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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.
Yeah, Twitter has a bot policy.
https://help.twitter.com/en/ru...
Zoid.com
Look, I'm on board with a good nazi bash just like everyone else...but...
This smells fishy. They openly admit they spammed people, and they don't provide context to the discussion. Twitter is known for having a somewhat left-bias, so if these folks were identified and banned, twice, I'm already suspicious.
The linked article stinks of sensationalism, and that's what tripped my bullshit sensors from the start.
These assholes may be telling the truth, and they may be entirely justified in their outrage, but the article and the style in which it was written makes me highly suspicious.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
"You looked at me in a way that I didn't like - you're a nazi fascist sexist misogynist and you need to die."
Any and all reasons for calling someone a "nazi" are fair game. So much so that the word has now lost almost all meaning.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Too bad "nazi" now means anyone who is not a leftist.
In this context, "nazi" means white nationalists, white supremacists... basically anyone at the "unite the right" rally who chanted nazi slogans. You know, nazis.
Not conservatives. Not libertarians. Just nazis.
Enjoy your civil war.
Racists caused the last one and racists, presumably because most of them don't actually know what a civil war actually is, seem to want one now. I don't know what a "race war" is, but I would prefer not to share a country with people who need one just so they can be proven right.
So if we can just peacefully persuade the racists to shut the fuck up (or if they are serious about white nationalism, fuck off back to Europe) it won't happen.
And how would you feel if within seconds of you posting anything (and I DO notice I'm replying to an AC, so I mean the collective 'you' here) a reply would appear essentially yelling, "THIS GUY IS A CONFIRMED NAZI! DON'T ASSOCIATE WITH HIM EVER!"?
Doesn't matter if it's true. There's no way of proving innocence or guilt. There's just this bot hounding you, following you through username and account changes. Isn't that the very DEFINITION of harassment and stalking?
Is it okay to do that because some of the targets, hell even if they have 100% accuracy, agree with Nazi ideology? Do we REALLY need to start saying "First they came for the Nazis, and I said nothing because I wasn't a Nazi ..."?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
The party was dismantled generations ago, there are no more Nazis.
So those chaps making Nazi saultes, chanting "blood and soil", wearing swastikas and so on---what would you call them exactly?
If you want a good argument about it, I suggest you try arguing with this chap:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Har...
His take on it:
I guess I got confused when they gave the #Hitler salute and chanted "blood and soil" b/c it reminded me of who I fought in my youth.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Homophobia and death threats. What makes you any better than them?
Are you talking about absolute idiots or reasonable people? The former says crazy shit all the time no matter which political/religious/shoe size they have and can be ignored.
Reasonable people use nazi as a generic insult too but not for "anyone who is not a leftist", if they do that they are in the absolute idiot category. Strongly authoritarian right have common traits with national socialism but so have leftist authoritarians. That doesn't mean they _are_ national socialists of course.
But now we should study what _you_ wrote: you imply only "leftist" people use the nazi insult. Ludicrous! Either your world-view is skewed so extremely that everyone using the word nazi is per definition leftist (which indicates that you are a right-wing extremist) or that you are an absolute idiot and should be ignored.
So what is it?
--
People not realizing there are many more axes in politics than the simple "left"-"right" one scares me. Democracy requires thinking people understanding politics in order to function properly.
There are liberal left and there are liberal right, there are authoritarian left just as there are authoritarian right, there are religious leftism just as there are religious rightism.
I wouldn't call them Nazis because they aren't a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
So your argument is Since the persons are not formally members of the nazi party, they are not nazis. 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").
I wouldn't call them Nazis because they aren't a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
If they look like a Nazi, quack like a Nazi, make heavy use of Nazy symbology and espouse the same values, it's reasonablt to call them Nazis.
If you want to engage in a game of mindless semantics where only you control the definitions, feel free, but don't expect anyone else to think you're being sensible.
you seem to think being called out for bad grammar, bad terminology etc. is some how unacceptable
Ah, I see you've entered the "just make shit up" part of the debate. That didn't take you very long I must say.
Where do you think you are? This isn't Twitter
On Twitter, you might have a chance of trying your arguments out with someone who has more than an armchair perspective, you know, someone who actually fought the Nazis.
I see you simply ignored that.
By the way, quoting the names of inapplicable logical fallacies, especially those you don't understand does not make an argument, and it does not make you sound clever.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The Nazis were left wing as well.
No, they weren't. They defined themselves as a "third position" distinct from both right and left, adopting a few elements from one side, a few from the other, and adding stuff of their own to the mix. This is why the right calls them left, the left calls them right, the center considers them extremists in one direction or the other, and also why all three are wrong. The center is correct only insofar as nazis are extremists, but they're extremists in a direction that doesn't fit within the left-right spectrum.
Also, internally the Nazi Party had several subgroups, including a left wing, a right wing, a monarchist wing etc. At some point the right wing of the party decided the left wing was being too troublesome and killed them all. Afterwards the economic policies of the party, that were somewhat "balanced" from the perspective of the left-right axis of the time, turned markedly to the right. But contrary to what the current left wants to believe on the matter, that still didn't turn Nazism itself into a right wing movement.
Nazism was and remained first and foremost nazi-wing. Any attempt at reducing that wing so as to fit the left-right spectrum, be it into the left side of the spectrum, as conservatives and libertarians want to do, be it into the right side of the spectrum, as liberals and socialists want to do, is and will continue being incorrect and doomed to failure.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Merriam-Webster can suck it. Oxford gets it better.
Nazi
NOUN plural nazis
1) historical A member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
1.1) derogatory A person with extreme racist or authoritarian views.
1.2) A person who seeks to impose their views on others in a very autocratic or inflexible way.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Correct. All racists are not Nazis, but damn near all Nazis are racists.
It's possible to be a racist and not believe in nationalism and autocratic rule.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Many of the "white nationalists" who marched in Charlotte were wearing swastikas, carrying Nazi flags, and shouting anti-Jewish sayings. The other white nationalists there didn't seem to mind the presence of these folks. As a friendly tip: If you are waving a Nazi flag and shouting anti-Jewish sayings while protesting, chances are you're a Nazi. If the people you're protesting with are carrying a Nazi flag and you don't see anything wrong with that, chances are you're a Nazi.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
Yes, autocratic white supremecists are bad. No, that is not a free pass for committing assault. Grow up.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.