It was previously a Twitter norm that you could temporarily change your display name to “impersonate” (satirize) someone, with your handle being the giveaway that it’s not real.
This norm seems to have been summarily overturned. I thought that Twitter was going to keep the status quo with moderation and make changes through a moderation council with diverse viewpoints.
I thought this was verboten for blue checks because it kind of defeats the purpose of verification. It says on the blue check page that parody accounts are not eligible for verification. Though, it does not say explicitly that parodying using an existing verified account will lead to suspension.
> It was previously a Twitter norm that you could temporarily change your display name to “impersonate” (satirize) someone, with your handle being the giveaway that it’s not real.
Here is the policy archived from January of this year.
> The account name (note: this is separate from the username, or @handle) should clearly indicate that the user is not affiliated with the subject of the account. Non-affiliation can be indicated by incorporating, for example, words such as (but not limited to) "parody," "fake," "fan," or "commentary.” Non-affiliation should be stated in a way that can be understood by the intended audience.
So the requirement goes beyond your handle, it must be clearly indicated in your display name that it is a parody. Kathy did not do that. She changed it to just "Elon Musk".
So Musk is enforcing a policy that existed way before this takeover.
This rule was rarely (if ever) enforced when people would change their account name temporarily as a one-off joke.
Also from the page you linked:
> When we receive a valid impersonation or trademark report about an account that is not in compliance with our Policy, we may give the account owner the opportunity to bring their account into compliance and we may temporarily suspend the account. Accounts with a history of repeated violations may be permanently suspended.
Musk’s decree is clearly a break from previous policy.
> Musk’s decree is clearly a break from previous policy.
The policy's wording gives leeway for Twitter to enforce it in different ways. I wouldn't say that this case is a break from previous policy. He's may be changing the way it was being enforced previously while still remaining in policy.
That's all to say he hasn't changed previous policy, he has changed enforcement of it.
If people think that's a jerk move, fine. I don't think so. Breaking the rules is breaking the rules whether enforced or not.
If he actually changed previous policy (i.e. changed wording/meaning/essence) or went outside the policy to punish Kathy, then I would agree that would be a jerk move.
I don't think it's okay to call someone a bootlicker, or to reference their views from one thread in another (especially without reference to something specific they've said, as that essentializes their views). Both of these apply scrutiny to a person rather than to an idea. That results in toxic conversation where no one learns anything and everyone walks away unhappy.
I think there are times when it's appropriate, but I've only once seen it done in a productive manner (in the context of forum threads). Usually, and in this case specifically, it's just a way to say, "You are an undesirable type of person, so you shouldn't be listened to."
Forum posters, by and large, aren't public figures and shouldn't be subjected to personal scrutiny. Their views should be debated in isolation, because we should be discussing ideas and not each other. Otherwise you just get into mud flinging and dissections of hypocrisy, neither of which are informative or productive; it's just toxicity.
Sometimes someone is sort of a limited purpose public figure in that forum, and they cause problems across multiple threads with repetitive, disruptive behavior. In that case, the only way to challenge them on it is to call a spade a spade and to show the receipts. But it's a delicate criticism to make which readily devolves into mud flinging.
This case specifically isn't saying they're undesirable therefore wrong. Do you think it's a coincidence the views cited are on the same topic? The purpose of mentioning other comments here is to fill in a bigger picture of the views they are expressing right now, not to mention anything else about the person.
This is not violating the idea of looking at views in isolation. It's only violating the idea of looking at posts in isolation, which is a worse goal. We should want to look at someone's entire view on a specific topic.
You may not find that comment productive, and that's fine, but the reference to other posts about their view is not the problem with it.
I think you simply misunderstand the comment. I don't know how you are reading the word "bootlicker" and not taking the implication that their views are to be disregarded, or why you don't think "bootlicker" is an undesirable category.
Please note that I'm not saying you shouldn't read a comment history. I'm saying, you shouldn't weaponize a comment history.
If you examine the sibling thread to this one, I think you'll find that the commenter clarifies that they do, in fact, hold this person's views in contempt. Frankly when I skimmed the comment history in question I did find comments that made me go "yikes!", but that doesn't mean we engage in a no holds barred rhetorical cage match. As I've argued, that does harm to the conversation and community and fails to reach the people who should be reached.
> I don't know how you are reading the word "bootlicker" and not taking the implication that their views are to be disregarded, or why you don't think "bootlicker" is an undesirable category.
I do see that.
But that doesn't mean the part before "bootlicker" was wrong!
> If you examine the sibling thread to this one, I think you'll find that the commenter clarifies that they do, in fact, hold this person's views in contempt.
Yes, the views. They're applying scrutiny to the specific views and not anything else about the person, which is the correct thing to do.
You can say they are doing the scrutiny wrong, but that's different from scrutinizing the wrong thing. They are scrutinizing the right thing. They're not bringing in irrelevant information to discredit. They're only bringing in information on the directly relevant views.
tl;dr "what to scrutinize" and "how to scrutinize" are different things. The way they did the former, "referencing views from another thread" but only on the same topic, was fine. The stuff like "bootlicker" is the latter.
You're picking and choosing what parts of the comment to base your opinion on, and in the process you've transformed it into an entirely different comment. As a result the first half of your comment contradicts the second. At this point the ball is just entirely in your court; if you're going to deliberately misread this comment then there's nothing more I can do or say to convince you you've made an error.
I have no idea how you think my comment is contradictory.
Maybe just focus on the tl;dr?
You accused someone of bringing in outside information they should not have. I assert that, while they were very rude, the information they brought in was correct to bring in.
What am I missing?
I promise promise promise I am not deliberately misreading anything.
If we go back to the very start, you said "I don't think it's okay to call someone a bootlicker, or to reference their views from one thread in another". I'm not defending the bootlicker thing! I'm defending the referencing of views in this case, because and only because they are directly relevant.
You said two things were wrong, I think one of them is not wrong. That's not "picking and choosing" in any negative way.
I don't know why you ever thought I was defending the bootlicking accusation. But I didn't accuse you of misreading me on purpose.
Nah, I'd rather say my piece. There isn't anything but toxicity to be had in conversation with someone who unironically takes the position that people changing their screen names to Elon Musk are impersonating him.
Those banned are trolling him, plain and simple, and if you comment as though you can't see that, you deserve some judgement and scorn.
> "Those banned are trolling him, plain and simple"
And...what's wrong with banning trolls? The nature of trolling isn't about "speech", it's about disruption of the platform that provides the chance for speech.
And who uses the term "bootlicker" who isn't juvenile or suffering unknown issues? "You are now about to witness the strength of redditor knowledge..." Awesome, but your comment is a pile of ashes on the ground.
Didn't the person in question also use Musk's profile pic?
> overreach
Do that in any forum on the internet, that is, troll using the Mod's name and profile picture, and see what happens. You might be lucky, but if you called your resulting ban an "overreach", it would be your error of judgement.
In this case, the Twitter user clearly was breaking shit on the way out, then celebrated her own antics on the new platform. "Act of protest"? It's generous of you to equate trolling with protesting.
Protesting is usually obvious what the protest is. What was hers about? The $8? Musk in general? It wasn't clear. It wasn't a protest.
I think her banning is a good thing for Twitter. Impersonate someone, bye bye. They want a trusted platform.
I have no skin in this at all. Not American, not a Twitter user, and I object to extreme left and right, but would like to see platforms like reddit and Twitter accommodate all sides. Rather than dwell in the echo chambers they gravitate towards. At least Musk is giving it a shot, if somewhat a messy shot. It's a messy world.
People with infuriating views still deserve respect. That's something Musk doesn't seem to understand.
If you express yourself the way you just did, lurkers and people on the fence will read your comment. If you employ thought terminating cliches ("bootlicker") then they'll filter you out as noise.
I disagreed with your behavior, but I engaged with you in an open minded way, and I think our conversation has been productive and respectful. I'd guess you probably feel you deserve that respect (and I'd agree).
Yes. It’s almost like it wasn’t “bullshit”[1] but served a useful purpose and that the policy of believing that all speech that doesn’t break the law should be protected wasn’t fully thought through.
The problem is that it was always at the whim of some opaque internal Twitter process. There always should have been an actual process for anyone to be verified. It creates resentment when the criteria for verification are not transparent.
Is this going to fix it? No, one of two things will happen: (1) Musk will end up with a gigantic tax write-off when he sells what’s left of Twitter to Verizon for 140M two years from now. (2) Musk will turn it into something that is successful by some definition but isn’t Twitter and no longer commands the same attention from the world at large.
The obvious question is, "Why are verified profiles allowed to change their account display name in the first place?" Which seems to be getting addressed[0].
Alright. That doesn't answer my question though -- why should anyone with a verified profile be allowed to change their name, which could mislead people of their identity, while maintaining their verification status?
Because going forward the only thing the verified badge will be verifying is that twitter was able to charge your credit card $8 within the last month.
So his commitment to free speech absolutism has lasted an entire week! That's honestly longer than I expected. He's gonna need thicker skin if he's going to be extremely online all the time during this rebuild of the company.
He also said that it wouldn't be impersonation if it had a disclaimer that it was a parody account, and then he banned accounts like H3H3's that were clearly labeled as parodies.
Yeah, who could have seen this coming? Will be interesting to see what other innocuous behavior ends up suddenly qualifying as a violation under this regime.
Twitter's new owner promised to allow all speech that is legal under the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
He demonstrated his high-minded principles by reinstating the account of his friend who had been banned for anti-Semitic speech.
But parody accounts that criticize the new owner are somehow a step too far.
The unifying principle appears to have nothing to do with what is legal under the U.S. Constitution, but instead whether the new owner personally wants to amplify or suppress the speech.
Hard to believe that all that talk about the wisdom of the founders and the value of unrestricted free speech was just bullshit.
> But parody accounts that criticize the new owner are somehow a step too far.
Elon claims she was suspended for impersonating a comedian not Elon. She later changed it to Elons name but the original report she was banned for was someone else. Saying this is only about protecting the boss doesn't really hold up.
Having rules again Impersonation isn't wrongthink. Thats a big stretch and sounds a bit desperate.
I also highly doubt the new rules are "everything goes except what is illegal". They haven't even announced what the new policy is but there's no way it's going to be a free for all for prominent accounts (random accounts were always given more leeway because there are simply too many of them).
Twitter went hardcore in one (highly inconsistent) direction. You could significanty pull back from aggressive moderation and still not be an "illegal or all" scenario. Which is far more likely to be the case given pressure from advertising and because it makes sense as a product descision.
People didn't care about Twitters moderation until they went hardcore. The solution doesn't need to be hardcore in the other direction to be a big improvement.
> Maybe. The problem is that unless it's made explicit, I am going to assume that someone WILL get confused.
This was the original point of the blue check marks, which is the point of the parody.
And you're making an argument which is adjacent to everyone needing to use "/s" because some people can't figure out sarcasm or irony on their own (also adjacent to the "think of the children" argument).
By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.[1]
So there doesn't seem to be any kind of carve out there.
Either you're absolutist, or you're not. That's one of the few things I'm willing to be absolutist about. Once you start carving out exceptions, it's reasonable to start looking for more.
Personally, I think there should be all kinds of exceptions when it come to "free speech". But in particular, I don't think that "No exceptions, except this one that just occurred to me" is a sound position.
Be awfully nice if everyone wanted death threats banned.
There are people who make excuses for death threats under the logic that none of them are serious so people on the internet should all just grow thicker skin.
Also, no one is mentioning that this "comedian" impersonated Musk on her main account because it was verified, and without warning that it was a new parody account, urged people to vote democrat a day before the elections. She could have done the same before the acquisition, and likely be banned anyway.
I think she only wanted publicity. The timing and action is questionable, but now everyone knows her name.
Wonder if this is the 'rationale' with which they start demanding national IDs to ensure people with same names avoid getting flagged for impersonation. Also begs the question of since when was legal name ever a requirement for social media.
I really like Tesla and SpaceX but I have really started to hate Elon over the past year. Just STFU and build quick cars and rockets. It can't be that hard but he thinks he's some kind of edge lord that thinks everyone loves him.
Nope, the useless cave diving coffin was when I realized that Musk was often stupid and well out of his depth. This is just the latest thing that he's stumbled into that he completely doesn't understand.
There's nothing more obnoxious than a p̶h̶y̶s̶i̶c̶i̶s̶t̶ rocket company CEO first encountering a new subject.
I never had a particular opinion on him. I hate the glorification of people we quite frequently see in the US. In the same way vilifying him is the other side of the medal and just as stupid.
I think he is funny from time to time, but I believe he is an asshole as boss. Sometimes you have to be, but there are ways to go about that. There was a weird instance where he fired an allegedly incompetent engineer on the fly, but I don't know the details anymore. It seemed impulsive and random. Still, my opinion somehow improved lately. Maybe it is just his marketing team, but I prefer an asshole who is direct, instead of one that tries to hide it. Musk has enough self-reflection to know that he is an asshole. At least some points here...
At the beginning of covid, I wanted a tesla so bad. Now, I will never buy a tesla. Mind blowing to me that a company that sells something so pricey could alienate me so thoroughly, so quickly.
No change for me, I never really gave much opinion other than enjoying seeing the success of SpaceX.
I will say there is a definite pandemic of “Elon Musk derangement syndrome” going around now that I find entertaining as hell, as I watch normally sensible and smart people check their brain at the door as soon as his name is mentioned. That condition has prompted me to defend him a few times.
What would the original Twitter management do differently? Wouldn't fire 50% of the staff over the next several months despite the recession? Kept the comedian's account active even if she impersonated Parag?
> Before Musk took over the site, Twitter had already planned broad layoffs, which would have affected up to a quarter of the staff, according to people familiar with the plans. The Post reported previously the company’s board was planning to cut thousands of jobs as part of an effort to save $700 million in labor costs.
The original question was would Twitter have "Kept the comedian's account active even if she impersonated Parag"
The question presents her impersonating Parag as a given hypothetical situation and asks what would Twitter have done in that situation. The essence of the question is would Parag have allowed for impersonation of accounts?
> The account name (note: this is separate from the username, or @handle) should clearly indicate that the user is not affiliated with the subject of the account. Non-affiliation can be indicated by incorporating, for example, words such as (but not limited to) "parody," "fake," "fan," or "commentary.”
Kathy Griffin's name change did not indicate it was parody as stipulated above, it was changed to just "Elon Musk", a clear violation of this rule that existed way before Elon got involved.
So you're saying Parag would for some reason just ignore this rule. I find that hard to believe.
P.S. You also said pre-Musk Twitter probably wouldn't have had a massive layoff. They were planning to.
My understanding is that this behavior already violated the rules, it's not like Elon made this up on the spot (although perhaps he changed the punishment.)
I believe when this happens to less-sympathetic parties we chalk this up to "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", right? I mean, few people are actually going to defend a right to misrepresentation. Depending of the circumstances it could actually be libel/defamation, right?
Yes, this behavior was already against the rules. What Griffin is doing is a form of civil disobedience by intentionally breaking the rules to call attention to them. Previously this was a rule that was rarely broken because verification was hard to get and usually reserved for people who had a material interest in keeping it. That gave a strong incentive not to pull these hijinks. Next week verification will be as easy as spending $8. There are going to be a huge wave of accounts that think whatever they can get out of impersonating someone is worth more than the chance of losing their $8 investment.
Sounds like a good way to get rid of low quality accounts. It doesn't get much more pathetic than paying $8 for the chance to troll and knock furniture over as you exit Twitter in a huff.
The point is that it is easy to suspend these accounts when only a dozen or so celebrities are doing this. Is Twitter going to be as quick to find and ban these accounts when anyone can do it and after they have already made cuts to their moderation team? Plus if it was that easy to find these low quality accounts, Twitter wouldn't have the spam and bot problem that Musk talks about them having.
Why link to "hollywoodreporter" when you could link to the actual source.
Anyway, King said: "It ain’t the money, it’s the principle".... what, the principle of paying for a service?
I bought a few King books as a teenager, and even though I was broke, I don't recall saying anything like "f--- that I'm not paying for books". King thinks his Tweets are like his books! That's funny, they are not. His account serves his promotional needs more than it does the needs of people who like his fiction.
I linked to an article because articles tend to provide more context than the wasteland that is Twitter - the article itself links to the tweet.
>I bought a few King books as a teenager, and even though I was broke, I don't recall saying anything like "f--- that I'm not paying for books".
Yeah... but Stephen King didn't suddenly decide you had to pay a subscription to keep the book after you already bought it, did he?
>King thinks his Tweets are like his books! That's funny, they are not.
Pretending you can read someone's mind then disagreeing with them doesn't make a compelling argument.The value his account has brought to Twitter - for free - is worth far more than the shakedown cost for keeping his blue checkmark, and Twitter needs him more than he needs Twitter.
>His account serves his promotional needs more than it does the needs of people who like his fiction.
It doesn't. I guarantee you Stephen King doesn't need a Twitter account to promote himself or his work.
Stephen King is not known for his Tweets. He is known for his books.
He tweeted yesterday: "I don’t care what you do with the blue check as long as you VOTE blue."
Sounds like he needs a Twitter account to promote his politics, his dislike of republicans, dislike of Twitter, re-tweets of Biden, and personal jabs such as "It’s amazing how much Kayleigh McEnany looks like a Barbie doll.".... Wow, he should stick to far-fetched fiction.
> "...after you already bought it, did hey?"
Who already bought what now? Nobody bought anything! That's the point. That's why Twitter is losing money. King didn't buy anything ever.
Nothing wrong with finding revenue opportunities. Think of it as a price increase from zero to a new amount. No different to any other price increase we see from one amount to another.
It's amazing the breakdown of reason and logic when people are politically motivated in their replies.
>These "impersonations" are flimsy paper masks of Elon's face with the eyes cut out so you can see through.
Debatable. If I go on a major Mastadon instance and impersonate an admin or a top celebrity there will I get banned? If I do, should I expect much sympathy if I accuse the relevant admins of throwing a tantrum? Can I go on a major Mastadon instance and pretend to be a politician up for re-election and start making claims in hopes of damaging their electoral prospects?
It just strikes me as implausible that the people who are accusing Musk of being thin-skinned here actually believe that this sort of impersonation is defensible behavior. I guess it's reminiscent of the people who pearl-clutch about political violence but also were okay with Griffith doing a photoshoot posing with Trump's bloody decapitated head.
Twitter "impersonations" have been around forever and are easily spotted from a mile away. If anything they are a fun social engineering hack of that platform's outdated UI and bizarre lack of oversight on already-verified accounts.
Have you spent very much time on Twitter? Lots of people have silly names like this. You quickly learn to use people's handles & the verified check mark. This is very much parody that is normal on Twitter & which most people would immediately recognize.
Problem is Kathy didn't change her name to something that clearly indicated parody. She just changed it to "Elon Musk" a clear violation of Twitter policy that existed way before Elon got involved.
None of those things are this thing. You don't need overwrought hypotheticals because all of these things are satire or parody. They are extremely obvious parody.
The people doing Bitcoin scams are impersonating Musk, fine, ban those if you want. But it's patently absurd to call changing your handle to Elon Musk "impersonation".
Again, if someone were impersonating say the White House and making outrageous statement I doubt people would just be like "it's obvious, just let them have their fun."
And again, this can't be called impersonation in the first place anyway because it's merely a well-known meaningless free-form text field of no actual value or consequence.
The display name is not the actual identifier.
They aren't trying to say, register a new account that appears to come from a whitehouse.gov domain email, supply the SSN of a real whitehouse employee, etc. Or Elon in this case.
It's just a free-form text field that can be changed at any time to any thing, and so is no more than a decoration.
And importantly, everyone knows this. It's not some new hack that someone discovered that was not an intentionally designed part of the ui.
For example, if that field were meant to be taken literally and seriously, then why did Twitter write it as a free-form field, and allow people to write literally anything in there, as in, animals and random objects and words, and unpronouncable strings in any language? They wrote their own ui, they could have made that a static value if they wanted.
Do they though? I mean, I'm open to being convinced but just asserting this isn't very compelling. Why were there pre-existing rules governing the use of this field if this behavior was completely harmless? Saying "it's a free form field therefore no one should ever trust it" as a general principle seems like a stretch. Lots of web services separate display names from underlying IDs and allow flexibility in using the former, with some reasonable restrictions.
I look forward to seeing Musk continue to run Twitter into the ground, and have to eventually forfeit Tesla and SpaceX because of this. They'll be better off without him at the helm.
Tesla might, they seem to have reached critical mass... but I don't know how far SpaceX will get given he made driving down $/kg to orbit a personal mission in order for his entire Mars stuff to be even remotely feasible as an endeavour (to speak nothing of how likely it is to succeed)
Without someone to say "Falcon 9 isn't good enough" when its already crushing the launch industry and all the competition is racing to catch up to its capabilities, which could take as much as a decade for slower moving companies like ULA (partial reuse goal is years away) or ArianeSpace, and regardless of the timeline often requiring significant efforts to develop reusability technologies that fit existing designs, whole new rocket design programs to add reusability, or fleeing to niches where such reuse is not viable (rapid schedule (in terms of calendar days between purchase and launch day) in the hope of holding onto some market share...
SpaceX without Elon would quite possibly turn into Blue Origin, who's glacial schedule is moving so slowly, the largest customer they have signed is for their engines, and due to widespread rumours those engines wont happen on time, the customer made a very big deal about showing off that they do indeed finally have some engines they can use to build their first test rocket.
Regardless of his many faults, personal and professional, he as CEO of a privately held company who gets to make the big decisions about what does and does not get built, has been responsible for pushing forward the space rocket business in a way that hasn't been seen in nearly half a century... The Apollo era saw companies push designs and innovate and resulted in actual test hardware programs with such experiments as Aerojet's 260, a 6.6m diameter solid rocket motor with 16 MN of thrust, equivalent to the entire Saturn 1 first stage. The funding cuts post Apollo shrunk the industry into just relying on the R&D from the Military Industrial Complex side of the aerospace companies and so we got decades of slow incremental progress mainly off the back of maintaining the fleets of ICBMs.
You know, he was not willing to pay the kid running that account more than $5000 to take it down, so he can spare us the personal safety risk whining and just take commercial first class like us single-digit millionaires if he’s so concerned about it.
He can also keep flying his jets and ban all such accounts for $0.
Not sure you'll stay a single digit millionaire for very long flying first class nilly willy tho, a million dollars ain't what it used to be, amirite old sport?
This link points to yahoo.com which gives me a weird nostalgic twinge: “Remember when people used to care about what happens to this Yahoo! company and now it’s basically a random domain?”
Twitter seems to be on the same path to oblivion. Microsoft offered $44 billion for Yahoo in 2008, which in a strange coincidence is the same amount that Musk actually paid for his Yahoo/Waterloo.
I gather it was a leveraged buyout so he wont be losing much if it does go under. The only problem is most leveraged buyouts are for mature low or no growth companies that are profitable have strong cashflow and low capex requirements. Cant really say that about Twitter in any way. It feels like its going the way of Digg.
SNL is careful to not straight up copy the person they are parodying. They leave a lot of room to make it abundantly obvious that it is someone else performing parody.
Maybe someday they'll leverage deep fakes to achieve something that is indistinguishable from the real person if you miss the minor details, at which point there will no doubt be calls to end what they are doing, but until that day comes...
Yup, just like that. A downplayed detail that is there, but not obvious when quickly swiping through hundreds of Tweets as the typical user does. There is good reason why SNL avoids such subtlety and goes for overt differences in details when performing parody. Identity confusion isn't good comedy and isn't considered a good idea generally.
In the feed it is presented small text in a muted grey, same as the date of posting which is equally likely to be ignored, and when read left to right, as is the style of our time, comes after the profile picture, person's name, and verified badge.
You can find it if you're looking for it, but it is not something someone scrolling through casually is going to take notice of, especially since the first three components observed have been considered enough to verify identity until now.
Which, indeed, is Griffin's implicit statement – that the blue badge is becoming meaningless when anyone can buy it for $8 – but that's also why there are holdover efforts to maintain the badge as a form of identity through banning of those trying to impersonate others.
Maybe you think the @id should be the most visible piece of information so that this isn't an issue, and maybe you're right, but it most certainly is not. Reality doesn't care about your feelings towards things, it only deals with what is.
It's right at the top and clearly visible. It's really not hidden at all, and if you read the name of the tweets it's literally the next word that follows. You'd have to stop reading mid-line to not see it.
I would understand your argument if it was in any way not obvious and centered alongside the posters name.
Sure, maybe some non Twitter users won't understand, I'll grant you that, but impersonation and parody are so common everyone looks at the @.
Just like I said. Proof right here that readers shortcut over content that doesn't seem necessary.
> You'd have to stop reading mid-line to not see it.
Which the average user would being that there is only so much time in the day and you've already identified the poster leaving it to be a waste of time reading further during casual use.
> but impersonation and parody are so common everyone looks at the @.
The blue badge used to indicate that the account was a legitimate person using their legitimate real-world identity, and anyone who violated that was at risk of being banned, so impersonation has never been expected. And since the badge comes first...
It was annoying, anyone, especially verified could change picture and name to someone else and write some bullshit. Most of people wouldn't notice the handle, only the name and picture, and that's how fake news might spread.
Lately there were a lot of verified profiles that changed their profile pic and name to Elon Musk and were trolling.
Surely context would show that these are parodies, not impersonations.
Are these people trying to impersonate Elon Musk, or are they parodying Elon Musk on their clearly-marked "not elon musk" (due to the handle) accounts?
Its sad that censorship decisions are treated differently in the US media based on political affiliation.
Throughout the pandemic, I witnessed people questioning the science behind lockdowns and government overreach being banned, censored, de-patformed from social media sites and the common response in the media being "start your own platform"
"The shoe on the other foot" is such a bad place to find ourselves as a society, it speaks to us being incapable of reconciling our differences for a common good.
Since the 2016 election, the US has gone batshit insane it feels like. It was crazy before, but its incredibly hard to have any sort of a conversation about touchy issues these days without an overwhelming negative, non-critical response in the form of downvotes, aggressive bucketing into political buckets, pariah treatment etc.
I hope, at least on HN, we're able to hold discussions on political topics without such tribalism.
This isn't a case of partisanship from the critics. If one side claims to be on the side of anti-censorship, then engages in censorship once in power, that is a case of hypocrisy. It doesn't take tribalism to call that out.
I've had a mixed experience. I've had people call me a mass murderer and a fascist because I identify myself as a communist. (Not a Tankie, fuck tankies.)
But I've also had some great discussions here with people who listen, trade book recommendations, and at least try to learn before writing me off.
A lot more of the former these days, unfortunately.
If that's the defining characteristic of being a communist, then the defining characteristic of being a capitalist must be thinking "maybe the relentless pursuit of financial equality above anything else is bad".
If both of those things are true, then I would guess that at least 90% of people in the world are simultaneously capitalists and communists.
There’s no point in discussing US politics. It’s not possible to do that anywhere US people are allowed to post, because people in the US have nearly literally lost their minds. All because a mentally ill real estate huckster was elected president, found the cracks in America’s foundation that conservatives spent 40 years widening (with, to be sure, much help from the liberals/centrists), and stuck TNT in them.
Buckle up; the next decade is going to make the 1960’s look pastoral.
I guess that last episode of "Fuck around and find out" didn't really take with Griffin.
Finding out that, apparently, there were under the table "You get a blue check for $15,000" schemes going on will make things ... super-interesting, if any forensics can find out a goodly percentage of the culprits. And I wonder exactly what overlap will be with this crop of sudden whiners.
How is changing your name to that which belongs to someone else "speech"? Sounds like trolling and impersonating to me.
What exactly is being spoken when you change your name to a false one? I thought "speech" was when someone with name X, says something about subject Y.
I'm not surprised the attention seeker got suspended.
Attempts to confuse identity are not normally held as acceptable, though. Parody and satire imply that there is some kind of exaggeration that makes it identifiable as such. In this case, without scrutinization, one could have easily thought Griffin's account was Musk's.
> First, trolling is speech.... expressing yourself through actions is speech.
Can't agree. It's like saying running red lights is "speech" because you're expressing yourself by driving like an idiot. Can we lift the bar just a little before something is "speech"?
Satire and parody, absolutely. But those things are usually found in predictable places, like on a stage where the audience is expecting parody and satire. Or within the contents of a message. Not in the message header, trying to pretend like it came from somewhere else.
If popular comedian Joe Bloggs booked a venue and sold tickets for a comedy night, then someone else turned up instead "surprise! It's parody guys"... not only would the venue owner be pissed, but so would every single person who bought a ticket. "It's just a prank bro" is a meme for a reason... and it's not a complement for the prankster. Trolling is blocking speech because it aims to dismantle the facilitation of speech.
While under her normal name she made a number of comments supporting the democrats. Saying to vote democrat, etc. No problem.
When she switched her name and picture to Elon, she broke an existing rule about no impersonation.
In effect, when both of these combined she was publicly spreading election misinformation by making it look like Elon Musk was recommending to vote democrat. Also against the rules.
This is not the first time she has broken the twitter rules; she must be surprised they got enforced this time.
Wow, all these Hateful elon comments might be warranted, but are not what I though HN was about. Maybe this isnt the right forum to have actual discussions anymore.
There's plenty of room for discussions. Most people see Elon as a petulant villain right now. So when he's particularly petulant to the detriment of his platform and hypocritical, it's reasonable to call him out as such.
What exactly did you think HN was about? HN leans heavily to the left. I think it's best to just observe these types of topics, and only participate in the technical topics.
As a leftist who regularly gets flagged, downvoted, or mixed votes for even suggesting a vaguely leftist idea I'd say:
Hacker news does not skew left. Not right. It's simply not a monoculture and it tends to emphasize data first and foremost. Anything even remotely politically charged will draw out all sorts of arguments.
