A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate, and Twitter verified it

Re:A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate, and ... by patrickdavey on Friday February 28, 2020 @05:04PM (#22446846)

Excellent idea. Might also help against the bot issues. If we could just turn off the visibility of non-verified accounts (or better still, make that the default) it seems misinformation would be a bit harder to spread.

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Re:A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate, and ... by Avamander on Friday February 28, 2020 @05:11PM (#22446891)

But will also kill anyone's account who doesn't want to get harassed and/or lose their privacy.

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Re:A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate, and ... by patrickdavey on Friday February 28, 2020 @05:40PM (#22447080)

I admit I've only just now looked at what it means to be verified: https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit... doesn't seem like you'd necessarily have to give a real name or anything. Sure it'd mean Twitter would know more about you I guess?

For me, at the moment, I'm genuinely concerned about the rise of bots and their impact on online discourse. I'd love to see measures put in place to flag or prevent their use. You only have to look at some of the comments on a Trump/thunberg/Sanders post.

Or integrating https://botometer.iuni.iu.edu/#!/ Intro Twitters service or building their own _and turning it on my default_

Certainly doesn't have to be the verified account direction, but, something needs to be done.

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Re:A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate, and ... by Avamander on Friday February 28, 2020 @08:18PM (#22447971)

Well, if everyone could get verified, what's to stop real people spreading disinformation but now, with a checkmark?

I'm all for identity verification and having a strong online identity (e.g. I really like Keybase and Estonian PKI), but being identified shouldn't mean one can be trusted.

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