
A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate, and Twitter verified it - smacktoward
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/tech/fake-twitter-candidate-2020/
======
maram
Making the blue verified check exclusive is the main problem here.

Twitter internal system/process of verifying accounts is fundamentally
broken...why don’t they open this to everyone and people can apply with their
official ID?!

They can add/create another Check mark for celebrities..but verified real
accounts of people should be for everyone.

Twitter is a public sphere and They should be able to identify real accounts
easily.

I don’t want to waste my time talking to accounts under pseudonyms..

~~~
capableweb
I'm sure many of the conversations you've had on HN and elsewhere has been
with people under pseudonyms. Just because they are using a pseudonym doesn't
mean it's not a conversation not worth having. The value should be based on
the actual conversation, not under what circumstance it's being held.

~~~
DoreenMichele
If you look at the leader board of HN, most of the top fifteen or so can be
readily identified by their real name even if they aren't using it in their
handle in some way. (I don't know about the rest of the board, having not
looked in depth at every single name on it.) Most of the top fifteen-ish do
seem to be using some portion of their real name in their handle.

Real names aren't required here. You can call yourself whatever you want.

In actual practice, the community does appear to care whether or not it knows
who the hell you actually are. It does appear to correlate to some degree to
ranking on the leader board.

~~~
lonelappde
I think it goes the other way. People who write good content often like to use
their real name because it builds their personal brand, and don't want to harm
it with shitposts. Fewer people put the effort in anonymously for no benefit.
The voting audience isn't craving names.

~~~
DoreenMichele
The reason I'm aware that the top fifteen-ish names can generally be readily
identified in most cases is because I post as openly female and I've gotten a
lot of flak for that over years. One of the more common lousy things that has
been said to me is "So don't tell people your gender. _On the internet, no one
knows you 're a dog if you don't tell them._"

So I wrote a ranty personal blog post about that at some point and went
through the top names on the leader board. My point was: How do I hide my
identity to hide my gender and also establish a professional reputation? This
doesn't work. If you know my name, you can readily infer my gender.

I posted for years under a two letter handle that can be mistaken for a
feminist handle though it wasn't intended to be any such thing and I had it
six weeks before it occurred to me anyone might see it that way. It was
supposed to be initials from some handle I had elsewhere and I typoed it.

I had blog posts on a personal blog explaining my handle and that it wasn't a
feminist handle. After I finally hit the leader board, I became extremely
uncomfortable with continuing to use that handle.

I felt there were too many eyes on me and if I needed to explain it, it wasn't
a good handle under which to have that kind of visibility. So I changed to my
actual first and middle name.

The first week or two, I got accused of trying to pull a fast one and trick
people and ridiculous stuff like that. After that settled down, HN treated me
dramatically better than it ever had under my previous handle.

Obviously, there are many confounding factors and you can't definitively prove
that it's any one thing. But I think if you are establishing a relationship
with a community, there is no clear distinction between "I choose to behave X
way because of how I expect that to impact me." and "Other people behave X way
towards me." Those things create a feedback loop and you can't completely
tease out how much people find them credible because they know their name and
reputation, so they upvote it and how much people make an effort to say good
things.

I don't think I behave differently since changing my handle, but I certainly
have a much more positive experience of the forum since changing it. So that
influences my feeling that other people do care about such things.

~~~
stjohnswarts
If someone cares about your gender on HN or gives you a hard time over it or
your choice to use it they're probably not worth communicating with anyway. I
get your point about people maybe feeling a bit better about someone if they
openly put up their real identity or link their pseudonym to a real public ID
like a blog , twitter, or other account. I think that's probably just human
nature but I don't think gender would come into that except maybe sexist
persons who you are superior to anyway because of their choice to be an
irrational person.

~~~
DoreenMichele
That's a little like telling someone of color to just ignore systemic racism.

I've been here more than ten years. I literally spent years doing all the
stuff people say to do here to network, get taken seriously, etc.

It wasn't working because I got treated differently by essentially everyone
due to my gender.

I was literally homeless for nearly six years and frequently going hungry
while being blown off and told sexism wasn't a real problem.

You no doubt mean well. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good
intentions.

Given that I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader
board, it doesn't appear to be me mishandling things. All the evidence
suggests that I'm the most successful openly female member here in terms of
getting accepted by the community, etc. And it has seriously sucked in a "The
rampant sexism is going to help kill me" kind of way and this has been true
for a great many years.

It's only in recent months that I'm beginning to get anything resembling what
I wanted all along out if it. I'm quite clear this is largely due to my
gender.

It's not really anything I care to discuss further. It gets me a great deal of
flak to talk about all that. I've really gone to substantial pains under
enormously difficult circumstance to minimize the focus on my gender and the
BS I had to deal with because of it while being accused of making a big deal
out of nothing, etc ad nauseum.

~~~
saagarjha
> It's only in recent months that I'm beginning to get anything resembling
> what I wanted all along out if it.

What did you want out of it?

------
jandrese
> The student, who CNN Business spoke to with the permission of his parents
> and has agreed not to name as he is a minor

(half a page down)

[Picture of the student in his school]

~~~
all2
In journalism (at least in one of the classes I took) there is an ongoing
debate of anonymity while still being informative. The theoretical example we
were given was of a deceased soldier. Do we share the name? The face? Both?
The professor told us that professionally an editor will choose face or name,
but not both in order to protect (to some extent) the identity of the subject,
the subject's family, etc.

I've not put a lot of thought into how this editorial decision needs to be
changed in the face of newer tech (reverse image search, facial recognition,
etc).

~~~
danso
That's a weird example to use. Did the servicemember die on duty? I can't
think of any situation in which a U.S. media outlet _wouldn 't_ publish both
the name and photo (if the latter is available). There's generally no widely-
held ethical (nor legal) issue from publishing info about a deceased person,
military or not.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
You can’t see how there are legal and ethical issues with publish the name and
photo of, say, a murder victim?

Likely the details will become public information as a matter of course as the
investigation and possible court case evolve, but “no issue” seems a stretch.

~~~
danso
No, I don't see those issue, at least in the U.S. Are you under the impression
that the media is barred or discouraged from reporting when a murder happens,
or who the victim is? * What would be the legal basis for that? As a recent
example, 5 people were murdered in Milwaukee in a mass shooting on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the identities of all 5 victims were released and publicized:

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/28/milwau...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/28/milwaukee-
shooting-co-workers-killed-molson-coors-identified/4901227002/)

edit: *added "or who the victim is"

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Ok, not from the US, thanks for clarify.

~~~
danso
No problem, I'm glad I remembered to not assume everyone here is U.S.-based

------
mc32
Such farcical comedy. They verify a fake candidate but refuse to verify well
known but “problematic” public figures...

~~~
cryptoz
Why would Twitter want to verify someone who is problematic? Sounds like a
recipe for disaster.

Their definition of verification includes public interest, and if the public
is not interested in someone problematic, why would Twitter verify them in the
first place?

~~~
Hokusai
> ... judges decided that the US constitution's First Amendment did not apply
> to YouTube, a private company.

The legal system sides with you. Platforms are not forced to accept members
that go against the platform core values or economic interests. Tweeter brand
is tied to the people that uses the service.

* [https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51658341](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51658341)

~~~
taverify7559
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. editorialize their content
selectively. Ergo, they are publishers, not neutral platforms.

------
Miner49er
Meanwhile, candidates like Joshua Collins[1] can't get verified, even after
they changed the policy.

An article about some others:
[https://thehill.com/policy/technology/484453-twitter-
falling...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/484453-twitter-falling-
short-on-pledge-to-verify-primary-candidates)

[1]:
[https://twitter.com/Joshua4Congress](https://twitter.com/Joshua4Congress)

~~~
markdown
AFAIK nobody can get verified. This has been the case for the past two years
according to Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/verified](https://twitter.com/verified)

~~~
uoaei
So who actually decides when to put blue checks on whom?

~~~
tomschlick
Twitter employees determine it based on unknown criteria and political
agendas.

------
jiveturkey
> Ballotpedia

I love this. He did the equivalent of creating your own wikipedia entry, that
you then cite.

~~~
gowld
Citogenesis

[https://xkcd.com/978/](https://xkcd.com/978/)

------
riffic
Twitter's verification "process" is opaque and ad-hoc.

I would recommend looking at alternatives because it's truly mindless to put
your verification eggs into Twitter Inc's proverbial basket.

------
jessaustin
_A Twitter spokesperson recently told one publication, "Our worst-case
scenario is that we verify someone who isn't actually the candidate."_

The choice of article is telling: that's worse for them than verifying some
who isn't actually _a_ candidate. Maybe Keybase could help them with this
problem?

~~~
jaywalk
I think their position is perfectly reasonable, though. Verifying a fake
candidate is embarrassing for them, but that's about it. Verifying someone who
claims to be Bernie Sanders but isn't can cause real harm outside of Twitter.

------
32gbsd
I am not surprised they give blue tickets to the biggest kissers. You just
have to be a certain type. regular people? naw. Well in their defense if it
was not exclusive and "hard" to get then what would be the value?

------
thefifthsetpin
But... isn't he really the person behind the fake 2020 candidate? Seems like
the process basically worked. At worst, twitter made a slightly embarrassing
decision about who warrants verification.

------
sdan
In an age where world wars could potentially start via Twitter and getting
verified is the stamp of approval of being a political/celebrity/public
figure, this is pretty wild.

~~~
riffic
the verification process is broken and I would argue it is unable to be fixed,
otherwise the company would have fixed it already.

Verification badges are bestowed upon you from above, they are not something
people can actively ask for.

------
luord
Leaving aside the comments on twitter. That kid would probably do a great job
in information security, if he was so inclined; he clearly has the instincts
for it.

------
NiceWayToDoIT
Isn't Twitter verify account program on hold for few years now? I went to
their page and message is still there? [https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-
your-account/about-twit...](https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-
account/about-twitter-verified-accounts)

------
tonydiv
If you're a reporter in the space who wants to know more about this, happy to
share more.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

------
throwaway_tech
Maybe Twitter did this for the free publicity.

------
jupp0r
They were the legitimate owner of the fake candidates website and identity. I
don’t see the problem in the verification process.

It would be broken if I could create an account for a real politician and it
would be verified.

------
zaptheimpaler
As if news outlets don't regularly get things wrong or push biased views?

I don't see why Twitter should all of a sudden be saddled with the
responsibility of getting everything right. The mainstream media shirked that
responsibility a long time ago, and so did the government.

Voting is a core function of democracy, so its the governments job to publish
a true, up-to-date, and accessible list of who the current 2020 candidates
are. And voters responsibility to know and spread the word about that list.

Time has shown that outsourcing crucial functions of democracy to corporations
with misaligned incentives does not work well.

~~~
Veen
> I don't see why Twitter should all of a sudden be saddled with the
> responsibility...

The problem is that Twitter made a big deal about verifying candidates and
partnered with a third-party organization to do so. Because of that, people
believe that if a candidate is verified by Twitter, they are the genuine
article. There is no need for them to be suspicious because the Twitter
account has been professionally vetted already.

No one forced Twitter to take on that role. The problem is Twitter claiming to
verify candidates, but doing a shitty job of it. The better alternatives are
(i) Twitter not claiming to verify anyone or (ii) Twitter doing a good job of
verifying the identity of candidates. What they are doing is the worst
possible course of action.

