
Instagram Threatened Removal of Verified Status for Posting Snapchat Content - thescribbblr
https://beebom.com/instagram-reportedly-threatened-users-with-removal-of-verified-status-for-posting-snapchat-content/
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dang
Cribbed from a WSJ article which was discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21048093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21048093).

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danShumway
> _Links asking someone to add you on another service aren’t supported on
> Instagram_

That's some weasel-wording right there. "Not supported" makes it sound like
this is a feature they'd need to code that they haven't gotten around to yet.
It's not -- they needed to take the time to explicitly block something that
would otherwise work by default.

Phrasing it as _" Links asking someone to add you on another service are not
allowed on Instagram"_ would be more honest, but also make it obvious what
they're doing. So instead, they go out of their way to phrase it as something
out of their control rather than as a deliberate policy.

~~~
privateSFacct
Isn't inviting folks to add you on another service how most of the scam / paid
date etc folks operate? I used to get messages from random women asking me to
add them on other services a fair bit.

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danShumway
Even assuming that's a valid reason to restrict a competitor, the phrasing is
still deceptive.

If Instagram stands by their decision to block third-party links, then they
should phrase it as, "we block third-party links", not "they're not currently
supported."

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mc32
This “verified” nonsense is silly. Twitter knew who Assange was but refused to
“verify” him.

They should change what they call verified to another label like “goodie two-
shoes” instead. As it is is a complete misnomer. It’s basically used to get
users to behave a certain way and if they don’t conform they don’t get
verified or if they are verified it gets revoked.

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vortico
When will Twitter re-open verifying? It's been closed for 2 years...

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apostacy
Crummy Buzzfeed content drones with 5000 followers are getting verified.

Verification ticks are just a badge of being well connected, and approved. And
having your tick removed is a way of saying that you have stepped out of line.

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cameronbrown
That's what worries me about verified. It's just a form of nepotism at the end
of the day and they certainly prefer certain niches (Hollywood, Silicon
Valley, the media industry, etc..) over others.

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cwkoss
Also seems verified is fairly correlated with certain political ideologies -
kind of feels like twitter is trying to direct conversation without taking
responsibility for bias.

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Faark
That sounds like the usual persecution complex of the anti establishment/alt
right. If that where the case, Twitter would be very shitty at such job, since
countless of them are verified. Notably including alex jones up to his ban.

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cwkoss
Journalists of major publications and celebrities are pretty evenly verified.
Maybe it's just the circles I follow, but I encounter a lot of random 'liberal
centrist with a podcast who has written 2 op eds'-types that seem to be more
famous on twitter than anywhere else.

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sailfast
Removing links to other platforms is anti-competitive full stop. Threatening
de-verification due to links is even worse.

This is the behavior of monopolists. The FTC and existing anti-trust
organizations would do well to return to their jobs and take a look at these
practices broadly across the tech industry.

~~~
hamilyon2
Isn't instagram participation voluntary and free of charge? Monopoly over
what? Everyone is free to move to another platform or start his own.

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echelon
> participation voluntary and free of charge

If you want distribution of your thoughts, you have to use the walled garden
controlled by giants.

> Everyone is free to move to another platform or start his own.

The reality is that you can't. Not without billions of dollars of funding.

Social networks should be regulated. They can't own the platform and make
moves to crush others by threatening to downgrade your voice and
participation.

~~~
hamilyon2
I distribute my thoughts using email. I have not hit it's scalability limits
yet. I cry when I think that in some future I will have to be under some
proprietary platform control to distribute my thoughts.

> The reality is that you can't.

The reality is that is was solved a while ago, the solution is rss and email.

Instagram instead offers popularity and nice photo filters and colored ticks
on avatars. Which are nothing in common with distributing thoughts.

~~~
echelon
> The reality is that is was solved a while ago, the solution is rss and
> email.

You are in a very small minority when compared to the average internet user.
This is the same attitude that advocates for IRC and Jabber when modern
alternatives have taken over due to user friendliness, network power, and
corporate ownership/management.

It's not to say these platforms don't have problems (they do), or that a non-
open model is preferable (it's certainly not ideal).

> Instagram instead offers popularity and nice photo filters and colored ticks
> on avatars. Which are nothing in common with distributing thoughts.

We can't ignore that the Internet has moved on from our technical solutions
since the rest of the world got online. If we want it to remain open, it's up
to us to help reign things back in through legislation when we see such
blatantly gross abuses such as this.

If you keep pointing to RSS as the solution while simultaneously discounting
all of the moves that are being made by the big players, RSS will wither and
die and you will be left with nothing.

Platform control. Regulatory capture. Impenetrable new "standards". DRM.
Dropped support for HTTP, RSS, semantic HTML, ad blocking, video...

Just imagine what the Internet will look like in twenty years and tell me that
doesn't worry you.

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mosselman
What I think is the problem is the terminology. 'Verified' makes it sound like
there is some identity checking going on. It is nonsense to say that because
someone is posting on 2 platforms, they suddenly aren't who they say they are.
If you use the term 'affiliate' or 'partner' it is a different story. If you
are posting on 2 or more platforms, it is logical for all involved platforms
to not feel like partners anymore.

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im3w1l
Call me paranoid but it seems increasingly that Big Tech uses all their
avenues to force conformity. The message is that if you don't do what we want,
bad things start happening. It can happen anytime anywhere and you wont
necessarily know why. It's about encouraging a helpless, submissive, fearful
mentality.

Maybe they'll no longer show you as verified. Maybe your posts will be demoted
a bit in the feed. Maybe you now longer show up when people search for you.
Maybe your sub becomes quarantined for an obviously for an obviously false
reason (facts don't matter). Maybe you see more captchas. Maybe pages start
loading more slowly for you. Maybe for your subscribers. Maybe you wont be
able to show ads. Maybe it's the comments that get revoked. Maybe your account
gets frozen and all your funds stolen.

Most (all?) of those are actual things happening right now.

~~~
chii
> it seems increasingly that Big Tech uses all their avenues to force
> conformity.

because these big tech companies are all dependent on advertising revenue, and
thus converge to advertiser friendly behaviour.

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lonelappde
Nothing much to do with ads in this case. If Insta cost money to use, Insta
would still not want people leaving for Snap.

~~~
doubleemms
Of course they wouldn't, but it's a question of who their customers are –
hint: not their users (even the "verified" ones).

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aphextim
Not that I agree with this practice, but I've heard from people who stream on
twitch that if you are streaming on their platform, you cannot stream to you-
tube, d-live or other platforms and keep the affiliate/partner status which
allows viewers to subscribe and donate via twitch currency to you.

You may stream to multiple platforms at once, however you lose your ability to
be verified on twitch by being an affiliate/partner.

I see more and more of the large platforms taking this route and removing the
verified/special perks for being on that particular platform if you are not
keeping your content exclusive to them, in an attempt to keep the largest
market share/content creators.

In the end I think this will only drive the more independent creators to adopt
smaller and more open platforms and the big platforms that are left will be an
echo chamber more than ever.

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chmod775
They are afraid of other platforms, because they know their business will take
a serious hit if there's ever serious competition. The cut they take off of
subscriptions and donations is absolutely shady and unjustifiable.

Add to that the long list of twitch "anti-features" and they're on a good
course to become to Quora of streaming sites. Can't wait for just lurking to
become "members only".

Twitch would die in a heartbeat if they allowed multi-streaming (streaming to
multiple platforms at the same time).

Their product is too easily replicated and most people don't care about the
platform - they follow their favorite content creators.

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fortran77
Twitter started this whole thing. Originally, IIRC, "Verified" meant exactly
that. You look at a twitter account of a Celebrity or CEO or poltician, and
the blue check meant it was really them.

Now it means it's really them _and_ they haven't said or done anything that
the wrong people find offensive. Comedians get de-verified (or kicked off) for
offending people if they offend the wrong people. (While others who do equally
horrible things -- like when Spike Lee tweeted the address of a completely
innocent and uninvolved person asking people to harass and threaten them, he
was not removed or de-verified [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-
esq/spike-lees-defense...](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/spike-
lees-defense-tweet-lawsuit-656118) )

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jimkleiber
And twitter started this whole thing because they were getting complaints from
celebs and being sued by Tony LaRussa for account impersonation.

I wonder if these networks even want people’s humanity verified on each
account, seems like it would kill growth numbers. When Facebook started, most
accounts were unofficially verified to be humans, as it was only open to
people who had a .edu email address, which were mostly verified and given out
by universities to real people. Then they opened it up and boom Facebook grew
to ridiculous numbers.

I’m waiting for one of the social networks to let anyone verify their
humanity, Bumble does it, not sure why Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, and the others
cant give this option. Maybe they don’t want to?

~~~
jimkleiber
TechCrunch article from 2009: [https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/facing-
lawsuits-and-compla...](https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/facing-lawsuits-and-
complaints-from-celebs-twitter-launches-verified-accounts/)

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HiroshiSan
This somewhat related but Instagram has started doing some shady shit, for
starters if you browse without an account they now cover the page with a sign
up splash.

The one that really grinds my gears is that I made an Instagram to follow some
artists I really enjoyed browsing, and for whatever reason their algorithm
flagged me, and so they deactivated my account. In order to reactivate my
account they requested a picture of myself holding a paper with the ID code
provided in the email (which I refused to do). When I tried asking why I was
deactivated I was simply given a canned respond requesting that I give them a
picture of myself with the code proving that I am indeed a real human being.

~~~
ritchje
Was it a new account? If so, the same thing happened to me; I created an
account on Sunday to follow some photographers and my account immediately got
disabled - before I could even login for the first time!

~~~
HiroshiSan
It was! Same day I made the account, all I did was follow people, never posted
myself.

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fhennig
Every now and then there are these news, where platform owners "abuse" their
power on the platform to do something in their favor. I remember an example
where HN discussed about how "Amazon's choice" doesn't mean that it's a good
product, it's likely just a product which generates a lot of revenue for
amazon.

It should be of no surprise that plaform owners will behave in this way. I
think the way forward should be protocols over platforms. ActivityPub over
social networks. Matrix over instant messengers.

Protocols are empowering. In the earlier days of the web there were many
different protocols for different things people wanted to do, such as SMTP,
FTP, HTTP etc.

~~~
doubleemms
Yes! So much this!

You can choose your email provider, or your cell phone carrier, and no matter
who you choose, you'll still be able to email and text/call others (regardless
of who _they_ choose).

But you can't choose a new Facebook provider. There's no recourse if a given
platform is behaving badly, and the network effect just reinforces their hold
on users.

Open protocols free users to make choices about providers and foster
competition based on the service provided instead of having to "choose" to go
where the people already are.

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tjpnz
Coming from a Facebook owned company is this really of surprise to anyone?

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JorgeGT
Next: you talked about WePay, so we burned all your Libra.

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jimkleiber
I’ve been waiting a long time for these platforms to let any of us human users
verify our human identities. Not sure if they actually want to.

Who wants to help me build a platform with only verified (you are the human
you say you are) users?

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ga-vu
Not the first guy I hear saying this. Happened to a friend too. Probably not
threatened... but "told"

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blaqdu
why would they not do it after they mic almost everything that snapchat comes
out with?

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megadopechos
What is posting Snapchat?

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rubbingalcohol
The title got truncated due to character limit - "posting Snapchat content"

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rodmena
Ahh... Facebook again.

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circa
LOL the title should just be something like, "when stupid gets even more
stupid"

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sandworm101
One upon a time an evil file might be called 'vader' or 'skynet'. Now harry
potter fans are senior enough to decide on project names. I feel old.

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danjin250
I think it's also that the "he who shall not be named" aspect here isn't
shared by Vader or skynet

~~~
sandworm101
As Vader was a cover name for annikin. Iconic evil characters are all pretty
similar. Jedi are essentially space wizards.

