Slashdot Mirror
A Reporter Built a Bot To Find Nazi Sock Puppet Accounts. Twitter Banned the Bot and Kept the Nazis (nytimes.com)
Yair Rosenberg, writing for the New York Times: I asked my own Twitter followers whether it might be possible to create a bot that would reply to these impostors and expose their true nature to any users they tried to fool. Neal Chandra, a talented developer in San Francisco whom I've never met, replied, "I can try to throw something together this evening." And so, after a week of testing, Impostor Buster was born. Using a crowdsourced database of impersonator accounts, carefully curated by us to avoid any false positives, the bot patrolled Twitter and interjected whenever impostors tried to insinuate themselves into a discussion (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled). Within days, our golem for the digital age had become a runaway success, garnering thousands of followers and numerous press write-ups. Most important, we received countless thank-yous from alerted would-be victims. The impersonator trolls seethed. Some tried changing their user names to evade the bot (it didn't work). Others simply reverted to their openly neo-Nazi personas. A few even tried to impersonate the bot, which was vastly preferable from our perspective and rather amusing. Twitter sided with the Nazis. In April, the service suspended Impostor Buster without explanation and reinstated it only after being contacted by the ADL's cyber-hate team. Over the next few months, we fine-tuned the bot to reduce its tweets and avoid tripping any of Twitter's alarms. As the trolls continued to report the bot to no avail, we thought the problem was resolved. But we were wrong. This month, Twitter suspended the bot again, and this time refused to revive it.
A "white supremacist" isn't a nazi.
A "racist" isn't a nazi.
A "white nationalist" isn't a nazi.
Even saying "Not all nazis are bad" as in the article doesn't make you a nazi.
if they are serious about white nationalism, fuck off back to Europe
I think New Syria is the last place a "white nationalist" would want to move.
You know what else applies to "govt"?
Obligation to protect the citizens from persecution by third parties.
Laminate tha, dipwit.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Nazi party is long gone; there are no Nazis. Use the correct terminology or go back to Twitter.
So your argument is Since the formal nazi party ceased to exist many years ago, there have been no nazis since then. That is as ridiculous as claiming Since World War II was the last formally declared war, there have been no wars since then.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
No, I do not. But, I'm not interested in leading this into argumentum ad nauseam over outliers.
Regardless, it would be disingenuous to claim there aren't more accurate, more up to date and better terminology there to describe these people.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
False equivalence.
This is not an argument. This is your opinion presented as if it were a fact. You are by all means entitled to have your opinions, but please do not try to present them as facts. It comes across to me as a disguised attempt to appal to authority, with you being the authority.
This is Slashdot, not Twitter.
You have posted this or similar to several of your posts, and it comes across as an attempt to silence the other person and to try to be an authority ("such and such are the rules"). If you want to influence people, telling them to shut up or otherwise address them in a derogatory way is usually never a good idea.
But, to address the very quote (which I interpret to mean "While on twitter you might get away by saying whatever rambling comes out of your head, here on slashdot you have to provide valid arguments for what you write").
You have claimed that the arguments are not equivalent without backing that up with any arguments. So in a eat your own dog food opportunity, please explain exactly what you think the difference(s) between claiming Since the persons are not formally members of the nazi party, they are not nazis and Since World War II was the last formally declared war, there have been no wars since then is (are).
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
So all of a sudden it's "acceptable" to be violent towards someone because they have different views than you, but only if it's a certain subset of different views.
Views have nothing to do with it. What legitimizes violence against then is their continued active attempts to kill and/or subjugate everyone who isn't like them, starting with those who don't fit their list of approved ethnicities and religions, but quickly branching out into others. They have had decades to prove that they will do this at every opportunity, so every attempt by them to gain power should be taken as an active and deliberate attempt to commit the violence they espouse.
Yes, autocratic white supremecists are bad. No, that is not a free pass for committing assault. Grow up.
Nazi-punching is legitimate self-defense.
Interestingly, the largest slice of hate groups is on the left. And it's a rapidly growing number at that, having nearly doubled over the last 4 years.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!