NY times characterizing these protesters as far/right or as “attention starved gamers” is also odd.
Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
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Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
#32I love the last question ‘Aren’t you giving these trolls the attention they’re seeking by writing about them in The New York Times?’ I thought the same thing. Interesting to see right-wing business coming out of *chan-land. I’d always seen it as more of a left-wing place.
Y'all went so far left *chan-land is now considered right.
Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
#33> Last week, a trolling campaign organized by right-wing internet users spilled over onto Twitter. So Twitter bans a bunch of satire accounts for political reasons and the New York Times applauds the decision. This makes me incredibly sad but I guess it's to be expected. If your political position is so weak that some jokes can damage it, maybe it's time to take a deep inward look. I don't see anyone calling on SNL t…
For spreading incorrect election information.
Plenty of far right twitter accounts, these where designed to get banned for publicity.
Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
#34Cmon the meme is kinda funny.
Being funny isn't really a defense against pointing out that it's harmful.
Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
#35This is HN so you might appreciate this version: (SFW)
Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
#36How about they proceed to ban bots instead?
That would IMO make twitter much more useful, but of course it would kill 95% of their “user base” and traffic.
Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
#37...as someone who is oblivious to these things (only knew it was a "thing" last night)...can someone explain why this is harmful and not just people wasting time?
From the article, spreading misleading voter information, which could cause voters to miss the date.
Sigh. So people who would normally vote liberal are now going to vote on the wrong day because they got the election day date from a troll account mocking their liberal position--and they didn't bother to remember that elections are always on Tuesdays or to use google?
Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
#38The fact that NYT even asks the question “Are these Russian bots?” kind of fuels this meme, imo.
Their answer is “probably not”.
Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
#39...as someone who is oblivious to these things (only knew it was a "thing" last night)...can someone explain why this is harmful and not just people wasting time?
> These accounts posed as liberal activists and were used to spread — among other things — false information about November’s midterm elections Which violates the Twitter policy against intentionally misleading election content. Pretty straight forward.
Pretty sure like 0.001% of those accounts did that. But it's a good excuse, granted.
I think the real reason they got banned is that under every tweet of every blue-checkmark liberal on Twitter you'd find dozens of replies of accounts called NPC209834029 with the same avatar nodding and saying the same platitudes. But of course, when all the replies to all Trump tweets are from blue-checkmarks shitting on him, Twitter doesn't seem to care. :P I think neither should be banned, but I guess they know better.
Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists
#40The appropriate title should have included:
"The accounts violated Twitter’s rules against “intentionally misleading election-related content."