In case you didn’t know, Gab promotes itself as “The Free Speech Social Network” and is trying to lure Twitter users who feel they’re being censored to its social media platform. It also engaged in a nice bit of corporate trolling Tuesday after a project lead at Twitter said parenthetically that “election integrity” is Twitter’s top priority.
We've heard some questions recently about the status of Verification on Twitter, so wanted to address directly. Updating our verification program isn’t a top priority for us right now (election integrity is). Here’s some history & context, and how we plan to put it on our roadmap
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) July 17, 2018
That’s quite a big admission to make in parentheses, and Gab was quick to jump on it:
https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1019337920845508609
Solid burn.
It’s already in effect by conservative accounts. Many replies that don’t include any offensive words are hidden simply for being pro-conservative.
— Dino-tron (@ya_nevermind) July 17, 2018
We’re old enough to remember when @GayPatriot had his account locked for abusive behavior after calling Chelsea Manning “Bradley.”
It’s no secret that we rely on Twitter for material, so we were interested to see what Kayvon had to say about Twitter’s verification process, and why so many blue-checks we’ve never heard of seem to get away with truly abusive behavior on the platform.
Back in November we paused public Verification b/c we wanted to address the issue that verifying the authenticity of an account was being conflated with endorsement. Our intention was to hit the brakes until we had a fix across policy/enforcement/product. https://t.co/HJW40w9dAH
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) July 17, 2018
Despite that goal, we still verify accounts ad hoc when we think it serves the public conversation & is in line with our policy. But this has led to frustration b/c our process remains opaque & inconsistent with our intented pause. This is far from ideal & we still intend to fix
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) July 17, 2018
Though we've made a lot of progress towards a holistic solution, the truth is that this work is still incomplete and we’re choosing not to prioritize it just now (attached is an email I sent our Health leadership team last week) pic.twitter.com/6xoEv1n3TR
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) July 17, 2018
OK, brace yourself for this next tweet:
Instead, our team is focused on information quality ahead of the elections– our highest priority within the Health roadmap. This focus will help us move faster on what we think is most important. After we make more progress, we plan to address Verification.
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) July 17, 2018
All 90 percent of Twitter users want is an edit button to fix typos, but Twitter’s team is “focused on information quality ahead of the elections.” Honestly — somewhere between the time that Hillary lost and the Russian collusion narrative caught fire, someone floated the idea that “fake news” on social media had cost her the election, and social media companies are still running with that.
I know this isn’t the most satisfying news, but I wanted to be transparent about our priorities. Feedback and thoughts welcome, as always.
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) July 17, 2018
Feedback?
Is this a joke? Twitter cares about election integrity about as far as they have gone to stop shadow-banning and censoring conservatives.
— Uncaduv✖️ (@Uncaduv) July 17, 2018
You mean silencing people that don't go along with your protected PC culture? You people are going to be in for another RUDEEEEEE AWAKENING come November
— Flanderz (@KFlanagan721) July 17, 2018
Election integrity has nothing to do with Twitter regardless of what Democrats say. If #FakeNews is such a danger, why hasn't @CNN been able to convince anyone to vote Democrat?
— Rob Kurtas (@robknyc) July 17, 2018
https://twitter.com/jsmalls131313/status/1019349664167071747
Anyway, back to election integrity and why it’s so important:
https://twitter.com/kayvonbp/status/1019381244696526850
He’s got a point: mainstream media outlets with blue checks like CNN spread plenty of fake news on Twitter, but we trust ourselves to sort it out.
https://twitter.com/jsalicea00/status/1019349038817333249
How dare you accuse Twitter of being liberal, just because its CEO backtracked after being caught eating at a Chick-fil-A during Pride Month.
You’re right. Completely forgot about their background
— jack (@jack) June 10, 2018
Yeah, Chick-fil-A is anti-gay … more fake news.
Related:
CNN's Oliver Darcy still not satisfied with Facebook's handling of 'fake news' sites like InfoWars https://t.co/5u7NXZOZ0K
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 12, 2018
SPLC faces dozens of lawsuits, but look which tech companies it's in bed with https://t.co/aEUjZYJ2lF
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) June 20, 2018
Join the conversation as a VIP Member