Twitter Bans, Removes Verified Status of White Supremacists (thedailybeast.com)

After updating the rules of its verification program on Wednesday, Twitter has begun banning and removing verified check marks from white supremacist accounts. For example, white supremacists Richard Spencer and Charlottesville "Unite The Right" protest creator Jason Kessler had their verified statuses revoked today. The Daily Beast reports: The verified check mark was meant to denote "that an account of public interest is authentic," the company said in a series of tweets on Wednesday, but that "verification has long been perceived as an endorsement." "This perception became worse when we opened up verification for public submissions and verified people who we in no way endorse," a company spokesperson tweeted. Users can now lose their blue checkmarks for "inciting or engaging in harassment of others," "promoting hate and/or violence against, or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease," supporting people who promote those ideas, and a slew of other reasons.

Comments

Verification

[michaelmalak]

So... now there's no way to verify that a white supremacist actually said that racist thing?

Re:Verification

[amiga3D]

I guess the internet is going to end up split with left wingers having their own little nest and the right wingers theirs. Pretty much how the media worked out and now it'll be on to other things. We'll have right wing stores and left wing stores. The only thing that bothered me is I never thought that in the divorce the liberals would get the NFL.

Re: Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the plan, then the Antifa needs the same treatment. No white supremacists with verified accounts, and also no black supremacists with verified accounts.

Re:Verification

[DNS-and-BIND]

Random scumbags on the right always represent everybody you disagree with, but when an asshole from Black Lives Matters murders five cops or a Muslim blows somebody up, they are anomalies and we shouldn't paint with a broad brush.

The Bernie Sanders supporter who attempted to murder a dozen or so Republican Senators and Congressman left us no possible doubt about his motivation. In a March 12th post on his Facebook page, he wrote.

"Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time To Destroy Trump & Co."

Now, it must be admitted that his reasoning isn't actually all that bad. If the President really is a traitor and, if he is literally destroying our democracy, then it's not unreasonable to think that violent action might be warranted. So, his inference isn't really what's crazy here. It's, rather, the ideas from which he derived it that are the problem.

So, where did he get these crazy ideas? Well, let's see. Here's a March 7th Newsweek headline from a piece by President Clinton's Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich: Is Trump a Traitor or a Paranoid? Former MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, Democratic propogandist Michael Moore, and venerable Democratic wise man Bill Moyers have all explicitly called the President a traitor. And, of course, the list of Democratic celebrities and politicians who have accused the President of serving Russian interests without necessarily using the word "traitor" would be very long indeed.

There can be no real debate about where exactly James Hodgkinson got the ideas that made trying to murder a dozen Republican politicians seem not totally unreasonable. He got them from perfectly mainstream political and intellectual leaders of the Democratic party. Anyone with half a brain knew all along that it was only a matter of time before someone started taking their manipulative nonsense seriously, as well as the horrific results that would ensue.

Why hasn't Twitter taken away these people's blue checkmarks?

Re:Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

I am with you on this, and I lived under commies... sadly they cant look in the mirror

Re: Verification

[quantaman]

God help me... I'm going to defend white nationalists.

a) Antifa are in no way "black supremacists"

They weren't called that. Only a call for treating all groups similarly. And yes... Antifa is a hate group.

The phrasing of the comment certainly left an implication they were black supremacists, I wanted to make sure to explicitly contradict that.

b) Antifa are not they remotely as bad as white supremacists.

Because...? Do you really want to compare the commonality of violence from Antifa to the far lower level from the white supremacists?

Antifa certainly doesn't shy from low-level violence like punching and vandalism, and it's something I deeply abhor about them. But if you compare all the low-level violence from both sides I'm honestly not sure who is worse.

But the white supremacists have a literal and extensive body count. Here Antifa isn't even close.

c) White supremacists are a far bigger problem than Antifa and black supremacists combined.

Because... ? Interesting that only now do you draw a distinction between the group... earlier you seemed outraged that they would be listed together... and in your mind, thought of as the same thing.

Huh? You think because I said "Antifa and black supremacists combined" I think they're the same thing??

Isn't it odd, that those most worried about 'white supremacists' are often the most angry when 'radical Islam' is spoken of? We don't dare use the "i" word, for fear of alienating peaceful Muslims who are unfairly being grouped in through the use of the word word.

The problem with talking about "radical Islam" is it's usually done in the context of talking about terrorism, and it implies that terrorism is caused by being really Muslim.

But there you can be a really, really devout Muslim and be totally opposed to violence. And you can be a really crappy non-devout Muslim and be a terrorist. It's not a great correlation.

So this ends up causing a bunch of really peaceful non-terrorist Muslims to be unfairly suspected of terrorism and exposes them to all sorts of harassment.

It also means some Muslims are going to hear you keep equating Muslim with terrorist and they're going to make the same association and be more likely to embrace terrorism. I suspect this has played a role in some of the "lone wolf" attacks in the west, people who didn't have a strong Islamic identity embraced terrorism because the media told them that's what true Muslim's did.

Should we not now worry of alienating non-supremacist white people in with the supremacist sort by labeling all as 'white'?

No because it's a complete non-sequitur. The problem with "radical Islam" is it easily applied to all Muslims because it basically means someone who is really Muslim.

"White supremacist" doesn't generalize about white people, it specifically identifies the group of people who think that whites should be supreme.

Re:Verification

[Kiuas]

Are you joking?

CNN
MSNBC
CNBC
ABC
HuffPo
WashPo
NPR
VOX
Buzzfeed

The leftist crap goes on and on.

I'm going to ignore the fact that you just listed Buzzfeed, a clickbait site that doesn't do actual news together with actual news organizations and point out that as a European leftist I find it rather confusing that someone would label stuff like CNN 'leftist'. I live in a country that's comparatively very far to the left of the US, which means we've got, among other things, universal health care and education systems. I admit I do not read/follow CNN regularly but i certainly have not been left with the impression that they support either of these policies for example. They certainly lean more towards the democrats, but the democratic party is not 'the left'.

The point here is this: compared to other western nations, the US has tilted heavily to the right in the past few decades. The democrats are now what the republicans were in the past, whereas the republicans have kept going to the right, so you essentially have 2 right-wing parties, one far-right and one more centrist, but no leftist party, and this reflects in the media landscape as well, so that anything close to the center is labeled 'the left', and anything actually to the left is labeled 'communism'.

Overall the two party system has caused american politics to become hyperpolarized. Any and all nuance seems, at least from the outside, to be gone. It's all a game of 'blue vs. red', 'us vs. them' and both sides are making the divide worse by actively demonizing the other side.

As a case study look at the way the attempted ACA repeal went down. The republicans have the congress, the presidency and the senate, yet they failed to repeal the ACA because the suggested repeal was not right-wing enough for a segment of the republicans, even though said proposal would have robbed millions of americans health care and likely resulted in tens if not hundreds of thousands of deaths. In Europe, a health care plan that would remove coverage from millions of people with low income would be considered extremely far to the right, but even this was not enough for some republicans.

And then when outlets like the CNN point out the fact that such plans would lead to massive amounts of deaths when people are robbed of coverage, they're labeled 'leftist crap', as if not towing the line of the ruling party and presenting facts about the proposal somehow makes them 'the left', which is not true.

So, people think the check means

[Anonymous Coward]

So, people think the check means Twitter is endorsing the verified person. So, now it officially does.

*CRAZY*

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying that it's treated as an endorsement, they are acknowledging they use the checkmark as an endorsement now. So the 'Verified' checkmark means Twitter, as a corporate entity, is endorsing whomever they give it to. As a potential investor, I find it extremely off-putting a media organization would taint themselves with moderation of speech because there's no way to come out clean. Someone *always* disagrees with whatever you say, and Twitter decided to join the fray? That's *insane*!

Re:The moral of the story

[interkin3tic]

No, the moral of the story is best summed up by XKCD

Wrong thing to do

[Todd Knarr]

I think this is the wrong thing for Twitter to do. They ought to reinforce the idea that verification is just that: verification of identity. It's no more an endorsement of the person than a driver's license is an endorsement of them by the DMV. Personally I like a flag that tells me whether an account really belongs to the person in question or a troll trying to get them in trouble. In the case of white supremacists and their ilk, I consider the verified checkmark to be a target selection aid. It helps me insure I'm taking offense at and responding to someone who deserves it, not someone who's gotten the MAGA folks annoyed.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[MightyMartian]

Yeah, killing tens of millions of people, including six million Jews systematically murdered, invading neighboring nations, making war on the English-speaking world, along with other assorted war crimes like human experimentation, slave labor, and so forth.

Frankly, I'm not sure why being a Nazi has suddenly become this protected status. There was a time when most of these goons hid in homemade fortresses and got their "literature" in plain brown wrappers.

Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,...

[aevan]

But they DO call people 'white supremacist'..even if they aren't white, as long as they are right-wing. Alongside Nazi, Literally Hitler and so forth.

Yep. Not endorsed=no check mark, so check mark=

[raymorris]

Yep, they removed the mark from these people BECAUSE they don't endorse them. So "if we don't endorse someone, we remove the check mark".

They did NOT remove the check mark from Black Panthers and Antifa accounts.

Twitter fucked up here. Once they start removing the check mark from people they don't endorse, obviously people will say "so why don't you remove the check mark from bad person)?" If they refuse to remove the mark, that now looks like an endorsement.

Re:The moral of the story

[qwerty shrdlu]

And also here: https://xkcd.com/1357/

Re:The moral of the story

[AmiMoJo]

The comic you linked to is full of obvious errors. For example, it quotes John Stewart Mill, but completely misses the point he was making. He wasn't arguing that Twitter should not ban anyone ever because it's the new town square public forum, he was arguing for anonymous speech and for the availability of safe spaces where people could express unpopular views.

Basically Mill was an advocate of 4chan and privacy.

The other obvious flaw is that it says we risk leaving who can speak to who can shout the loudest, while also advocating that everyone be given a free megaphone. Mill understood this, his argument was not that everyone should get their own column in The Times, it was that as an individual one should seek to consider all points of view and arguments. In fact, he recognized that publications specializing in certain ideas were necessary to fully develop them, because otherwise you end up constantly defending the basics and never get to discuss the detail with like-minded people in a safe environment.

Re:The moral of the story

[GameboyRMH]

Well it's alt-right(and alt-lite) sure, it's also conservatives, gamers, progressive muslims, gun owners,

Oh fuck this, gamers in general will not be lumped into the basket of deplorables over one incident involving a bunch of fedora-wearing MRA neckbeards who happen to play videogames. This shit will not stand, the sheer percentage of female gamers these days ensures it.

Progressive Muslims are also extremely wary of the same problem and would gladly tell you where you can shove this idea.

Gab.ai, minds.com, and so on

"So on" being the Daily Stormer and other hate sites. These aren't a new phenomenon. Mainstream sites should not attempt to cater to these userbases. Let them remain in the deepest darkest corners of the Internet, I say.

Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes

[e_pluribus_funk]

>The famine of 1966 killed only 2 million

Let that sink in folks, Communists view 2 million deaths as no big deal.

Re:The moral of the story

[interkin3tic]

Leftists get a blue check mark taken away from racists. They can still tweet, just without an emoji.

The right wing in control of all levels of our government make sure scientists can't report that climate change is happening because coal companies don't like it.

Clearly this country is being destroyed by leftist fascists...