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A comment on Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic. Parent comment

Re:Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trendin... by maram on Saturday January 09, 2021 @06:18PM (#25706146)
> I think I’m smarter than the average person, and can discern the truth from multiple conflicting claims. But a little introspection shows me that no, this isn’t really true. I’m not hunting down original sources for everything I think I know, I’m mostly relying on gatekeepers (experts) to tell me what is true.

The least thing Twitter could do is allow us to see who started a specific hashtag. Hashtags can be pushed using Tweetdeck through private accounts.

In 2016, @jack asked which feature we want to see https://twitter.com/jack/status/814537990366228480

I replied with "ability to see who started a specific hashtag" https://twitter.com/maram5e/status/814720800024621060

@jack thought it was interesting and mentioned VP of Product at twitter. https://twitter.com/jack/status/814721829273292804 I got excited, but nothing happened.

I got excited because I thought I would in no time be able to, not discern the truth, but identify whether I can trust the source. After all, there is a name for content which does not identify its source: Grey propaganda.

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Re:Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trendin... by ZeroGravitas on Saturday January 09, 2021 @07:19PM (#25706695)
Wouldn't this encourage false-flag hashtag squatting? Just figure out what your "enemies" are likely to hashtag, and set up some unpleasant accounts to use the tags before they do.
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Re:Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trendin... by maram on Saturday January 09, 2021 @08:01PM (#25707067)
Who is the enemy here? The people or governments? Arab spring succeeded in Tunisia because real time news sharing was faster than state-sponsored-media. The same thing happened in Egypt.

>set up some unpleasant accounts to use the tags before they do.

That's what governments tried to do, but they failed, and were failing. Bots with aged accounts and Tweetdeck got better in 2015.

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