087
They're just testing the waters to see if they can eventually turn "verified
users" into literal corporate drones without being questioned by the majority
of their users.

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zerostar07
just cut the crap and call it "endorsed users" . otherwise they you're
implying they are some sort of demented people who are "no longer themselves"

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CM30
Yeah. How is someone 'not the same' individual after they do something you
consider 'morally questionable'? If someone's a sociopath or neo Nazi or what
not, it'd probably be more helpful to tie them to their own words.

That said, this may work a bit better than removing the checkmark for
something they said on the actual site. In those cases, the affected person
could simply say their account's been hacked and have no one really be any the
wiser.

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ipsocannibal
Watch as losing or not being able to attain a verified badge becomes a mark of
distinction for those attacking cultural norms. I also predict that some
individuals will work to become verified only to perform actions that force
Twitter's hand in de-verifing them in order to provide further evidence that
Twitter punishes users for participating in 'wrong-think'.

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tortasaur
How, exactly, would one "force Twitter's hand"? Twitter sets their policies,
there are no mystical forces at work here. Your tone implies you're doubtful,
but _isn 't_ this Twitter punishing "wrongthink"?

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Simulacra
I think this is wrong. There should be a divide between what you do online,
and what you do offline, because that power to judge a person and deprive them
of something is too easily abused

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floatingatoll
Surprisingly, they’re not the first. I believe both Sony and Microsoft reserve
the right to ban you from their online gaming networks for behavior out-of-
network.

