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

Posted by BeauHD on from the ctrl-alt-delete dept.

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.

6 of 707 comments (clear)

  1. Verification by michaelmalak · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Verification by amiga3D · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. So, people think the check means by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  3. Re:The moral of the story by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  4. Yep. Not endorsed=no check mark, so check mark= by raymorris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:The moral of the story by qwerty+shrdlu · · Score: 5, Insightful

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