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Twitter's community verification system will be a disaster

• sofaofthedamned 7y ago
  If easydns can't survive a HN flood then I wouldn't want to be a customer of theirs.
  • annoyingnoob 7y ago
    I've never had a problem with their DNS service (only service I use). I don't always agree with Mark.
• dijit 7y ago
  The post goes into it but I just want to double assert that the blue check mark system is rather absurdly arbitrary. Not only is there a bias towards “Lefty” (quotes) views, but it’s often handed out to people who have no worry about impersonation because they are not a personality in of themselves. Not only that, they (as a group) are not immune to spreading significant amounts of misinformation[0]. Who watches the watchers? [0]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/twitter-verified-accounts-misinformation/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/twitter-verifie...
  • geerlingguy 7y ago
    And since 2017 (maybe 2016) they've publicly stated the blue checks are 'on hold', though it seems some people still get them sometimes? From the blue checks I see in my timeline right now it seems like it's completely arbitrary who has them vs. who doesn't. For example: A few journalists with hundreds or thousands of followers do, while others with same amount (all of whom I think are decent journalists) don't. Many organizations do (whether they have thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, but some (with very recognizable names) don't. Some random individuals do, some don't, with follower counts in the hundreds to the millions. The only thing it does for me is adds visual noise to the timeline. I can turn it off (in Tweetbot) and do, but I'm not sure what the point is currently.
    • paulgb 7y ago
      Among people I know, the distribution of blue checks is so arbitrary that I'm convinced we're all participating in some modern form of Stanford Prison Experiment.
    • casefields 7y ago
      My sibling is a journalist in DC. New hires at her paper get check marks right away. Seems like there's still a point-man that these new organizations contact. This is ripe for aa interesting article, but who wants to be the bad guy and end such a juicy perk?
  • chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    > Not only is there a bias towards “Lefty” (quotes) views... Is there a source for this? While it sounds credible, I don't think I've seen any data on it, and I've certainly seen a lot of "Righty" folks with blue checkmarks. (The ones the article you linked to talks about are entirely on the far right, in fact, although of course that article is in Mother Jones, which is...not on the far right.)
    • dijit 7y ago
      FD: I align with the left politically. I don’t have (and can’t get) data direct from twitter. But it’s a common accusation. https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/9354-twitter-accused-left-bias-verifying-eminent-accounts https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/9354-twitter-accused... https://theoutline.com/post/1323/verified-blue-checkmark-derogatory-insult-twitter https://theoutline.com/post/1323/verified-blue-checkmark-der... https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/verified-politics/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/verified-politics/
      • chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        Well, it's a common accusation from some louder parts of the Right, to be sure. But I've also heard folks on the left accuse Twitter of having a conservative or even alt-right bias because of the common occurrence of alt-right trolls gaming the reporting system to get leftist activists suspended. While that may be an exploitable flaw in Twitter's system, I doubt Jack Dorsey is a secret neo-Nazi; likewise, I take "Twitter is run by anti-conservative SJWs because they kicked off Milo and Richard Spencer" with more than a few grains of salt. :)
        • type0 7y ago
          > I take "Twitter is run by anti-conservative SJWs because they kicked off Milo and Richard Spencer" with more than a few grains of salt. :) They probably not, just regular progressives, although they could have friends in those circles. Btw taking too much salt isn't good for you.
    • Zenst 7y ago
  • merpnderp 7y ago
    Always keep in mind Twitter takes away check marks as a form of punishment. It’s bizarre to think of validating someone then invalidating them when they say something naughty, makes it seem like children are in charge.
• _--__--__ 7y ago
  Not only does Twitter frequently verify users that are not noteworthy (online or off) or likely to be impersonated, the last I had seen they hadn't even addressed the absurdly common fake Elon Musks shilling crypto scams. Even if this has been fixed since the last time I saw it, it's much more likely that they just trigger manual review of any account that uses a name/avatar similar to Musk instead of actually fixing the real problems. The bad behavior of the blue ticks is widely recognized independent of ideological bend, and I predict that many of the accounts of actual value will wear these scarlet letters as badges of honor if this system actually gets implemented.
  • btown 7y ago
    Someone should train a GPT-2 twitter bot on the fake Elon Musk crypto scams to automate the creation of fake Elon Musk crypto scams. On a related note, I get my daily dose of valley thought leadership from https://twitter.com/real_human_vc https://twitter.com/real_human_vc - it truly captures the zeitgeist of what VCs talk about.
  • kevingadd 7y ago
    For a little while putting Elon Musk in your display name got your account automatically suspended, I think when the crypto scam thing was at its worst. I haven't seen anyone talk about that scam lately so they may have moved on to better ones (like the relatively new scam where if someone asks you for a paypal donate URL, a bot impersonates you and posts one in the replies almost instantly)
  • Nasrudith 7y ago
    Why would anybody expect blue ticks to behave "good" in the first place? Even being a high ranking professional with plenty to lose is no guarantee that they won't, nor is there any guarantee that lower levels will be better. The only thing to hint is if there is some sort of enforcement mechanism but that is a foregone "who watches the watchers" situation.
• kick 7y ago
  Wow, this is a really terribly-written article. You'd imagine a company that had been around for 20 years would have a sense of professionalism or something. When someone is able to pinpoint your exact political alignment and the news outlets you read from a corporate blog post, you're probably doing something wrong. Then again, the guy links to his book (with a subtitle of "Protect Yourself from Deplatform Attacks, Cancel-Culture and other Online Disasters" no less) at the end of the post, so this was probably intentional. I share more or less the same political views as him, but this is ridiculous.
  • saber6 7y ago
    While I can sense his flavor of politics, his core point is still potent to me: These people are going to be the deciders? Twitter is proposing, once again, stupid shit. This is not a mature organization with sound decision making capabilities.
  • Thorentis 7y ago
    Ah, there's the comment I was expecting to find. Somebody assuming the author's political alignment based on the (awful) Tweets they chose to highlight. You claim to hold the same political views as him, so what are you trying to achieve? More internet points? I found the article to be objective, included good sourced examples, and addressed a serious problem that has been discussed on HN many times before. The blue check mark system is terrible. It unconsciously makes readers trust the claims and assertions made by those that wield them. And as demonstrated in the article, blue-check-marked Tweeter often make horribly unverified claims, or incite outright violence. Both of these things I hope would be condemned by every side of the political spectrum, regardless or who is saying them.
    • kick 7y ago
      He takes several obvious and blatant jokes seriously, and he does this because not long ago, two right- and right-libertarian outlets with relatively large audiences posted pieces intentionally misinterpreting them, practically admitting to doing so in the pieces. At best, the bad faith seems to be lost on him, of course. The only thing worse than someone on an opposing side to you making a horrendous argument is someone on your own side making a grotesque one, and that's what he's doing here. His "point" is completely invalidated by the examples he used, which (notably) are all jokes, bar one. It only takes someone with the most basic amount of social competency to tell that. It, later, is invalidated further by his claim that "rubes can figure out how to sift through b/s," which he demonstrates to be wrong with the contents of his post. I don't think that twitter should be creating hierarchy on its site, and I'm far from against him politically: an abhorrent argument is still an abhorrent argument, though, and anti-intellectualism like this should be spoken out against wherever it appears, regardless of whose side it's on. This type of person making this type of argument devalues the side they're on as a whole, and should be strongly pushed out. And that's not even getting into the idea that a corporate blog should stray away from overtly-political posts.
• bjt2n3904 7y ago
  I particularly enjoy Arthur the Aardvark's take on false information on the internet[1]. The author is right. Letting the community decide what is true will be a disaster. Really, truth (or lack there of) is outside Twitter's scope. Twitter exists to allow users to communicate. Not to educate users on critical thinking, or arbitrate truth. Even if they "democratize" truth. 1 - https://youtu.be/YWdD206eSv0 https://youtu.be/YWdD206eSv0
  • pwinnski 7y ago
    The very fact that people continue to use Twitter demonstrates that we collectively are not good at filtering anything. The author writes as if they themselves are somehow immune from something they clearly aren't. I do think putting this power into the hands of blue checks is a mistake. But then, I think using Twitter is a mistake.
    • Nasrudith 7y ago
      I don't see how that follows neccessarily, many aren't there for the filtering or truth but access to the content. It is theoretically possible to filter or avoid the BS. I think they are trapped in a fool's errand no matter what personally given the precedents set up and the problem being humanity which stubbornly refuses to accept it or that there are no good solutions.
    • 101404 7y ago
      Twitter can be a useful tool. I follow about a 50 or so people who tweet on stuff I am interested in, and I have blocked 1000+ people.
• xg15 7y ago
  > Us rubes can figure out how to sift through b/s and make our own determinations on what passes the smell test. Yeah, no. If "smell tests" worked, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
• nodesocket 7y ago
  Twitter verified is inherently a flawed system. I personally know people who got it simply because they knew people who worked at Twitter. Let's not kid ourselves that most high-tech companies based out the bay area are going to have very heavily biased political beliefs and opinions. Remember the Twitter employee (now-ex) that deleted Trump's twitter account?
  • Nasrudith 7y ago
    I don't think not being biased is possible except /maybe/ an absolute null set. Any position on a mapping qualifies as a bias technically, it just may not map to something considered such or sensible. What is meant most of the time is if it is contentious or controversial which is utterly orthogonal to morals and reality. If enough people dogmatically insist that using punctuation is intellectual elitism or acknowledging gravity is then it may become a "political issue". They would be objectively wrong in every stance but by definition would be right about it being political. A cat walking across a keyboard is biased compared to anyone actually writing even including the worst typists chemically impaired.
• wyoh 7y ago
  From Twitter's perspective, it won't be a disaster, it will work exactly as they plan.
• davidw 7y ago
  > If somebody else has an issue with somebody’s tweets, I don’t know, maybe there could be some sort of “reply” function or something where somebody could rebut the contents of a tweet. The problem is the asymmetric nature of the costs of producing bullshit vs the costs of providing carefully reasoned rebuttals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...
• geofft 7y ago
  > Ryan Broderick, a self-professed hebephile It's pretty clear that the tweet in question was satirizing people who use terms like "hebephiles" to defend themselves. While you can argue in good faith whether the satire worked, was a good idea, was appropriate, etc., taking the tweet at face value and saying that he's a "self-professed hebephile" is not arguing in good faith. So either the author doesn't understand what was going on or is choosing to lie about it for rhetorical purposes - either way the author isn't a credible voice.
  • StuntPope 7y ago
    Actually, no, that is not clear at all. What is clear is that Ryan Broderick demonstrated ideation of a sexual nature with underage children on multiple posts. There were numerous other items from his tumblr and instagram which make it clear broderick was not being satirical. See the screengrabs captured here https://www.cernovich.com/ryan-broderick-racist-tweets-vile-jokes/ https://www.cernovich.com/ryan-broderick-racist-tweets-vile-... OR here https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-journo-reportedly-blogged-about-pedo-fantasies-rape-jokes-and-doxing https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-journo-reported... But it looks like you're willing to give a lefty a pass on behaviour that would be career ending from a conservative, which is par for the course.
    • geofft 7y ago
      1. None of that makes it clear he was not being satirical to me. Can you explain? Again, it all seems like extremely questionable humor, and you can question the humor in good faith (and you can also argue that ironic humor still has harmful effects, etc.), and you can certainly say in good faith, "Someone who makes these kinds of jokes should not have a moderation role at Twitter." But saying that it was not humor - that Broderick was genuinely claiming to be a hebephile - is a large logical leap that seems unjustified to me. Can you justify it? (As it happens, I did read Cernovich's page to confirm that I had the correct understand of the tweet before I commented. I am more confident in my comment having read it.) 2. I'm not sure this would be career-ending for a conservative, why would it be? 3. Par for what course?
• mc32 7y ago
  Yeah, who doesn't think this will devolve into voting rings and positive re-enforcement loops? I don't see how this will turn out well. I think they are better off with self-regulated groups ala Flickr and Reddit with some appeals system (like Flickr). Otherwise it will be abused because it's set up that way.
• djohnston 7y ago
  I am quite excited to see facebook and Twitter's opposing takes on this problem play out over the next few years.
• Thorentis 7y ago
  The blue check mark should mean nothing other than "this account belongs to who it says it does". And that's it. Unfortunately, Twitter has reinforced the incorrect unconscious bias of treating the blue tick as meaning "credibility/reliability", by removing it from people who state opinions and hold views that Twitter (the company) doesn't like. This has led to a severe imbalance on the political spectrum of who holds blue ticks, and increases the ability for the celebrities and journalists to control the narrative online. This should only be seen as a bad thing for everybody, regardless of your political alignment.
• Traster 7y ago
  >In other words, and this applies to all tech platforms, don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about anybody. Us rubes can figure out how to sift through b/s and make our own determinations on what passes the smell test. Does this guy have memory loss or something. There is a reason why twitter is looking at these changes and just saying "Oh yeah go back to how it used to be" is not a sensible response to this.