Twitter Bans, Removes Verified Status of White Supremacists (thedailybeast.com) 707
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.
The moral of the story (Score:2)
Re:The moral of the story (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The moral of the story (Score:5, Insightful)
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That always was a shit comic and for good reasons. [sealedabstract.com]
Re:The moral of the story (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
That always was a shit comic and for good reasons. [sealedabstract.com]
And other bollocks. Throwing in a bunch of quotes randomly combined with a complete misunderstanding of British history is not a rebuttal. The XKCD was not against free speech, it was pointing out that just because it's not illegal to say does not entitle you to a platform, let alone any platform you like. Also freedom without responsibility is anarchy, the same is true with free speech, free speech has never protected you from criticism.
People trying to defend racism (yes, white supremacists are racists, placing one race as superior to another... let alone all others is the dictionary definition of racism) are the ones who are destroying free speech. They are using this as a thought terminating cliche to silence criticism. White Supremacists are not some hard done by minority group fighting for equal rights or recognition, they are fighting to suppress equal rights for other groups they don't like. Using free speech to defend them from critics is devaluing free speech. Free speech does not mean what you say is right, it just means it is not illegal to say it. Using the free speech excuse to silence critics, especially valid critics, reduces freedom.
I'm a firm believer in playing the devils advocate, but one must always consider the nature of the devil for which one advocates for. Knowing who you are defending is key in defending it successfully. Often using the wrong defence harms you more than not defending them in the first place. Finally, using free speech as a defence is the worst possible argument, falling back on free speech means that the most compelling defence you have for what you said is that it is literally not illegal to say it.
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Re:The moral of the story (Score:5, Insightful)
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:The moral of the story (Score:5, Informative)
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...
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Why don't you learn a teeny bit about fascism? Fascist regimes often do censor, but lots of other ones do also. It isn't a synonym for censorship or repression or something you don't like.
Also, it looks to me like political groups don't like free speech. The most worrying suppression of free speech right now is taking place in the scientific areas of the Federal Government, and that's not liberals doing it.
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. Also helps explain why they didn't make a peep when Trump called for bringing back the fairness doctrine in all but name.
You weren't paying attention then, because if you were then you'd already know that people were automatically arguing against that as soon as he said it. That was right in the "trump heavy" subs, forums and so on. They're easy to find, you shouldn't have any problems. But if you're sucking your news from a couple of sources, I can see how you'd miss that. Just like how the media is all over Judge Moore, and not saying anything about the Menendez trial. I mean that literally. You know that he actually
Cue the Nazi snowflakes (Score:2, Insightful)
whining about how they're being persecuted for hating people.
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the irony is that they *are* being persecuted by people who hate them.
Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes (Score:3)
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They are but they lost their Verified Grammar Status...
Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Can we ban communists, too then? Their crimes are worse.
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Most communists involved in crimes are already dead.
So what is the point?
Want to ban all white americans because they killed most of the native americans 300 - 200 years ago?
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Well, mostly of the actually sane people just argue that there are left extremists that label everyone they dislike as nazi, and might abuse this to stomp on em.
Of course, there are some retards that do label themselves as Nazis, and those need to be mocked and ridiculed for supporting such stupid ideas (and truth be told, it's not even that hard given how ridiculous most of em are).
The one thing you should NOT do is to turn nazis into martyrs or "the edgy thing you do to look cool if compared to the whiney
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You're creating more of em with this kind of attitude. When you keep moral panicking on the TV about "OMG THE TERRIBLE NAZIS", you will give a lot of kids the wrong idea.
Before the extreme left started doing all this retarded stuff, we used to just mock the retards pretending to be nazis and it worked brilliantly, keeping the numbers really, really low.
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I'm simply pointing out that this way of dealing with the extreme right is not working, It was small before people were using those methods, and now its quite darn big.
So something wrong is being done if the goal is to keep the thing small.
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In my opinion you're confusing cause and effect. They are big now because you didn't stop them earlier. Don't get me wrong,I perfectly understand why you don't want to stop them - Freedom of Speech is a high value and I'm more on the side of the US than other countries in that respect. But there is a catch. The problem is that the Internet has given radicals plenty of forums to collude and these allow them to grow. This doesn't just apply to radical right-wing, of course, it's a problem with all radical opi
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I want to stop the nazis from growing, but i don't think the methods being applied would work.
All that banning those people from the twitter do for example is just to give the nazis a talking point of "see how the lefties control the media"?
The narrative i see they use is that "the lefties controlling the media want to genocide the whites", and they let several tabloid lefty loony shit like saloon to do the job for em, saying that "this is what the WHOLE media actually thinks".
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The alt-right has spent years infiltrating the GOP and manipulating opinion to make far right / supremacist views more acceptable and mainstream.
Look at the reaction to Charlottesville. You might have expected widespread, unequivocal condemnation... But POTUS came out in support of the Nazis. At least they failed to completely take over the GOP and have been left with an ineffective government that is tearing itself apart as the traditional conservatives try to reclaim their party.
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You're hanging your argument on a few books full of fallacies (Marx's work). We are hanging our argument on the history of the 20th century.
That makes you _wrong_ (theory always loses to practice), Fascism and Communism are 'hating cousins'. They are fighting over the same political territory.
All real world flavors of Marxism contain a key unfixable flaw. Excessive concentration of power, which then corrupts. Game over.
Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes (Score:4, Interesting)
You want real mass murder? Check out Stalin and Moa.
You are comparing apples and oranges. Although Mao killed more people than either Stalin or Hitler, the vast majority of those deaths were from economic incompetence rather than intentional malice. They died from a man made famine, not in death camps or gulags.
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Executions, forced labor, and purges
In China, these were mostly within the political class. Stalin and Hitler tried to exterminate entire ethnic groups.
The famine of 1966 was Mao just getting warmed up.
The famine of 1966 killed only 2 million. Heck, even Pol Pot killed more than that. The "Great Leap Forward" famine of 1959-61 killed far, far more, and was caused almost entirely by incompetence.
Re: Cue the Nazi snowflakes (Score:4, Insightful)
Let that sink in folks, Communists view 2 million deaths as no big deal.
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Was Milo a white supremacist? No. But Twitter called him one and banned his account.
Oh, come on. He has a very public track record of taking sperm from black men and holding it within himself.
What further proof could you need to demonstrate that he feels he's a superior receptacle.
Verification (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Verification (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.
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Or maybe we simply won't pretend that it's ok when people who want to commit mass murder preach their hatred openly?
Re: Verification (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh bullshit. The Antifa openly call for genocide, but that's okay because you ignorantly think it's a white culture they want to exterminate.
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God help me... I'm going to defend white nationalists.
They weren't called that. Only a call for treating all groups similarly. And yes... Antifa is a hate group.
Because...? Do you really want to compare the commonality of violence from Antifa to the far lower level from the white supremacists?
Because... ? Interesti
Re: Verification (Score:4, Insightful)
God help me... I'm going to defend white nationalists.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
So what you're proposing is to wait until they're tied in this metric? "Oh, they're not that bad... yet. We should wait until they are!"
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.
I think you need the term "radical" defined.
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.
Look, if you have a huge festering would on your arm and don't take care of it, you'll be perceived as being sick. Everyone's going to say "quantaman is sick", not "quantaman's festered wound on his arm is sick". Yes, a disease which is being not taken care of will make the whole person be defined as sick.
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.
Maybe you see it that way
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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.
I haven't followed the thread so am just commenting on this one point. The thinking, decades ago, was that, to help social cohesion, we should not have labels for groups, especially when those labels become fuel for bigots, for bigots to hate those groups. The idea, and it sorta comes from PostModernist thought, is that culture is made up of the words and language which people use, so if you could just remove all racist labels from language, then racism would disappear. And that's why we have been taught
Re:Verification (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
I am with you on this, and I lived under commies... sadly they cant look in the mirror
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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.
If you have to tell us then it's obviously debatable.
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.
Hyper-partisanship is a problem and yes, I know that violence is going to occur but not for the reason you believe. The truth of the matter is that the less representative the government is of it's people, the more prone people are to violence. Right now we have a very low-representation government. This has been done though a number of ways of filtering who and what people can vote for.
* First-past-the-poll voting is reductive and always result in a t
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So your argument is that if his side commits violence your side can too? That sort of thinking leads to civil war.
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Really? THIS kind of crap is what is modded as "Informative" or "underrated"? Slashdot really is sinking lower and lower.
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You're not going to stop them short of full-scale repression (which I'll do you the courtesy of assuming you don't want). They'll just do it where you can't get at them. Like the OP says, we'll split right down the middle.
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Ah, good point. I'd forgotten that. Time to spend a few hours reporting twitter users for promoting violence on the basis of gender and gender identity.
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These guys aren't just "right wingers". I know right wingers. I have friends who are right wingers.
These are white supremacists who are calling for a white ethnostate and genocide (albeit Spencer has now changed that to a "soft genocide" (his words)). You can be way right wing and not be a little goose-stepping trust fund fuck.
It shouldn't be a surprise that Twitter doesn't want to am
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These guys aren't just "right wingers". I know right wingers. I have friends who are right wingers.
Exactly! I have friends who have right wingers. A couple of them are even running as candidates for right wing parties in the upcoming elections in my country. We're still friends, we go out and drink together, we sometimes have spirited discussions, but we're still good friends despite disagreeing on politics.
And even though I don't like that their parties are way too deep in the pockets of corporate interests and will probably contribute to an erosion of worker rights and other causes I care about, they'r
Re:Verification (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
So, people think the check means Twitter is endorsing the verified person. So, now it officially does.
Yep. Not endorsed=no check mark, so check mark= (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.
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"This perception became worse when we opened up verification for public submissions and verified people who we in no way endorse"
The verified status literally means Twitter endorses them.
By the way, as long as we're talking about it, I ran across this story the other day that explained where Richard Spencer got his start. [nymag.com] It was the Duke Lacrosse non-rape case that was made up and never happened. The Left literally created the alt-right movement. In 2014 Rolling Stoneâ(TM)s false rape story a
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"This perception became worse when we opened up verification for public submissions and verified people who we in no way endorse"
It literally means that Twitter thinks that verification means endorsing the person. Literally.
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Alleged white supremacists actually,... (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the recent moves in the media, be it twitter, facebook, news articles, reddit posts, moderation across the web, youtube, shaming campaigns etc, it's extremely difficult to actually identify, clear, distinct, genuine racists.
The term has been wildly thrown around the web in the past 3 years (along with misogynist and other such things) to the point it's verging on meaningless.
Why take someones words and analyse them when you can just shriek and bray and imply they're saying something they're not. The accusation alone is enough to "throw a dead cat on the table" and totally redirect the conversation.
I myself am 'clearly racists' according to some comments I've got on reddit, because I have the gall to take issue with my countries *extremely high* immigration policy, which is impacting housing affordability, renting affordability and the jobs market (as well as general congestion, sustainability) - I need not mention a race mind you, but I'm clearly racist because I think maybe we should be thinking about this long term.
The wild labeling of any 'dissenter of our groupthink' is just causing more backlash. I can't help but take a cynical view now of anyone accused of such things and try to find the *actual truth* of what was said, to see if it's taken out of context or not.
In conclusion, basically, I'm not sure I really trust twitter to get this right, in the slightest.
NOTE / DISCLAIMER: (general rant, 2 people mentioned in article could *totally* genuinely be lunatics for all I know, but I'll be damned if I'd take twitter opinion as the final word on it, nor the average twitter users 'reports' either)
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Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,... (Score:5, Informative)
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Uhh no, try to keep up. They're even calling Jewish people and Israel "white supremacists" now.. Like mainstream news organizations (CNN, HuffPo, etc)
Wouldn't call them White Supremacist, but Israel is certainly an apartheid state with serious racial issues.
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I myself am 'clearly racists' according to some comments I've got on reddit, because I have the gall to take issue with my countries *extremely high* immigration policy, which is impacting housing affordability, renting affordability and the jobs market (as well as general congestion, sustainability) - I need not mention a race mind you, but I'm clearly racist because I think maybe we should be thinking about this long term.
You do not need to actually do anything to be a racist . . . if you are a white, middle-aged male . . . "You racist!"
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You do not need to actually do anything to be a racist . . . if you are a white, middle-aged male . . . "You racist!"
You can also be not white, and still be a racist too. The current favorite among the left is to label asians(especially JP, CN, or PH) who support western ideals, democracy, free speech, etc. Is to label them as banana's aka "yellow on the outside, white on the inside." Which isn't any diffrent then the old house ni*ggers, uncle tom and other labels used by racists.
I hope the left is enjoying their identity politics, because this is the beast you created. Even funnier is just how far they'll twist thems
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Only if you are a WASP ...
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Well, if in the pursuit of absolute freedom, some firms will pay the price.
I don't think most of the world is ready for a Star Trek universe where most
of the time, the growth of the mind is valued more than wealth.
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I'll make it easy for you: When people self-identify as "white nationalists" they are racists. By definition.
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I'll make it easy for you: When people self-identify as "white nationalists" they are racists. By definition.
Long before a(t least a) bunch of racists started labeling themselves 'white nationalists', there were many 'black nationalist' self-labelers, and it seems like they weren't called racist (as much at least). I myself am not a 'nationalist' of any sort, I believe in human rights that should be protected and fought for around the world. Though the radial importance of locality, despite the internet factor, still means that it is most logical to deal with your vaguely near neighbors socially before worrying
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Re:Alleged white supremacists actually,... (Score:4, Insightful)
But that's nothing compared to how incomprehensibly sexist I am for having the unmitigated gall to believe that women are every bit as strong willed as men, and thus capable of saying 'no' to a sexual advance, so affirmative consent is not needed, and further that when a man and women are both drunk, the woman is just as responsible for her actions as the man-- regret isn't rape, and when two equally impaired people have sex, the woman isn't a victim nor is the man guilty of sexual assault. And I'm supporting rape culture and the patriarchy because I believe these college Title IX kangaroo courts lack essential due process, very clearly acting on a principle of 'guilty until proven innocent' and using a burden of proof so low it doesn't even come close to meeting the weak 'preponderance' standard it's ostensibly supposed to require (unless the person accused of misconduct is female, then the burden exceeds even 'beyond a reasonable doubt'-- in a case where a slightly buzzed woman gave a bj to a blacked out unconscious man, and explicitly admitted to that, it was the man who was found responsible for assaulting her. while unconscious. with his penis in her mouth.). If you don't support guilt upon accusation with no ability to challenge the veracity of the story, that means you support rape. Lawyers should be allowed to speak and ask any relevant question? How dare I support traumatizing the survivor with facts that cast doubt on her lived experiences.
Facts are racist, due process is sexist, and anyone not supporting the most radical actions of the progressives is Literally Hitler. And it's getting worse and worse and worse. The left is imploding because they can't stop turning on allies to the progressives who dare challenge the orthodoxy- flipping the oppressors instead of ending oppression, and insisting there's no difference at all between men and women, or between races. And god forbid you use peer-reviewed studies to show that the wage gap largely doesn't even exist because men and women on average make different choices-- science is just propaganda from the patriarchy. Demonizing white men likely contributed to Darth Cheeto's victory, but the left has just been doubling down on the same extreme identity politics, and is just asking for an even stronger backlash.
I'm extremely liberal myself, and would never even consider voting for a Republican, as I loathe 95% of their platform, but as a cis-hetero white male who insists on adhering to equality and facts, I feel very unwelcome in the left.
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I'm in Australia,
My government *LITERALLY* cuts a cheque / tax refund for property investors who purchase their second / third / fourth (and so on) properties, as a rental. They get a tax credit on all expenses, interest paid, maint fees, management fees etc.
We have a housing crises in this country, it's significantly worse than the USA. The average home is now 12x the average yearly wage, on this particular metric, some of the worst prices on the planet, excluding a small handful of trickier places (Ho
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We let in nearly 300,000 people a year, [...]
That's a very misleading figure [aph.gov.au] because it includes short-term visas for students and business people. In 2015-2016, the number of immigrants was 189,770 under the migration program plus 17,555 under the humanitarian program. Net migration is around the 178,000 mark.
But even this is beside the point. The problem isn't that we let in so many people, the problem is that we shove them into capital cities. There is no housing crisis in regional centres. But there isn't enough infrastructure either.
Re: Alleged white supremacists actually,... (Score:2)
It could be worse. They could have turned up, taken your country, stolen your children and desecrated your holy sites.
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Well, the GOP is working to make education levels in other countries equal to that in the USA. The problem is that their approach to this is to lower education levels in the USA.
The most recent example of this is the proposed taxation of tuition waivers for graduate students.
*CRAZY* (Score:4, Insightful)
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*!
politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck those 3 white supremacist dudes, but it's ok for tens of thousands ANTIFA and similar to spew hate, insult and otherwise promote hate and violence ?
Everybody is aware of this.. just making sure it's pointed out, as it should be, every time they do something like this where they decide who gets to have a voice and who doesn't.
antifa or fake Russian accounts? (Score:2)
Some of those claiming to be antifa are counterfits.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craig... [buzzfeed.com]
https://www.vice.com/en_us/art... [vice.com]
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Being for antifa means you're a communist agitator that's trying to overthrow society. That's treason son. You sure you really want to go down that path?
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There comes a time you have to pick a side. So yeah "dad", we pick the side of the constitution. If that means we have to refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of you traitors, then so be it.
Funny that you're advocating for the exact side that's opposite to the constitution. Did you skip the part where antifa says "liberals get the bullet too." Yeah, I bet you did. The only people being traitorous here are the ones using violence in order to make changes that are shittier for everyone else. Too bad your parents didn't teach you that.
Wrong thing to do (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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This, exactly.
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It's no more an endorsement of the person than a driver's license is an endorsement of them by the DMV.
You don't have to pass a driving test to get a licence in America? You learn something every day.
In my country, a driver's licence is proof not only of your identity, but also that you have demonstrated some level of knowledge of the road rules and some level of competence in operating a 2 tonne death machine in a public area.
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They are certifying that you have demonstrated a certain level of competence as a driver. That is not an endorsement but it's somewhat analogous to it.
Make it actually mean verified? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about they just make it actually mean "verified" and allow ANYONE to get verified by sending in identification verification? Problem solved and it isn't a special club anymore!
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There's no going back, now.
Apparently, that was their original goal for the program ("The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic"). But the perception was that verification implied endorsement, and then Twitter started reinforcing that by doing things like revoking Milo Whatshisface's verification because he was being shitty on their service. By doing that, they imply that verification doesn't just mean that an account is authentic--after all, Milo's
I feel like its going to be a long wait (Score:2)
I'm very much looking forward to seeing a few radical left Twitterers getting the same treatment, because I'm sure there can't be any significant political bias at Twitter or any of the other giant CA-based internet companies that are forcing their PeeCee agenda down our throats, right?
The twitterverse ... (Score:2)
... is a depressing rabbit hole of great importance because uh, you know ... no, not that it's profitable, that's not it ... because uh ... no, it's not a vetted source of commentary, it's because, you know ...
You know what?
Fuck it.
Where's my water? (Score:2)
Indifference (Score:2)
Considering I seriously doubt there's anything Spencer and I agree on except maybe whether it's raining and that I don't pay any attention to Twitter I'll just go ahead and enjoy my ability to be indifferent to the whole thing.
Verified schmerified. (Score:3)
The verified tag is nothing more than badge of social status. At which point, it's useless.
The mere fact of being DE-verified pretty much proves this.
How about orange supremacists? (Score:3)
Will they be next?
In other news... (Score:3)
How many left wing nutjobs and so-called anti-fascistic fascists have had their twitter recognition and/or accounts removed?
Thought so. This is standard censorship where we block those voices we don't like hearing, leaving more room for those we do like.
Most of these strongly oppose white supremacy (Score:2)
The truth is hate speech now https://twitter.com/TRobinsonN... [twitter.com]
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No, and their Saudi Arabian patron Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is in trouble at home.
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There's nothing wrong with the term. E.g. Wikipedia describes it as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Virtue signalling is the conspicuous expression of moral values done primarily with the intent of enhancing standing within a social group.[1] The term was first used in signalling theory, to describe any behavior that could be used to signal virtueâ"especially piety among the religious.[2] In recent years, the term has become more commonly used as a pejorative characterization by commentators to criticize what they regard as empty, or superficial support of certain political views, and also used within groups to criticize their own members for valuing outward appearance over substantive action
Which applies to Twitter making a big fuss about removing the blue checkmark from someone like Spencer. Spencer is someone who can't fill a meeting room for a talk and is widely despised on the right and, as I said, removing his checkmark or even banning him will do absolutely nothing to change anyone's mind about him. Most people who know about him know he's a literal national socialist. His tiny fan club t
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"I think Twitter is overstepping its bounds on determining what is offensive and what is not."
Read the fucking Constitution. Only the govenrment is barred fromcesoring.
Private companies like this just don't want to bake a wedding cake for racists, as it is their right.
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"I think Twitter is overstepping its bounds on determining what is offensive and what is not."
Read the fucking Constitution. Only the govenrment is barred fromcesoring.
Private companies like this just don't want to bake a wedding cake for racists, as it is their right.
Did the OP even mention the 1st? Why is it an automatic assumption that if someone mentions freedom of speech or censorship they are referring to the constitution? Furthermore, why is it an assumption that a particular Twitter (or any other social/forum based platform) user should be conversant in the Constitution of the United States, when there's a good chance they aren't from the United States? To wit: 79% of Twitter accounts are based outside the United States [omnicoreagency.com]
One can agree with the sentiment that twit