
Twitter’s Silence on State-Sponsored Attacks - bootload
https://threatpost.com/twitters-silence-deafening-on-state-sponsored-attacks/115937/
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brc
In the last twelve months I have stopped using Twitter. It used to be fun but
it just became a mess of marketing and moral posturing and bullying. It wasn't
a conscious decision, it just happened.

It's like the photos of the woman scorned - the guy with his car trashed and
clothes thrown out, he's probably getting back together with her after an
apology. The guy with his stuff neatly folded and packed on the front is gone
for good because she moved on.

It's one thing to think of a Twitter boycott over some issue like this, but
when it fails to meet the standard of providing value so you just move on,
well that's a lot worse for Twitter.

~~~
toxicFork
I have restarted using Twitter recently; after not using it for years.

The content you see depends entirely on who you choose to follow. I only
follow the people who regularly publish awesome content, initiate discussions,
and have a positive outlook on things. Also some credible news sources, and
add a few personal idols like Elon Musk.

I did see some people become toxic, start bullying and so on, I unfollow them,
or make another decision, depending on the circumstances.

It feels like you make your own community on Twitter. You need to moderate it
too.

~~~
SyneRyder
This is good advice. I love Twitter, and find you need to be ruthless in
unfollowing anyone who ruins the experience for you. Unlike Facebook, there
usually aren't social / real-world consequences for unfollowing someone on
Twitter.

For people who are noisy but you still want to follow, shuffle them off into a
Twitter list you check occasionally. I love @SwiftOnSecurity, but she's too
noisy/frequent for my main feed, so I don't follow her and only include her in
my Infosec list (that also includes @troyhunt and @tqbf).

You'll probably enjoy Twitter a lot more if you use 3rd Party clients like
Tweetbot (Mac / iPhone) and Fenix (Android). Zero ads and more flexibility
with features like Mute Filters (eg muting specific hashtags as well as
specific users). The official Twitter experience is terrible.

Don't feel obligated to follow friends. This is often the fastest way to ruin
your Twitter experience.

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sandworm101
>> “It’s just scary to think somebody wants to know something about me and I
have no clue whether it’s the NSA, the German police or North Korea,”

Well, Twitter is alerting about 'attacks' by nation states. So it won't be the
NSA or German police. They need not attack and/or steal anything to get such
information. But if they did, Twitter would certainly not be informing the
target. So of the three options above, it must have been NK.

~~~
seszett
> _Well, Twitter is alerting about 'attacks' by nation states_

May I talk about something that's been irking me?

I often read people talking about "nation states" when they are actually just
talking about states.

As far as I know, Twitter will _still_ alert you if the state that's attacking
is not a nation, like say Canada or the UK. Or for a more likely attacker,
China describes itself as a multi-national state.

~~~
smarx007
I believe the reason for "nation states" is to avoid confusion with US states.
I am from Europe, for the record.

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bootload
Why is the article singling out twitter? One reason is, a minor market
correction is adjusting the perception of the value of Twitter. This type of
criticism happens when new tech companies are formed, when there's large
amounts of money involved and the market corrects, criticism is magnified. [0]

[0] Guardian, Jana Kasperkevic, _" Stock rout demotes Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
from billionaire to millionaire"_
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/20/twitter-
sq...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/20/twitter-square-jack-
dorsey-downgraded-billionaire-millionaire-tech-stocks)

------
Eridrus
Not sure why Twitter is being picked on here, Google, the originator of this
practice, is equally silent on the cause for these notifications.

~~~
sporkenfang
It's become popular to pick on Twitter since they've previously made some shit
decisions about how to handle free speech and user rights. My thought is that
any company handling user data and accounts that state-level actors might want
access to is at fault; the very least they can do for user privacy (and
rights) is tell those users that someone is targeting them.

from the story:

> Twitter is not alone in starting to alert users targeted by state actors.
> Facebook did so beginning its notification service in October, followed by
> Twitter on Dec 14 and Yahoo eight days later.

and with regard to

> “However that [Twitter stays] quiet now does probably more harm,” Kubieziel
> said. “Some people suspect that Twitter might have received some gag order
> and isn’t allowed to say anything. However, even if it was only some bad
> algorithm which misjudged the situation, it would be better to tell the
> truth. I think it would help many of us to sleep better.”

it seems most likely to me that, yeah, they've been told not to tell who it is
that wants the info.

~~~
zitterbewegung
The real problem is that you don't know what to conclude if they are silent or
not. In theory we don't have proof of either outcome but it is prudent to
assume the worst.

~~~
sporkenfang
I'm not sure why this is a problem, considering that if one nation-level party
is interested in you, probably multiple are? As long as the users in question
know someone is poking around, they can take steps to reduce their online
presence, or migrate to new online identities, at the very least.

The point I suppose I was trying to make is it sounds like a lot of finger
pointing since people are afraid and don't know whose door to bang on.

