Remember back in the good old days (by which I mean 2013) when I thought it was so great that Twitter stuck to its policy of allowing anonymous/pseudonymous accounts, since it seemed to be a great advantage for free and democratic expression? Well, big oops there:
[T]here is evidence that Twitter may have been used even more extensively than Facebook in the Russian influence campaign last year. In addition to Russia-linked Twitter accounts that posed as Americans, the platform was also used for large-scale automated messaging, using “bot” accounts to spread false stories and promote news articles about emails from Democratic operatives that had been obtained by Russian hackers. Twitter has struggled for years to rein in the fake accounts overrunning its platform. Unlike Facebook, the service does not require its users to provide their real name (or at least a facsimile of one) and allows automated accounts — arguing that they are a useful tool for tasks such as customer service. Beyond those restrictions, there is also an online black market for services that can allow for the creation of large numbers of Twitter bots, which can be controlled by a single person while still being difficult to distinguish from real accounts.
Emphasis mine, because it's something that we'll need to emphasize for many years to come. Bots, as longtime Second Life users can tell you, run rampant when there's no requirement to associate a user account with a real identity. The same is true of Internet trolling, which gets greatly magnified through anonymous/pseudonymous accounts. Twitter has known this to be a serious problem for years, culminating in the "Gamergate" abuse disaster of 2014. (Fun fact: Many of the same abusive individuals associated with Gamergate are now associated with the spread of fake US news cultivated in Russia, which is unsurprising, since Donald Trump's key adviser actively and successfully leveraged Gamergaters in the campaign.*)
Note that I say "mismanagement" was Twitter's greatest failing, because pseudonymous accounts in and of themselves weren't the fundamental problem:
It's not an exaggeration to say we're now on the brink of war & global economic collapse due to Internet trolling. https://t.co/lgmKFByByP
— Wagner James Au (@slhamlet) September 28, 2017
Twitter bots, for example, should be clearly identified as bots. Fake information tweeted by unverified, quasi-dormant accounts, or accounts associated with abusive/unverified accounts, should not be as easy to spread as it is now -- or at the very least, should come attached with an "unconfirmed" tag. And so on. Twitter is promising some policy and management changes related to all this, but to say this is late in coming is quite literally the understatement of the century. Because if a woefully unprepared, psychologically unstable Commander in Chief installed by a KGB-trained autocrat launches a nuclear strike, provoked, as someone once said, by a tweet, the enablement of anonymous Internet trolls will share much of the blame.
* Not actually a fun fact at all.
SO it's now Trump's fault that North Korea is test firing missiles and directly over Japan and threatening the US daily with a strike? Are you kidding me?!
And that site you linked to in your tweet, just further drivel in the whole 'Muh Russia' narrative. You folks are borderline sick on your own shit at this point. I am astounded daily at the level of stupid exhibited minutely by the New Left, for which you apparently are front and center of.
You want to see it burn just because your chosen criminal candidate Madame Side of Beef didn't win. Sick sick sick sick.
Posted by: RedPillBringer | Friday, September 29, 2017 at 10:34 AM
Free exchange of ideas and information is really only dangerous to those people who are too compromised and afraid to think for themselves. It does hurt to look at things that you once cherished and see it for the evil it has become.
It hurts everyone when you refuse to do that. Take back your mind and feed your soul.
Posted by: Clara Seller | Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 08:44 PM
Yes, it was Russia. Russia I tell you. That is the the reason that America did not vote for that lying old hag. Those damned Russians can manipulate anything. Why I'll bet they even put that server in her house and wiped it clean too. Yes definitely the Russians cause no american can think for themselves.
GTFO Wagner
Posted by: LagOh | Monday, October 02, 2017 at 01:03 PM