Let’s see:
Using “badge politics”, censoring those who don’t worship twitter’s liberal dictator, & implementing procedures to annihilate conservatives from the Internet?
Sounds like twitter is carrying out its own “final solution” for conservatives.
And so it begins. Twitter is quick to call me and others Nazis, but they are literally trying to eradicate my presence. Just like Hitler.
Twitter is uh, cracking down on hateful tweeters (not the Tiny Tyrant, natch), by removing their little checkmark. Yeah, that will show them. While I can’t say I think much of this ‘action’, it’s certainly upsetting the conservanazi crowd. Laura Loomer says Using “badge politics”. If that little checkmark didn’t mean anything to you Ms. Loomer, why on earth did you pursue it so hard? You claim Twitter is ‘annihilating’ conservatives, literally trying to eradicate your presence. Going by your checkmark free tweets, that has not been accomplished in the slightest. Perhaps you should save your hyperbole for a time when Twitter actually does something, like ban your account.
All the checkmarkless nazirati are having fits, as if this truly impacts their ability to spread their bigotry, hate, and fear. Perhaps it does, and if so, good. You can read many of the linked tweets of the nazirati at RWW.
I think she needs to brush up on the meaning of the words literally, eradicate, just, and Hitler.
There are quite a few more things that person needs to “brush up” on.
Why didn’t Twitter just set up a feature where anybody could verify that they are who they say they are? After all, it isn’t just celebrities who can be victimized by identity assumption.
Anyone with the social awareness of a fifth grader should have been able to see that there was no possible way to roll out the blue checkmark thing without getting large swaths of the population mad at them. Randall Munroe called it precisely with this cartoon: https://xkcd.com/1914/ . Especially with the scrollover: “When we started distributing special status tokens that signified which people are important enough to join an elite group, we never could have imagined we might cause some problems down the line.” Nailed it, Randall.
I don’t have any trouble with it for people whose credibility would be on the line, in particular, journalists, or various celebrities, if they were assailed with spoof accounts and so on. I don’t think the majority of people on twitter need such a thing; I don’t feel that I do.
As for the Nazirati, the problem was conferring credibility to them in the first place. I’m not particularly vested in this mess; my use of twitter is minimal, and I don’t think this the taking away of a checkmark is enough when it comes to the nazirati, but maybe it matters more than I realize.
I have a twitter account, but I have only ever sent a few tweets out into the aether. I haven’t been to my account this year, for example. It’s such a stupid platform, filled with short stupid thoughts. Anyone who ever put together a thoughtful strings of tweets would have been better served using any other platform.
I think it’s important not to dismiss how useful and important it can be as a tool. Characters were recently expanded to 280, by the way.
People would not have known about Ferguson without it. Many people traveled literally half way across the world to stand with people in Ferguson. It was vital in getting people woke; it was a vital platform for Black Lives Matter. It was also a vital tool for those of us at Standing Rock, along with other social media.
It’s very easy to dismiss it, but it has been of prime importance in many social justice movements, and still is, all around the world. It’s an easy platform for the disenfranchised to access and use, and those of us who are more privileged tend to forget about that one. Lots of indigenous people all over the world do not have a computer of any kind, but they can get a phone. In such cases, twitter can be a lifeline.
There ya go being all insightful again!