Twitter C/D

every alt-right or gamergate dipshit is acting as an ad hoc moderator because of the way twitter's reporting system works -- the people and tweets that are reported the most are the ones that get attention, so the ability to direct all your flunkies to report things because you're trying to fuck with someone pretty much gives you that power

there's no real "community moderation" otherwise, because communities are transient and without real dividing lines. it's not completely flat because affinity groups do form, but the ability to moderate is flat. I could tweet about music and never interact with any of these people and one day, someone could decide that they don't like me and cherry-pick one tweet to hammer. I think the only reason this doesn't happen more is because these ad hoc mods think they have agendas, and the juicier targets are verified so the reporting queue is different

there's no real political or social agenda in that behavior, eventually any popular account becomes a target because knocking people off a pedestal is the most juvenile version of fun. that simple joy of just knocking someone offline because they made the mistake of being popular

again, it reminds me of IRC -- even with irc moderation the older networks had no concept of channel ownership, if the channel was empty and you joined, you'd be able to take it over. there were entire parts of the internet that would be jacked up pre DDoS days, you'd just do a not-so-distributed denial of service attack by ping flooding users on slower connections or the weaker servers, get them disconnected or desynched, all so you could get mod powers for some community you probably didn't give a shit about, because wrecking someone else's shit was fun

ha thats prob a felony now

there was a moment in the very early 00s when some cybercrime law was passed and it was retroactive. I explained it to my roommate at the time and we were like”whoa we have done many crimes”

i kinda miss irc, shit was wild

just realised my first irc experience would have been almost exactly 23 years ago *gulp*

that's a real slap to the face with a large trout

ah memories

i met my first serious girlfriend on irc ffs

There should probably be an IRC reminiscing thread.

Or a buzzfeed listicle, “you know you’re an IRC kid when...”

an iirc kid afaic

There's an interesting new Twitter rule coming up soon.

How much you want to bet that it will apply to guillotine jokes, but not, say, bombing Yemen. pic.twitter.com/oJBVLawicG

— Cindy Stew Who (@voicehaver) December 12, 2017

you sure y'all on the same page? https://t.co/8c2d7xusmH

— 💔 (@lexwatchmeflexx) December 22, 2017

one of my least favorite parts of twitter. when your drag gets 3x as many retweets as the other person has followers. basically cyberbullying

yeah. but at least no one involved has which sports teams they root for in their bios

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/opinion/digital-nazi-hunter-trump.html

good website

Twitter sided with the Nazis.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED etc

still though

Can we fast forward to the part where it turns out there are a bunch of top level Twitter people with secret alt right online lives

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/368126-sen-warner-disappointed-with-twitter-about-russian-election-meddling

“I’m disappointed. I’ve been disappointed throughout this,” Warner told reporters. “Twitter has been often times the slowest to respond. Most of their work was derivative to the Facebook work. The other companies met the deadline which was way over a month from when they testified.”

Warner is currently pursuing legislation he co-sponsored with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that would force tech companies to be more transparent about who is purchasing political advertisements on their platforms.

The Honest Ads Act would hold companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google to similar political ad transparency standards as TV and radio outlets.

“[Tech companies] want to continue this approach of self-policing. I think that at the end of the day, that doesn’t cut the mustard,” Warner said on Tuesday.

He said if companies continue to fight legislation now, down the road they may “wish they could have taken the Honest Ads Act as opposed to where this policy discussion may lead us.”

Marriott International respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China. We don’t support separatist groups that subvert the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China. We sincerely apologize for any actions that may have suggested otherwise.

— Marriott Rewards (@MarriottRewards) January 11, 2018

Excuse me

lol love it

one wld assume this related to some mention of tibet hong kong or taiwan

They liked the wrong tweet

luv2see #brands desperately prostrating themselves before governments on social media, very cool

just wait for govts prostrating themselves before brands, coming soon to a social medium near you! #trench

btw how the fuck can i have blocked someone's retweets on this gd piece of trash website and i still get their likes randomly dropped into my feed??

I went down the rabbit hole

apparently this is what set it off

Friends of Tibet congratulate global hotel chain #Marriott International for listing #Tibet as a country along with #HongKong and #Taiwan. pic.twitter.com/SXKWb20v3e

— Friends of Tibet (@friendsoftibet) January 9, 2018

oh snap

oops lol

the rare trifecta

this is extremely good

The Hierophant: exploration of sacred truth

TAke a look, y'all: pic.twitter.com/dY14XIlPwY

— matt 💀 lubchansky (@Lubchansky) January 16, 2018

this too https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/twitterstorm-2018?utm_term=.kybv2bbA6#.cswg7PPwY

Joanna Whatley · London, United Kingdom
But, ummm... many of these tweets are dated March 2018, which make the whole thing a scam since it’s only January. Or have I fallen into a parallel universe?

wow that's surprisingly good

"buckle up, it's time for some bayesian inference"

i did particularly lol @ that

that article is the best black mirror episode yet

staggeringly good article. sometimes buzzfeed rises above being buzzfeed.

ugh that sounds wankier than i expected it to

it sounded as wanky as i expected

amazing, including the made up tweets, twitter handles, everything spot on

i didn't even pick up on the joke til Fergus McContrary, founder of an online journal looking sceptically at facts

need a trigger warning for satire plz

Good piece!

Oh no, the liberals have been TRIGGERED again. pic.twitter.com/DXKIp1HsYv

— The Liberated Brain (@Liberated_Brain) January 18, 2018

that was pretty good

so is this but not as funny

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/01/12/birdcage-liners/

that guy is way more sanguine about the future than he probably should be

Well, he played a major role in the creation of Microsoft Excel.

oh so that's the guy i need to put on my death list for excel-related crimes

I’m amazed he made an argument for longer posts providing better context, made a dumb dog analogy, and then used the details of a very specific twitter meltdown (“by the time you get off the plane in Africa..”)

I’m no longer thinking of dogs at all, I’m thinking about this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/22/pr-exec-fired-racist-tweet-aids-africa-apology

like yeah, you can fuck up context in 140 characters, but you just did it in thousands!