‘Alt-right’ site plans a ‘fake black person’ Twitter campaign

The Daily Stormer, an alt-right website that regularly features racist, sexist and anti-semitic content, claims it has nearly 1,000 “fake black person” Twitter accounts that it plans to use in a “big,” upcoming harassment campaign. This is a response to Twitter’s recent ban of multiple accounts that distributed white supremacist content and ideas — many of these banned users are prominent names in racist circles online.

The bans are a result of Twitter’s attempt to clean up its image with a new set of rules for reporting abuse. The company rolled out these safeguards on Tuesday.

At the end of a blog post published on Wednesday, The Daily Stormer says, “the meme wars have only just begun,” before outlining the next steps in a coordinated harassment campaign that targets people in the real world, rather than online. The call to action begins as follows:

“We will introduce new ways of trolling, including IRL trolling, snailmail trolling, telephone trolling, hoaxes, shoe company endorsements, etc. And look. We’re not done with Twitter. We’ve got a big campaign coming up.”

The site then asks its readers — who are ostensibly white men — to “create a fake black person account.” It claims to already have nearly 1,000 of these accounts with established post histories, and its instructions for creating a believably “black” profile are littered with stereotypes and racist speech.

“Just go on black Twitter and see what they look like, copy that model,” the post reads. “Start filling it with rap videos and booty-shaking or whatever else these blacks post. Read through their posts to get an idea of how they post. You need to be able to post in a manner which is indistinguishable from normal black tweeters. …Twitter is about to learn what happens when you mess with Republicans.”

Twitter’s hateful conduct policy prohibits harassment of people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease. However, its latest code of conduct doesn’t address how the site plans to handle fake accounts, though it has regulations in place for parody and impersonation. How to address an influx of fake Twitter accounts established for the purpose of organized, race-based harassment isn’t necessarily covered in the site’s existing rulebook.

A recent NYU research paper outlined how Twitter users could help curb abuse on the platform by reminding racist and sexist tweeters that their speech affected real people. However, this message worked best when it came from a user that appeared to be white and popular.

Via: The Daily Dot

Source: The Daily Stormer

Rutgers professor forced to take psych evaluation over tweets

What you say online has consequences. An adjunct professor from Rutgers learned that this week after he was detained by police and forced to take a psych evaluation after asking his class a few hyperbolic questions and later posting versions of them to Twitter. According to the New York Daily News, last Wednesday Kevin Allred asked his class if conservatives would care as much about the Second Amendment if guns killed more white people. “In class, we talked about flag burning generally as a form of protest, and what does the flag mean to different people,” Allred told the publication.

Last night, police showed up at his Brooklyn apartment to take him to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. The cops told him that he could refuse going with them, and that he wasn’t under arrest, but if he refused he’d be taken by force. He wasn’t handcuffed, and rode to the hospital in an ambulance. Allred says the doctors couldn’t understand why he was there.

“The doctors were like, ‘This is ridiculous, why did they bring you here?’” he said. “And I said, ‘That’s what I thought, but they told me I had to do it.’”

she said politicians say much worse on live television with no repurcussions and they choose to waste resources bringing me in.

— Kevin Allred (@KevinAllred) November 16, 2016

In a statement, the NYPD said they were acting on a tip from Rutgers campus police that Allred threatened to “kill white people.” One of his tweets says that if he saw a Trump bumper sticker that his “brakes would go out and I’ll run you off the road.”

“”will the 2nd amendment be as cool when i buy a gun and start shooting atrandom [sic] white people or no…?” was the deleted tweet according to NBC New York.

“The Rutgers University Police Department responded to a complaint from a student and took all appropriate action,” the school told regional news site NJ.com. “We have no further comment.”

Rutgers said that the NYPD was sent because campus police hadn’t been able to get in touch with Allred. Allred said that he had no missed calls or emails from the school.

Allred’s Twitter account was subsequently suspended, and to get it reinstated, he had to delete the tweet regarding the Second Amendment.

and i didn’t want to delete it bc i stand by the fact it’s protected speech. but had to in order to get back on here. 😡

— Kevin Allred (@KevinAllred) November 16, 2016

Via: Gothamist

Source: Kevin Allred (Twitter), New York Daily News, NBC New York

Twitter Introduces QR Codes for Sharing and Following Accounts

Twitter today introduced Snapchat-style QR codes, which are designed to make it easier to find and follow friends on the social network. Each Twitter QR code is unique to an individual Twitter user, so when scanned, it’ll bring up the person’s account.

To access your Twitter QR code, you’ll need the official Twitter app for iOS. In the app, go to your profile, tap on the gear icon, and select the “QR Code” option to generate your own personal QR code or scan someone else’s code.

Scanning a QR code is as simple as using the iPhone’s camera to either scan from a secondary screen or an image you’ve saved to the camera roll. You can follow MacRumors on Twitter by scanning the below code with your iPhone and the Twitter app.

QR codes were first made popular by Snapchat as a quick way to find your friends without having to search for them, but they may not be as popular on Twitter because the QR code settings are buried so deeply within the app.

Twitter’s QR codes are currently rolling out to users and may not be immediately available for everyone.

Twitter for iOS can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Tag: Twitter
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Twitter bans multiple ‘alt-right’ accounts

In the wake of releasing more tools to combat abuse on its service, Twitter has banned the accounts of a number of “alt-right” users. That includes the head of the National Policy Institute (NPI), Richard Spencer. The think tank describes itself as “dedicated to the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent in the United States and around the world.” USA Today reports that the purge started with Spencer’s verified status being revoked before removing his account (@RichardBSPencer), the NPI’s (@npiamerica) and his publication The Radix Journal’s (@radixjournal).

Speaking to The Daily Caller News Foundation, a conservative news publication, Spencer said that this amounts to “corporate Stalinism.”

“Twitter is trying to airbrush the alt-right out of existence,” he said. “They’re clearly afraid. They will fail!” Other affected accounts include those of prominent alt-right members Paul Town, Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn and John Rivers.

In a YouTube video entitled “Knight of Long Knives,” (a reference to a purging of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler), Spencer says that he’s “alive physically, but digitally speaking, there has been execution squads across the alt-right.”

As USA Today points out, the alt-right has been using Twitter to spread white supremacist messages, imagery and abuse, all of which violates the service’s usage terms. This summer, Twitter banned alt-right member and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos from the service following what Spencer described as “something that could be called harassment.”

Part of Twitter’s new counter-abuse tools include the ability to report tweets that “target people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease.” Twitter typically does not comment on the banning of individual accounts, but we’ve reached out for more information and will update this post should it arrive.

Source: USA Today

Twitter Addresses Anti-Harassment Concerns With New Mute Filter and Reporting Features

Almost three months after news first broke that Twitter was planning to launch new features in order to address a bevy of concerns leveled at the company in regards to bullying and harassment among its users, the company today announced the launch of a few anti-abuse steps it’ll be taking to make its platform more inclusive. The final product is slightly different from what was detailed in August, and comes as a simple expansion of Twitter’s pre-existing “mute” ability.

Whereas mute was limited to entire accounts before, now users will be able to mute keywords, phrases, and even entire conversations within notifications in Twitter. This way, users can block specific content they don’t want to be notified about, without having to completely mute an entire account. The expansion of mute is still a step behind third-party apps like Tweetbot, which let users mute words, hashtags, and users everywhere they appear on Twitter, not just in notifications.

The amount of abuse, bullying, and harassment we’ve seen across the Internet has risen sharply over the past few years. These behaviors inhibit people from participating on Twitter, or anywhere. Abusive conduct removes the chance to see and share all perspectives around an issue, which we believe is critical to moving us all forward. In the worst cases, this type of conduct threatens human dignity, which we should all stand together to protect.

Because Twitter happens in public and in real-time, we’ve had some challenges keeping up with and curbing abusive conduct. We took a step back to reset and take a new approach, find and focus on the most critical needs, and rapidly improve. There are three areas we’re focused on, and happy to announce progress around today: controls, reporting, and enforcement.

The company also announced, although vaguely, a new way for users to report abuse that violates Twitter’s parameters for prohibiting harmful language “that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.” It’s unclear how this update differs from Twitter’s current “report Tweet” option, but the company said that it offers “a more direct way” for users to report negative conduct when they see it happening.

The process behind the anti-harassment move at Twitter has gotten an overhaul as well, with retrained support teams ready to address user reports of bad behavior, and also overhauled system tools so its employees can “deal more effectively with this conduct when it’s reported.” Twitter said that its goal is “a faster and more transparent process,” with the final outcome aimed to be a “culture of collective support on Twitter.”

All the same, the company noted that it understands such improvements won’t stop hate speech overnight, or “suddenly remove abusive conduct from Twitter. No single action by us would do that. Instead we commit to rapidly improving Twitter based on everything we observe and learn.” The new features will begin appearing on Twitter for iOS, Android, and the web in the coming days. More information on how to install mute keywords and Twitter’s hateful conduct policy can be found in the company’s help center.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Twitter
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FBI using Twitter’s raw ‘firehose’ data to monitor users

The FBI is using a Twitter tool called Dataminr to track criminals and terrorist groups, according to documents spotted by The Verge. In a contract document, the agency says Dataminr’s Advanced Alerting Tool allows it “to search the complete Twitter firehose, in near real-time, using customizable filters.” However, the practice seems to violate Twitter’s developer agreement, which prohibits the use of its data feed for surveillance or spying purposes.

It’s not clear if Twitter has authorized the bureau to access Dataminr, but Engadget has reached out for comment. It cut off another company, Geofeedia, for using its raw feed to track users in a similar way. However, Twitter has a closer relationship with Dataminr; it owns five percent of the firm and has given it a virtual monopoly on its data feed. As the FBI points out in a “limited source justification” document, “Dataminr is the only certified Official Twitter Data Partner with direct proprietary access to the full ‘Twitter firehose’ which allows it to provide near real-time alerts of breaking news and events.”

US intelligence owns a venture capital firm called In-Q-Tel that invested in Dataminr and other social media analytics firms. Twitter reportedly authorized a pilot program that let the CIA and other agencies scan users, but cut access off after it ended. Like Apple, Google and other US tech companies, it wanted to avoid being associated with spying on both foreign and domestic users, according to the WSJ.

Dataminr is the only certified Official Twitter Data Partner with direct proprietary access to the full ‘Twitter firehose’ which allows it to provide near real-time alerts of breaking news and events.

During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised to force social media companies to give law enforcement the encryption keys needed to access to private user data. US tech companies, especially Apple, have argued vociferously against that, saying it would undermine confidence in their platforms. Foreign regions like Europe are especially sensitive to US spying after discovering that the NSA used server back doors and other tricks to spy on its citizens (and leaders).

It’s not far-fetched for entire nations to ban a social network, as Russia cut off 5 million LinkedIn users just last week. And the European Union is increasingly wary of Facebook, Google and other US tech firms.

Via: The Verge

Source: FBI

Twitter expands ‘mute’ and ‘report’ features to combat abuse

Twitter has such a bad troll problem that it may be the reason why Disney ultimately decided not to buy the social network. Now, even though it’s probably too late to change Disney’s mind, the company has enhanced a couple of features to help users get other abusive users off their backs. Over the coming days, you’ll be able to mute not just people, but also keywords and phrases, usernames, emojis and hashtags to make sure nothing cruel or insulting slips into your notifications. If people keep tagging you in a conversation you want no part of, you’ll be able to mute that thread to stop receiving notices, as well.

Besides giving you the power to mute anything you don’t want to see, Twitter is also putting other users’ well-being in your hands. Starting today, you’ll be able to report harassment and any hateful tweets directed not just towards you, but also towards other people, friends and strangers alike. So long as a tweet “targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease,” you can let Twitter know. The company says it refamiliarized its support team about its policies and improved its tools to be able to better address those reports.

In its announcement, Twitter has admitted that it’s having issues keeping abusive behavior in check. “We’ve seen a growing trend of people taking advantage of that openness and using Twitter to be abusive to others,” the announcement read. “Because Twitter happens in public and in real-time, we’ve had some challenges keeping up with and curbing abusive conduct.” It also knows these measures are nowhere near enough to clean up the website, but it’s committing “to rapidly improving [the microblogging website] based on everything [the team] observe[s] and learn[s].” Whether it gets to the point that big companies won’t hesitate buying it up, we guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Source: Twitter