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Comment by michaelbuddy | Hacker News Reader

>The man deserved what he got

No. Twitter incorrectly used him as some kind of example. They had also did temp bans on him in the past and also the immature move of removing his check mark.

The harassment was happening WELL before Milo was tweeting the ghostbuster. Milo wrote the article. Milo's tweets weren't anywhere NEAR harassment level. Trolling a famous person on twitter is not harassment and brigading. And as many have already shown the ghostbuster herself was just as guilty in the past of attempts at brigading.

There's even some communication from her where she was actually thrilled the incident would give exposure to her and the movie. Whatever people think of this, Milo didn't cause her any suffering or feeling of being 'unsafe' Other harassers were deplorable. Milo was not in that category.

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Removing his blue check was especially ridiculous to me. "Because you are who you are, you can no longer be verified."

If you're Verified, you have access to a Verified Twitter stream, which means you can avoid seeing anything from people who are not verified.

This provides a civilized version of Twitter that is mostly populated by smart and funny people.

So Twitter removed a professional jerk from the Verified streams while allowing him to continue as a rabble-rouser.

> This provides a civilized version of Twitter that is mostly populated by smart and funny people.

Twitter circa 2009 before Kutcher vs CNN? This still exists?

Only if you are Verified ;-)

I did suggest some time ago that Twitter could monetize by charging a high fee for verification (with, say, passport scans and other personal details). Sadly, they do it free.

So Twitter's verification is more about access to this socially elitist feed? That may be a feature, but I think the primary function is to avoid people impersonating well-known public figures on the platform.

Removing Milo's check out of politically-driven spite definitely undermines the validity of the entire verification system.

I didn't say it was the primary feature. I simply pointed out that verification wasn't as simple as is generally assumed.

> Removing Milo's check out of politically-driven spite definitely undermines the validity of the entire verification system.

That sounds like a prejudiced opinion expressed in prejudicial language. However, you might consider this section from I’m With The Banned

https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-ba...

QUOTE >>

Milo is excited. This is his night. How does he feel about his suspension?

“It’s fantastic,” he says, “It’s the end of the platform. The timing is perfect.”

He was planning for something like this. “I thought I had another six months, but this was always going to happen.”

Milo shows no remorse for the avalanche of misconduct he helped direct towards Leslie Jones, who is just the latest victim of the recreational ritual abuse he likes to launch at women and minorities for the fame and fun of it.

> Milo shows no remorse for the avalanche of misconduct he helped direct towards Leslie Jones.

He shows no remorse because she clearly didn't suffer from anything he said. Like I said before. Other people actually harassed, he didn't. Trolling a celebrity star of a bad movie isn't harassment by any measure. His comments were intelligent and funny. His article on Breitbart was scathing, which is why Jack targeted him, to set an example.

Also stated before, She was happy to leverage it for publicity. So much for being traumatized. And another thing, Milo doesn't launch abuse at Minorities. In fact, since he's in love with british black men, your comment has no value there because you're clearly uninformed on his background.

Milo attacks ideas and does sophisticated trolling. Judging by Twitter's crashing stock price right when this incident occurred, it can't be denied that Twitter's censoring of an minor media celebrity proved it made a bad move. So much so, Jack's been trying to put out the fire, even where he addressed it for a canned question during the investor phone call. He just wants it to go away.

> His comments were intelligent and funny.

So, you've been suckered by an obvious troll.

> In fact, since he's in love with british black men, your comment has no value there because you're clearly uninformed on his background.

You're funny. OK, answer these questions:

1) Where was Milo born? 2) What was his birth name? 3) What does his father do for a living?

I have another dozen if you get any of those right.

One of us knows Milo and it isn't you ;-)

> Milo's tweets weren't anywhere NEAR harassment level. Trolling a famous person on twitter is not harassment and brigading.

Milo had tens of thousands of flying monkeys to troll and harass people on his behalf. He knew this perfectly well, and used it all the time.

His tweets didn't need to be particularly harassing: all he had to do was point the finger. Which he did.

So what, when you gain over some arbitrary amount of followers, you're not allowed to ever tweet about another person? What's the magic number at which you're not allowed to speak about anything but generalities?

That's an plainly insane rule. How about Twitter actually ban people who actually break the site rules, act with some small measure of maturity, and stop moderating with a political bias that a child could see?

You're ignoring the context. Milo knew what he was doing. It was deliberate harassment.

And thanks to his thuggish role in gamergate, he had plenty of "previous".

Milo knew what he was doing.

What objective facts do you base this on? The tweets themselves are completely innocuous.

And meanwhile, people who post actual harassment and threats are left unscathed (I've personally reported a few myself), and while I'm not privy to what happens in Jack's office, it definitely quacks like it's okay to to harass if you subscribe to one political mindset, but not another.

We followed each other on Twitter, and have mutual acquaintances. I also know personal stuff about Milo that not many people know. If there were meanings that weren't obvious to you, that doesn't mean they weren't there.

It also means those meanings are completely worthless to bring into this discussion as they can't be evaluated - your comment is worded as if it's personal stuff you don't want to get in to.

Maybe it's a cultural thing. Milo is basically an example of British schoolboy humor, and the biggest joke for us, watching it, is that Republicans don't get the joke and take him seriously.

But then, Milo is just riding Trump, and plenty of Republicans take him seriously as well. (Not all, of course. Some have retained their integrity https://goplifer.com/2016/07/22/resignation-letter/ )

The problem is that people who are being taken for a ride obviously don't know they are being taken for a ride, or they wouldn't be. And they definitely don't want to know that: they'll just get angry. So it's much better not to tell them....

his 'thuggish role' you mean when he realized that the media were telling lies, where gaming websites were insulting gamers and he stood up for them on Twitter and Breitbart. What you call thuggish is really superior charisma and getting results.

Whatever #gamergate was supposed to be, in reality, it resulted in a series of thuggish massed attacks on women such as Zoë Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian.

I guess any self-righteous and simple-minded "cause" like #gamergate is likely to attract trolls and misogynists, but my personal experience on Twitter was that it was mainly backed by thick bigots. Of course, YMMV.

Just the sort of crowd that Milo can manipulate. And in his cynical self-aggrandising universe, dupes are there to be manipulated.

I implore you to read some of the facts on #gamergate - it's no coincidence that most of the people crowing the loudest about harassment have a financial motive to present that argument.

Most of what you're hearing is horribly, horribly slanted, if not outright false. Ask yourself why we're supposed to take someone that cries "i'm being harassed!" on faith. Ask yourself why certain prominent individuals have been caught faking harassment directed at themselves.

http://deepfreeze.it - literally every single point of discussion on this site is backed up with a citation, and it provides a very strong, very plausible alternative to the narrative surrounding that movement. I'm not going to say that trolls in there don't exist, but it's not near as significant a component of the group as you've been led to believe.

> Most of what you're hearing is horribly, horribly slanted, if not outright false.

Not in my personal experience, both of Milo and of Gamergate. Glad to hear you have a different and better experience, but I saw the harassment and thuggery in action.

Running out of money ?

Give $10,000-$25,000 to The Clinton Foundation

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundati...

>Milo had tens of thousands of flying monkeys to troll and harass people

your claim. I was reading his tweets and you're wrong. It's simple. you don't have a leg to stand on. And thanks to twitter, we don't have the records to look at either. But since I was reading them I know, so I don't have to take your claim into consideration.

Your problem, I think.

Yeah I reread his tweets there. They were no where near harassment level, again I reiterate. This is twitter's failure and it didn't help them in their stock this week. It may be a fatal blow as things continue and replacement platforms start to surface.

I read his tweets. We followed each other on Twitter. The problem is you're naive enough not to understand them. But as with gamergate, Milo is an expert at exploiting dupes.

For what it's worth: https://tweetsave.com/nero

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