lololol so people being mean on twitter is what we should be worried about right now, not the increasing power of surveillance capital and the hyper militarized state?
Certainly a single tweet like that will not start a war .
The tweets would have to be subtle and not something you wouldn’t say or now can back down from easily without damaging your reputation .
Social engineering is not a hammer , it needs find grained understanding of psychology , pressure points and what resonates with the crowds , these are skills which blue checks also need to be well blue checks that’s probably why they are more scared .
manipulating public opinion is their day job after all .
Deep fakes and hacks like this are scary for them coz these attack at the core of their strength - the trust the people have in them and their ability to manipulate it .
I'm not saying Twitter is in the right here, but I'm not convinced by the article that Twitter is meaningfully increasing the danger to the OP. Is a corrupt government really going to avoid kidnapping/torturing someone because they're popular on Twitter?
A friend of mine was targeted by a fringe group. They were doxxed along with some stolen private family photos and their real PII circulating around in Twitter with lots of threats from the dumpster fire that are Twitter accounts.
It was a traumatizing experience if you're a normal person and not used to this kind of negative attention attached to your real identity.
FB takes a lot of heat here vs Twitter perhaps because Zuck seems creepy but Jack Dorsey detoxes for one week in Africa but Instagram were quick to take down those threatening posts with PII but I was told Twitter asked for all sorts of government ID and then auto closed all the cases saying it's all within their terms and conditions. If any social media needs to disappear I think Twitter should be first in line.
Well the bad guys have shown that they can make as many fake accounts as they want on facebook/twitter. If anything, they're encouraged to do so. I don't see how a decentralized network would be any worse in that regard at least.
No they don't. Governments act by means of violence. That's why they are dangerous. Social media companies have never killed, tortured, or imprisoned anyone. The worst they can do is refuse to deal with you.
- No, the government and politicians don't use the same reporting functionality as us plebes, they e-mail Twitter Safety directly, as revealed by the Twitter Files.
- When the government (with their regulatory powers, monopoly on legitimate violence, etc) asks a private company to do something, the coercion is implicit. Just like if a heavily armed thug looms over you and asks, in a threatening tone of voice, for your wallet—the "or else" doesn't need to be aired out loud.
Its a real concern in this case though. Read the news these days on what certain governments do to their activists based on their social media postings.
Do you ever think that maybe it's GOOD of Twitter and Facebook to deactivate these accounts?
The information needs to be disseminated, but companies as large as the two mentioned may have enough conflicting interests that to allow a wanted person to interact with them would be a betrayal in itself.
Kicking dissidents off Twitter and Facebook might be like forbidding children from playing in the street. "This system is not set up in your interests, pursue them elsewhere."
It's not about being allowed, but more about being steered.
And yes, other social media platforms have similar issues with algorithmic feeds, but they are currently a less clear national security threat. Though, one could argue they are radicalizing internal threats.
If you allow foreingn controlled media or even domestic social media that is being abused by foreign entities like russia and the 2016 election you are right. The risk is real and it's not too late to take action and mitigate it.
Good. Take some tough medicine from this experience and then build public crisis management systems not owned by a product/profit-driven private corporation that’s loosely controlled by a completely separate country.
The moment heads of state were ATO’d to shill crypto scams by a teenage in Florida iirc in 2019/20 should have been the final straw in relying on twitter for public interest.
Next, get PTAs and local govts
off Facebook pages.
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