Such farcical comedy. They verify a fake candidate but refuse to verify well known but “problematic” public figures...
>>...that a teenager using next to no resources was able to quickly create a fake candidate in his free time and get it verified by Twitter raises questions about the company's preparedness ...
Raises questions? On the contrary - it settles any questions about about their preparedness.
>>The creation of a fake candidate account is in violation of our rules and the account has been permanently suspended
So the punishment for not existing is, you get banned. That's actually their response.
Next up: teenager uploads photo of all legitimate candidates to ThisPersonIsNotReal.com and gets them all perma-banned from Twitter...
Ha yea...If you expected introspection, you don’t know Twitter the company very well.
I really hope SV moves past this “surely we have an obligation to direct society” thing and gets back to hackers and geeks doing cool things. Not holding my breathe though.
Removing verification from people who violate TOS or spread messages that Twitter does not want to endorse is deliberate but unrelated.
No. A publisher can have biases. You would not appreciate any utility changing your service because of biases.
If they believe the person has violated their policies, then they should just ban them. If they don't want them having a blue checkmark when the ban expires, then they should ban them for life. Leaving them in this weird limbo without a blue checkmark turns it into something more like "Twitter's badge of approval", and feels petty and vaguely dystopian. I think it should just be "Twitter's badge of this-account-is-not-an-impersonator".
As another poster said, if they truly insist on this badge of approval, then they should have two checkmarks: one for verification, and one for "we consider this person a respectable, trustworthy, and upstanding member of the Twitter community" or whatever.
One which means “we sanction this person/their twitter persona” and another which means, “this twitter persona belongs to or is controlled by the person who it claims to be.”
We don’t need this muddled confusing system.
They are deliberately keeping the verification mark vague, so that people "misunderstand" it and so Twitter can claim publically that they aren't really endorsing anyone (but remove the mark from people they don't want to endorse).
But then, Twitter realised it could make money from the increased engagement blue check marked accounts generate. So it became exclusive. And then when they realised they'd be publicly/socially liable when celebrities said things Twitter the company didn't like, Twitter threatened removal of the check mark. So the check mark became Twitters stamp of approval to use, and be popular on, their platform.
The blue check mark should only ever have been a way to say "the name and identity I claim to have on their profile has been verified". That should be open to Leonardo DeCaprio, and John Smith down the street.
To me, it highlights how incumbent social media companies are easy targets for manipulation. They were never designed to disseminate truths; they were designed to amplify parrots and promote their own growth by capitalizing on trends like "going viral".
Of course, they are still verifying accounts somehow—apparently not in any way that's intelligent or sane.
[1] https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit...
I'm not sure what you are talking about, they verified/allow at least one very problematic public figure (donald trump)
Their definition of verification includes public interest, and if the public is not interested in someone problematic, why would Twitter verify them in the first place?
It’s merely not the same subset of the public that shares, confirms, and amplifies the political biases of Twitter’s staff.
You are right. I guess that it would be more accurate to talk about xenophobic and racist content providers instead of 'problematic'. Naming them for what they are makes it way more clear.
The legal system sides with you. Platforms are not forced to accept members that go against the platform core values or economic interests. Tweeter brand is tied to the people that uses the service.