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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.
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.