6 ms·

Large number of Twitter accounts critical of China suspended

155 points by lawrenceyan 7y ago

smnscu 7y ago
They've also restricted my account for no apparent reason a few days ago, and because the account is associated to an older phone number I have no choice but to wait for the mercy of Twitter Support. Makes my lazy ass ponder about the importance of federated solutions such as Mastodon.
- sneak 7y ago
  You can’t reuse a verification number across usernames; one of my accounts is locked and wants a phone, but the one I put in is “already in use on another account”. sigh.
atemerev 7y ago
Watch this; this post will probably be flagged and disappear from the main page really soon. Authoritarian countries monitor everything. Cowards.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post flamebait rants or make up groundless allegations here.
  - heraclius 7y ago
    There is not insubstantial evidence that authoritarian countries monitor coverage of their governments, so at least one part of the claim is correct. The other part is probably nonsense though—I see and post criticism of China very frequently.
    - atemerev 7y ago
      Both this post and my comment are now flagged.
  - atemerev 7y ago
    I have predicted that this post will be flagged. It was.
    - happytoexplain 7y ago
      It's unclear what you're trying to say.
rococode 7y ago
How does something large scale like this happen? Is it possible to get an account suspended solely by mass reporting of Tweets, or does it require some level of internal access to Twitter? The former would just mean Twitter needs to tweak their suspension procedures a bit. The latter would be quite worrisome due to the various implications (security breach, internal oversight and approval, rogue employee, etc.).
- octosphere 7y ago
  Most of the accounts were probably registered normally with en email address and a handle, only until Twitter presented the accounts with a 'Please verify the account with a phone number', and then they got flagged and banned. There used to be a loophole in Twitter where you could register accounts en masse (without phone verification), but they have since clamped down on this and now you have to go through rigorous verification steps to prove you're not some bot or trying to run a propaganda campaign.
  - locknumber110 7y ago
    But if one is some running bots for a propaganda campaign that's friendly to Twitter investors' interests, one magically doesn't run into those sorts of verification hoops.
jmccaf 7y ago
Twitter Takes Down Accounts of China Dissidents Ahead of Tiananmen Anniversary https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/business/twitter-china-tiananmen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/business/twitter-china-ti... """ In a statement, Twitter said that as a part of its routine efforts to stop spam and inauthentic behavior, it had inadvertently gone after a number of legitimate Chinese-language accounts. “These accounts were not mass reported by the Chinese authorities — this was routine action on our part,” the company said in a statement on Twitter. “Sometimes our routine actions catch false positives or we make errors. We apologize.” Online, many users said they did not believe Twitter’s statement told the whole story. """
marak830 7y ago
As long as we keep (as a whole) letting a country that ground dissidents to a paste and washed the result down the sewers, drive our collective greed, we're fucked. Note I'd prefer not to use the term greed above, it's just the most succinct for the situation but it is the reality. Minus the invasion, we are pre ww2, concentration camps are happening and we are doing business with those practioners. I and everyone I have an influence on, are refusing to buy Chinese goods, that's the limit of my power (which is fuck all honestly).
- Cyberdog 7y ago
  > I and everyone I have an influence on, are refusing to buy Chinese goods, that's the limit of my power (which is fuck all honestly). What device did you type this message on? Odds are very high it was assembled in China with a significant portion, if not majority, of Chinese-made components, and the company that sold it to you either has a significant presence in the Chinese market, or wishes it did. I understand the concern here, but for better or worse, China is where pretty much anything that uses transistors is made, and it's just not practical to boycott everything that passes through there. (Not to mention that it's not really fair to punish Chinese business-owners for the actions of their government when they have even less accountability over it than we do over ours. Is it fair for people of other countries to not buy from American companies because of our government's absurd incarceration rates?)
  - coryrc 7y ago
    It needs to be a collective action by the moral world to make a difference. Due to FPTP voting system, America will never again have a leader with the ability to ask the people to make a sacrifice for moral reasons. We no longer can implement treaties to get others to join collective action, and no other country wants to be or is powerful enough to be world policeman.
  - pavel_lishin 7y ago
    https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha
- 7y ago
atemerev 7y ago
Flagged in less than one hour, as predicted. China will be free someday.
AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
This is exactly why we must support decentralized and censorship-resistant alternatives. Mastodon and Pleroma are steps in the right direction.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
on a similar note the documentary "The Gate of Heavenly Peace," far the best history of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and mass carnage, is available in two parts on YouTube https://youtu.be/1Gtt2JxmQtg https://youtu.be/1Gtt2JxmQtg people need to be reminded that China hasn't changed in the way they treat anyone critical of this regime. and there are far to many China apologists sitting in power in Silicon Valley (at YC Sam Altman is a prominent case)

155 points by lawrenceyan 7y ago

They've also restricted my account for no apparent reason a few days ago, and because the account is associated to an older phone number I have no choice but to wait for the mercy of Twitter Support. Makes my lazy ass ponder about the importance of federated solutions such as Mastodon.

sneak 7y ago
You can’t reuse a verification number across usernames; one of my accounts is locked and wants a phone, but the one I put in is “already in use on another account”. sigh.

atemerev 7y ago

Watch this; this post will probably be flagged and disappear from the main page really soon. Authoritarian countries monitor everything. Cowards.

dang 7y ago
Please don't post flamebait rants or make up groundless allegations here.
- heraclius 7y ago
  There is not insubstantial evidence that authoritarian countries monitor coverage of their governments, so at least one part of the claim is correct. The other part is probably nonsense though—I see and post criticism of China very frequently.
  - atemerev 7y ago
    Both this post and my comment are now flagged.
- atemerev 7y ago
  I have predicted that this post will be flagged. It was.
  - happytoexplain 7y ago
    It's unclear what you're trying to say.

rococode 7y ago

How does something large scale like this happen? Is it possible to get an account suspended solely by mass reporting of Tweets, or does it require some level of internal access to Twitter? The former would just mean Twitter needs to tweak their suspension procedures a bit. The latter would be quite worrisome due to the various implications (security breach, internal oversight and approval, rogue employee, etc.).

octosphere 7y ago
Most of the accounts were probably registered normally with en email address and a handle, only until Twitter presented the accounts with a 'Please verify the account with a phone number', and then they got flagged and banned. There used to be a loophole in Twitter where you could register accounts en masse (without phone verification), but they have since clamped down on this and now you have to go through rigorous verification steps to prove you're not some bot or trying to run a propaganda campaign.
- locknumber110 7y ago
  But if one is some running bots for a propaganda campaign that's friendly to Twitter investors' interests, one magically doesn't run into those sorts of verification hoops.

jmccaf 7y ago

Twitter Takes Down Accounts of China Dissidents Ahead of Tiananmen Anniversary https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/business/twitter-china-tiananmen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/business/twitter-china-ti... """ In a statement, Twitter said that as a part of its routine efforts to stop spam and inauthentic behavior, it had inadvertently gone after a number of legitimate Chinese-language accounts. “These accounts were not mass reported by the Chinese authorities — this was routine action on our part,” the company said in a statement on Twitter. “Sometimes our routine actions catch false positives or we make errors. We apologize.” Online, many users said they did not believe Twitter’s statement told the whole story. """

marak830 7y ago

As long as we keep (as a whole) letting a country that ground dissidents to a paste and washed the result down the sewers, drive our collective greed, we're fucked. Note I'd prefer not to use the term greed above, it's just the most succinct for the situation but it is the reality. Minus the invasion, we are pre ww2, concentration camps are happening and we are doing business with those practioners. I and everyone I have an influence on, are refusing to buy Chinese goods, that's the limit of my power (which is fuck all honestly).

Cyberdog 7y ago
> I and everyone I have an influence on, are refusing to buy Chinese goods, that's the limit of my power (which is fuck all honestly). What device did you type this message on? Odds are very high it was assembled in China with a significant portion, if not majority, of Chinese-made components, and the company that sold it to you either has a significant presence in the Chinese market, or wishes it did. I understand the concern here, but for better or worse, China is where pretty much anything that uses transistors is made, and it's just not practical to boycott everything that passes through there. (Not to mention that it's not really fair to punish Chinese business-owners for the actions of their government when they have even less accountability over it than we do over ours. Is it fair for people of other countries to not buy from American companies because of our government's absurd incarceration rates?)
- coryrc 7y ago
  It needs to be a collective action by the moral world to make a difference. Due to FPTP voting system, America will never again have a leader with the ability to ask the people to make a sacrifice for moral reasons. We no longer can implement treaties to get others to join collective action, and no other country wants to be or is powerful enough to be world policeman.
- pavel_lishin 7y ago
  https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha
7y ago

atemerev 7y ago

Flagged in less than one hour, as predicted. China will be free someday.

AnaniasAnanas 7y ago

This is exactly why we must support decentralized and censorship-resistant alternatives. Mastodon and Pleroma are steps in the right direction.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago

on a similar note the documentary "The Gate of Heavenly Peace," far the best history of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and mass carnage, is available in two parts on YouTube https://youtu.be/1Gtt2JxmQtg https://youtu.be/1Gtt2JxmQtg people need to be reminded that China hasn't changed in the way they treat anyone critical of this regime. and there are far to many China apologists sitting in power in Silicon Valley (at YC Sam Altman is a prominent case)