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'Verified' Is Now a Derogatory Term on Twitter (theoutline.com)
From an article on The Outline: Since 2009, Twitter has added a blue checkmark symbol to certain accounts that have been deemed "verified," which means "that an account of public interest is authentic," according to Twitter. For some, the verified distinction is coveted. For others, it's become a dirty word. "Verifieds" or "blue checks" are the elite, the establishment. Since many members of the media are verified, they have also become associated, for some, with the perceived liberal bias of the fourth estate. Conservatives, alt-righters, and Donald Trump fans have noticed that when Trump tweets, there is invariably a flood of "blue check liberals" responding in a negative way. There is also the perception that Twitter, a California company, is biased toward liberals. Also, according to Twitter, there are now about 250,000 people who're verified on the site, some of which are for unknown reasons.
Not widely. I've never heard of this.
Dark Reflection
So does reality. And sanity.
A sane world is a free one. Because only in a free world you will get to hear ALL opinions, even the ones you do not want to hear. Ideas that go against your religion, your groupthink, your echo chamber and your peer group approval. They will not be filtered and they will reach you.
Reality on the other hand simply is. No matter how much you wish it away. Saying it ain't simply isn't going to serve you well, for reality is a cruel mistress who will remind you that she's in charge. No matter your wishes, no matter your doctrine or your conviction.
And yes, that works for the alt-right as much as for the alt-left (or whatever the term is for the regressive left is today, I fail to keep track and quite honestly, I couldn't care less what attribute they want to be associated with today). Sanity as well as reality is found in the middle ground. Not the extremes.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The biases of Twitter can be quite easily seen by looking at the "Safety Council", tasked with keeping Twitter free of undesireables.
( https://about.twitter.com/safe... )
Furthermore, it is quite telling that Twitter punished notorious troll and agitator Milo Yiannopoulos by removing his verified tag. Why would they do that if the tag was only there to assert that the account was in fact verified as belonging to the real Milo Yiannopoulos?
It does look elitist. I'm not so sure that it's a nefarious scheme so much as a by-product of a sorting algorithm. It would be nice to be able to easily sort those responses. When showing replies to a Tweet, Twitter prioritizes the verified accounts, as they are typically more visible (more followers see and like their replies). We see them first, even if we have no clue who the person is. For high profile accounts, like the president, there is bound to be thousands of responses. If even a small percentage of those are "blue checks", they tend to drown out the other responses. Their voice gets a priority. It can be pretty tiring, especially when the first few people responding have multiple replies. They appear to be "hogging" the comments.
@realDonaldTrump is a blue check. What more do you need?
... low numbers on Slashdot are not to be trusted.
They drank the social justice kool-aid a while back. And that group of "the left" has managed to steal the "liberal" label somehow.
And no, I'm not an alt-right nutter. No, I didn't vote for Trump. No, I don't think Brexit is great. No, I don't think Obama was evil incarnate. My introduction to SJWs was when they destroyed what was a reasonably functioning atheist community with their religion.
Bias is an inclination or outlook to present or hold a partial perspective, often accompanied by a refusal to consider the possible merits of alternative points of view. According to wikipedia,
Have you seen conservative bias? It's an alternative reality filled with alternative facts. When Obama was president, my Tea Party-loving, lily-white relatives in Idaho emailed clippings out of the right-wing echo chamber. I could prove every item was factually wrong in some way.
Because conservatives are well-known as pragmatic and open-minded people.
They're not the ones on university campuses or society trying to shut down speech, engaging in no-platforming, violently assaulting people for having different opinions, pushing safe spaces, engaging in racism like progressives are. Or have you failed to miss how much identity politics, anti-white bullshit gets pushed out by people who claim to be "moral arbiters" and standing up for minorities?
So yep, conservatives do seem to be the pragmatic and open-minded ones these days.
Om, nomnomnom...
Funny how the police can reasonably make that determination when they didn't bother to arrest anyone. Apparently putting on a black mask and shirt revokes your status as a student or teacher at Berkeley for the duration you wear it.
tends to have a liberal bias.
Get over it.
I think calling it a "liberal bias" in the first place is very misleading. It is a Democratic Party bias of the big city press. Born of cultivated political and personal relationships made in big cities controlled by the Democratic Party which also happen to be the centers of media markets.
I've personally seen this play out where reporters from the main press outlets are given office space inside city hall and the state government and clearly develop a symbiotic relationship with the political establishment. The only time reporters turn on the powers that be in City Hall is when they see blood in the water and see the prospect of a new patron taking over.
I'm not completely sure that this isn't a troll, but I'll answer up as if it isn't. It would have been better if it wasn't an Anonymous Coward posting with no way to establish the context from which the author has spoken...
This illustrates a big part of the problem. A belief that a particular political viewpoint is so correct, and another so wrong, that merely expressing views associated with the latter automatically makes one wrong.
It may be the case that loonies are more likely to identify with a conservative, individualistic political ideology more so than a group-think government-take-care-of-me political philosophy, and since loonies tend to be outspoken and get attention, those loonies might be seen as the face of that political philosophy. But that appearance doesn't make it so.
The current trend of folks wearing a liberal banner shutting down conversations about significant issues simply because the alternate viewpoint from theirs MUST be wrong because it's not their viewpoint is troubling to me. It's the political equivalent of sticking one's fingers in one's ears, closing one's eyes, and vocalizing "nyahh nyah nyah" as loud as one can. Donald Trump won the election because a significant number of people in the US voted for him. Wouldn't it make sense to try and understand WHY people voted for him rather than just shouting "He's not MY president" and suggesting that the political process in the United States has somehow gone off the rails because your candidate didn't get elected? It doesn't seem like very evolved behavior to me.
People believe all sorts of things, and they believe them for all sorts of reasons. Dismissing others beliefs because they don't line up with the beliefs that you hold dear isn't a sign of intelligence; it's a sign of close-mindedness. From my viewpoint, it seems like a lot of liberals are the kind of people who like living in a denser, urban environment, while a lot of conservatives are people who like living in a less-crowded, non-urban environment. Perhaps this acts as a filter for political beliefs. Perhaps it's possible that liberal beliefs work well in an urban environment, while conservative beliefs work well outside of that environment. I currently live in a US state that has a tradition of having individualistic citizens, yet has developed significant urban populations in some parts. The political demographics seem to support the notion that urban-dwellers are more liberal, while non-urban dwellers are more conservative. Does this mean that the future of the human race is to live in dense urban environments with liberal politics? I hope not, because that isn't an environment that I would like to live in, and one that I have specifically chosen NOT to live in. Is my choice invalid? Am I broken or defective because I don't want to live that way, or is it a valid choice of mine to not live that way?
I believe many things and have rejected belief in many others. I've been called a Skeptic before I was aware that it was a thing because I believe in evidence-based reasoning. I was raised in a northeastern US state as a southern baptist, but threw away the religious beliefs I was taught when I went to college and found a better explanation with more evidence. I've spent a lot of my professional career using knowledge and reason to to separate fact from fiction, to understand why things have occurred, and what is most likely to make things work better in the future. In my mind, THAT is a more evolved human. The use of reason, thinking based on evidence, and considering all of the data, not just the data that favors what I would like to be true.
As soon as one starts labeling things, including people, one ceases to be able to truly understand them. Labels are useful abstractions, and its human to use them, but some of the most interesting discoveries come from peering past the labels to truly see.
I would like to see some political dialogs that don't assume right and wrong based on party membership, I would like to see political dialogs that don't reject other's beliefs simply because they are counter to one's own. And for the sake of the FSM, I would really like to see an end to self-appointed moral superiority.
Milo is a troll because of his message, or because of how it's delivered? People on the right finally figured out that no matter how they say things, the progressive left will attack. Milo, and to a large extent President Trump have figured out that being "politically correct" has never worked. The target is constantly moving, and only favors the progressive left. The progressive left is now beginning to eat as much as they dish out, and they don't like it.
We hear the same claims about Ann Coulter, Ben Shaprio, Steven Crowder, Mark Levin, Larry Elder, Dennis Prager, and I could go on and on and on. The progressive left (and it's media monopoly) labels anything people on the right do as racist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamaphobic, transphobic, misogynistic, anti Hispanic, etc... They constantly cherry pick bits and pieces of content to argue with. They similarly cherry pick for their own narratives and continue to get caught.
The successful answer has been not to "play nice" but to throw things back in a way that displays the hypocrisy and dirty tricks in full view.
So far, Generation Z is turning out to be one of the most conservative generations in a long time. The progressives are in for a rough time.
Back on point, as GP stated the "Verified" has become synonymous with "Insider" or "Elitist". Twitter is losing the war, as is Youtube and Facebook. Censorship is never the answer, yet these massive institutions continue to travel that route.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
... trying to delegitimize every news source to his left counts as trying to shut down speech.
Really? So you're saying that his opinions of something are trying to shut them down. Or that he's right when you can find the media is vastly left-wing, votes democrat, reporters are democrats(around 90%) and 95-97% of them in the beltway donate to democrats or are democrats. Or that 90% of what they report is all negative, even when the subject is positive.
It's not like the MSM haven't spent decades delegitimizing themselves to well...everyone. Which is why the trust of the press in most of the west is between 8% and 15% or anything. No, you want to see what trying to shut down speech looks like? Go pay attention to what's happening to youtube right now, and sites like the WSJ, gizmodo, et.al., directly attacking the source of revenue for people because they don't "conform" to their ideology. That's what an attack on free speech looks like.
Om, nomnomnom...
Sure: half of it's sideways, it's compressed all to fuck, the aspect ratio on the left half has been mangled and the composition on the right panel sucks. Visually it's a total disaster.
You should probably tell the ones protesting free speech then to figure out how to hold a camera then. That is if they don't beat you, smash your camera, and you spend a day or two in hospital recovering from your "run-in" with them.
Om, nomnomnom...