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Twitter Admits 'Coordinated and Malicious' Activity Weaponizing Its New Privacy Policy (cnn.com) 169

Posted by EditorDavid from the tweet-revenge dept.
CNN reports: Twitter acknowledged on Friday that a new policy it unveiled this week to protect users from harassment is being abused by malicious actors — days after journalists, left-wing activists and self-described "sedition hunters" reported their accounts had been locked for sharing publicly available images of anti-maskers, anti-vaccine protesters and suspected Capitol insurrectionists.

The acknowledgment highlights how Twitter has been caught flat-footed by what it described in a statement as "a significant amount of coordinated and malicious" activity that led to "several errors" in Twitter's enforcement. "We've corrected those errors and are undergoing an internal review to make certain that this policy is used as intended — to curb the misuse of media to harass or intimidate private individuals," Twitter said.

Unveiled on Tuesday, Twitter's new policy prohibits the sharing of images of private individuals without those people's consent. The rule was created, Twitter initially said, in a bid to prevent its platform from being abused to harass and intimidate people, particularly women, activists and minorities. But right-wing groups and anti-mask activists have quickly determined that the new Twitter policy offers an opportunity to strike back at those who might draw attention to their real-world identities. And in a matter of days, they established a coordinated campaign to flood Twitter with complaints that left-wing activists, Jan. 6 investigators and journalists covering rallies have published their faces without consent in violation of the new rule....

"Due to the new privacy policy at Twitter, things now unexpectedly work more in our favor as we can take down Antifa f****t doxxing pages more easily," read one recent message on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that was reviewed by CNN. The message, which has been viewed more than 19,000 times, lists dozens of Twitter accounts for supporters to target with claims of violations under the new privacy policy... After filing such reports, some individuals have publicly celebrated "weaponizing" Twitter's new rule. A pair of posts reviewed by CNN on the alternative social media site Gab boasted of making dozens of Twitter reports and urged allies to "stay on the offensive" against "antifa" and "their doxxing riot videos."

The rapidly unfolding campaign highlights how a tool intended to help protect vulnerable individuals has quickly evolved to help shield others from the scrutiny that might stem from their public actions.
Twitter's policy is generally not supposed to apply to large-scale protests or newsworthy events, the company had said on Tuesday.

Yet CNN points out now that "those aspects of Twitter's own policy appear not to have been followed in at least several cases."
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Twitter Admits 'Coordinated and Malicious' Activity Weaponizing Its New Privacy Policy More

Twitter Admits 'Coordinated and Malicious' Activity Weaponizing Its New Privacy Policy

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  • Is this the onion? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by beepsky ( 6008348 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @04:41PM (#62047411)
    So Twitter created a new policy, but because right wingers are abiding by the policy and getting left wing policy breakers banned it's "coordinated and malicious abuse"?
    Do you have any idea how retarded that sounds?
    If there was ever any question that Twitter is left leaning this should put it to bed, they're literally saying that their policy is flawed because it can be used against lefties

    • Re:Is this the onion? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheMeuge ( 645043 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @04:51PM (#62047453)

      I think you misunderstand. Twitter created this deliberately flawed and obtuse policy to be weaponized by the left extremists (including their own staff), and now it was evidently weaponized by the right extremists. Now they are whining that it's unfair, even though anyone with a brain could have predicted that the policy would be abused by just reading the text of it.

      That's how I read it. How about we just end Twitter and make life better for everyone.

      • Perhaps the idiots that cheered this on might pause to consider what it resulted in and perhaps rethink their support of these kinds of rules in the future. I doubt most people will have that moment of clarity, but if even a few do it's at least a useful lesson. Let's just be thankful it's only Twitter instead of something of real consequence.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          Why? It sounds to me like the rules were good and working, I don't like anti-vaxxers or anti-maskers but I do recognise that they have as much of a right to be free from abuse and privacy invasion as the next person.

          I don't support vigilantism because it invariably becomes a witch-hunt and innocent people get harassed or worse.

      • I think you misunderstand. Twitter created this deliberately flawed and obtuse policy to be weaponized by the left extremists (including their own staff), and now it was evidently weaponized by the right extremists. Now they are whining that it's unfair, even though anyone with a brain could have predicted that the policy would be abused by just reading the text of it.

        That's how I read it. How about we just end Twitter and make life better for everyone.

        Also incorrect:

        The problem they were trying to solve was doxxing and harassment. Ie, person X expressing an opinion that person Y doesn't agree with so person Y figures out who X is in real life and starts harassing them for expressing that opinion.

        A critical factor in this is that person X isn't doing anything illegal nor are they even trying to hide their opinions or actions in real life, they're just trying to avoid harassment by strangers on the Internet.

        For instance, I could be pro-life or pro-choice,

        • The problem they were trying to solve was doxxing and harassment. Ie, person X expressing an opinion that person Y doesn't agree with so person Y figures out who X is in real life and starts harassing them for expressing that opinion.

          So what you area saying is that Twitter just banned its own core competency?

        • If you witness a crime, you should call the police, not post about it on twitter. If you are posting about something on twitter that "triggered" you, then likely no crime but hurting your feels was committed. Hence you run to twitter to try and get someone publicly shamed because your feelings were hurt.

          The fact that left-leaning twitter(that swears it's neutral, like NYT) tried to add a new policy that completely backfired on them is just hilarious.

      • Hanlond's Razor still applies: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

        Hanlon's Razor is a useful guideline, not an absolute. But is there any reason to think that Twitter's leadership is clever enough to do this effectively?

        • Re:Is this the onion? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Jarik C-Bol ( 894741 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @11:11PM (#62048287)
          I always heard it as “a sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from incompetence. And years in the service industry shepherding unwilling workers lead to my personal corollary to Hanlond’s razor:

          “A sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

          Some people are just so naturally bad at their jobs it looks like they are actively trying to do harm, but they are just stupid.

      • Except that's not what happened. Twitter created a policy to prevent revenge porn, cyberstalking, etc. It was supposed to be non-political and not apply to public activities. Then a bunch of people realized they could hijack the enforcement mechanism and use it to censor the speech of people they didn't like.

        Blame Twitter for not anticipating how their policy could be abused and not being ready to deal with it. But don't distort what happened. These are people trying to censor discussion of important p

        • These are people trying to censor discussion of important public events. They don't believe in free speech.

          Yes, that's Twitter.

          • Twitter believes in abusing free speech for profit, but in order to have that you've gotta have free speech.

            If you cancel too many people's messages then people will get fed up and use some other service. The people who have been cancelled from twitter are very loud so it seems like they are more numerous than they actually are, and when you dig into what their tweets actually were you can see nothing of value was lost in virtually all cases. Go on, prove me wrong.

        • Taking pictures of people with no masks on so you can publicly shame them on Twitter is not an important public event.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by kenh ( 9056 )

          These are people trying to censor discussion of important public events. They don't believe in free speech.

          It's called cancel culture, it's been "A Thing" for years, and while not exclusively practiced by either political party, one party has been cancelling people more aggressively than the other.

          Turnabout is fair play.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dackroyd ( 468778 )

      > they're literally saying that their policy is flawed

      They're saying the policy is flawed because it's being used to remove photos taken in public, not photos taken in private.

      The 'lefties' have been taking photos of white supremecists to document their violent behaviour. Right wingers have realised how shit the new policy is, and are using it to coordinate removal of their bad behaviour.

      Do you have any idea how retarded you sound?

    • Re:Is this the onion? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rayfield k. ( 8918519 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @04:55PM (#62047467)

      Yes. It's been pretty funny watching the rules applied equally for once and how much they are freaking out. I was just reading an account crying about their friend being banned for doxing a college student, calling on others to attack him and get him kicked out.
      I doubt it will last long.

      • I don't think it'll last long either.
        The staff will be trained to consider the political tribe of the actors, and we'll return to Twitter as usual.
    • You're failing to understand something because you've cast this in the simplistic notion of left vs right. But normal service will be resumed and people with a social conscience will continue exposing fuckwits that push for "racial purity" - the irony being that these fuckwits, themselves, are the result of several generations of inbreeding.

    • Don't you understand? Rules are supposed to be used by those in power against people that threaten their position. It's not for ordinary people to enjoy the same expectation of enforcement or leniency as elites.

    • Now, it says it has added "private media" to the list, because the sharing of such material could be used to "harass, intimidate, and reveal the identities of individuals."

      "Sharing personal media, such as images or videos, can potentially violate a person's privacy, and may lead to emotional or physical harm," the company said.

      The policy is specifically targeted to private media. These are journalists and bloggers taking pictures of anti-maskers in public.

      It's just another run of the mill false fl

    • Re:Is this the onion? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @06:26PM (#62047711)

      How wonderful it would be if we could have a debate on Slashdot that dispensed with glib stereotypes of "left" and "right" and "liberals" and "conservatives" and just focused on the facts and the issues.

      Has no one noticed yet that none of those political groups are actually what their names suggest? The conservatives aren't, the liberals aren't, and the powers that be are the only winners when they get Slashdotters arguing viciously about imaginary grievances.

    • The policy was clear and did not apply to large scale protests. The right wingers did NOT follow the policy, they violated it.

      The policy was not supposed to be weaponized by either side.

      • The policy was not supposed to be weaponized by either side.

        The problem here is not the "weaponize", it's the "side."

    • Bang on !
      No doubt Jack Dorsey decided to do what he did, almost all social media is beyond salvage now

    • But this proves Twitter is right wing since they are protecting privacy. They need to be shutdown for putting rights ahead of the Party.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      This stuck out to me:

      The rapidly unfolding campaign highlights how a tool intended to help protect vulnerable individuals has quickly evolved to help shield others from the scrutiny that might stem from their public actions.

      I am struggling to understand the difference between those two. Apparently the Twitter rule is doing exactly what they wanted.

      The rule was created, Twitter initially said, in a bid to prevent its platform from being abused to harass and intimidate people, particularly women, activists and minorities.

      To protect activists...

      But right-wing groups and anti-mask activists have quickly determined that the new Twitter policy offers an opportunity to strike back at those who might draw attention to their real-world identities.

      Aren't "right-wing groups" also activists? Apparently only "left-wing groups" deserve protection...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by truedfx ( 802492 )
      Have you actually read the story? Of course you haven't. It's quite explicit that this isn't about left wing vs. right wing, it's about people intentionally flagging up photos that don't violate the rules to punish people they don't like. It happens to be right-wing people here who are flagging up photos, but it's not the fact that they're right-wing that makes it malicious abuse, it's the fact that the photos don't violate the rules and they already knew that when flagging.

  • How did they not see this coming? One should always consider how badly something can be abused before incorporating it.

  • No, we mean the good activists (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NaCh0 ( 6124 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @04:48PM (#62047445) Homepage

    Is anyone else having a hard time feeling sorry that activist group X is having the rules applied as if they were activist group Y?

    Too much fairness going on, we're going to need to "tweak" the algorithm.

  • "My Hounds Would Never Harm Me" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @04:52PM (#62047459)
    - Ramsay Bolton and every totalitarian ideologue ever

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sfcat ( 872532 )
      Also every zealot of every stripe and flavor. Left or right, rich or poor, smart or dumb...all kinds of zealots think this. Probably even you.

  • Twitter keeps digging a deeper hole (Score:5, Interesting)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @05:11PM (#62047497) Journal

    I know this might be hard to believe, but it was actually useful and even ground-breaking back in the day. The Arab Spring was the quintessential Twitter crowd-sourced story that scooped the mainstream media by days. There is still a glimmer of that, as the under-reported student takeover at Howard University shows--but that trend only flashed up for a few minutes and I was lucky to see it so I could follow the story later.

    Twitter trends took a hard turn towards stupidity when K-pop stans started hash-tag jacking to thwart the Proud Boys. Then others latched on.

    The next turn came when Twitter took away the ability to localize trends (at least on PC, does the app still have it?). It was harder to spam when trends were localized, because would-be spammers would have to recruit in all locales.

    Now all you get is global trends that are being manipulated by bad actors, bots or "activists". The dominant themes are racism and crypto, with the occasional side-order of B-list celebrities.

    They could do a lot to fix this just by bringing back trend localization, but I don't think they care. I've limited my interaction with it to one day a week (Twitter Tuesday) and found that I don't miss it too much; but it's sad. It had potential. It still does. They just can't see it, and they're doing too well to disrupt the status quo.

    Positive change is going to have to come from someplace else, and not Trump social media to which conservatives defected--that's just the dual of the problem.

    There's an opportunity here for the Next Big Thing (TM). An opportunity for somebody to make Twitter the next MySpace.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sfcat ( 872532 )

      I know this might be hard to believe, but it was actually useful and even ground-breaking back in the day. The Arab Spring was the quintessential Twitter crowd-sourced story that scooped the mainstream media by days. There is still a glimmer of that, as the under-reported student takeover at Howard University shows--but that trend only flashed up for a few minutes and I was lucky to see it so I could follow the story later.

      The Arab Spring was started due to high food prices caused by a change in US bio-fuels policy. The US ag industry feeds about 1 billion people worldwide. When you take 50% of that off the international market, prices rise a lot. When poor folks can'f afford food, they riot. Twitter just capitalized on this to tell you that they mattered when they did not. You are just trying to justify your support of Twitter over the years and all the time you clearly have spent there. It has always been a cesspool.

      • I've seen a lot of people looking down their noses at Twitter over the years. I've even seen people say "I'm on FaceBook, but not Twitter because it's stupid", which is strange to me because I found it to be the opposite. It sometimes makes me wonder if it's dumb luck that causes people to have different 1st impressions of various sites and/or a different approach to how people filter content.

  • Backfiring (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @05:12PM (#62047503)
    I've tried explaining to other liberals how their demands will wind up backfiring and hurting them, and particularly marginalized people, more than their intended target, but as usual no one wants to hear it. Particularly frustrating was this idea that counterprotesters are open targets not allowed to defend themselves because they shouldn't have been there antagonizing protesters... who do you think counterprotests more? Or during the last administration, how they thought Barr would interpret "hate speech" if the government was allowed to ban it. Only an extreme fringe buys the batshit insane argument Sarah Jeongs tweets weren't racist for instance; they'd be quite upset when it turned out hate speech against a race equally prohibits it against white people, and guess what conservative administrations will focus on?
    Maybe it's swift and significant enough here to get that point across, but I doubt it.

    Not that the right seems to understand this any better with their demands companies be free to do whatever they want, then act all upset when that's not allowing conservatives to spew death threats and misinformation, or being "woke".
    • Agreed, someone at Twitter should perhaps read about categorical imperitives. Principles are pesky things when applied universally.

    • I've tried numerous times to get my liberal friend to see this about taxes on gasoline and sales taxes. They hurt the people on the bottom significantly more then those on the top.

      The lower your income, the harder these kinds of taxes hit because they take up a large portion of your income compared to someone making twice as much. Someone that makes twice as much does not remotely use up twice the amount of resources either.

      They refuse to see how California tax happy Democrats are hurting the very same peop

      • Same with migration. Elites and trendy middle class types cheer it on, yet it's the poorest who pay the price. The poorest will be competing with migrants for resources. Jobs, healthcare, welfare, and housing. It's the poorest who see their neighbourhoods become unfamiliar places as culture changes and crime rises.

  • Sounds like a History Channel show -- which I would definitely watch.

  • Who would've guessed it? (Score:3)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @05:14PM (#62047511)

    This is what happens when you live in Pointland and every piece of outside information is either blasphemous or superfluous.

  • Twitter is run my inept idiots (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @05:15PM (#62047513)
    They didnâ(TM)t foresee this policy being abused? Does anyone at twitter use the internet or been alive the last 15y?

  • Why social media sucks (Score:3)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @05:20PM (#62047525)
    If you're wondering why social media sucks so badly, it's because its algorithms essentially implement mob rule. Groups of users can & are often encouraged to gang up on individuals & other smaller groups to subject them to mob justice. There's no arbitration, only mob rule, because arbitration affects social media companies' profits, i.e. it's too expensive.

    • It's one of several scandals that all but killed Digg. The surge of advertising and clearly paid-for stories probably finished it off, but trust was already undermined by the 'Digg Patriots' group - someone leaked their internal chat records, revealing that the group had been organising mass-digg or -bury campaigns to push stories sympathetic to their politics to the front page, and suppress stories critical of those political views.

      • And yet Facebook seems to be immune.

        • Facebook is so essential and firmly entrenched that people keep using it even when they know about the scandals. I never got in to facebook myself, but I've seen how other people use it - once you've built up social connections there, you can't leave.

  • Why do they feel the need to make up their own rules ? Aren't pro photographers and lawyers who've wrestled with those issues for decades amount for anything ?
    • They are a company, they can make any rules they want covering content hosted on their network. People that don't know copyright and privacy laws think they can just post whatever they want even if the hosting company changes their posting rules. Much hand wringing over people ignorant of the new rules.

      Journalists sure, as they are granted freedom by law under most circumstances - but not everyone else.

      • Journalists sure, as they are granted freedom by law under most circumstances - but not everyone else.

        On the Internet, everyone is a journalist. And a dog. And still nobody knows.

      • Since they have special common carrier protections which normal people dont, shouldnt they have a few common carrier responsibilities, also?

        Does the phone comapny monitor your calls and cut you off and block you if you talk about the wrong things? Should they?

    • What does the law say about publishing photos of people online without their consent? We are all arguing about Twitter's new policy but maybe there are just aligning themselves with existing laws and regulations?

  • Abuse? (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    The anti-maskers, anti-vaccine protesters and suspected Capitol insurrectionists aren't doing anything to 'abuse' policies. Agree or disagree with them, they were just there. And they were photographed. And now Twitter has amended it's TOU making posting photographs without prior consent is a violation. Like them or hate them, they didn't 'do' anything to create the violation. In fact, they were photographed well in advance of this policy change. And even then, I'd like to see the convoluted logic that says

    • I don't know about the law in the US but in Europe you are not supposed to publish photos of other people online without their consent, even if such photos were taken in public space. I think Twitter is just aligning itself with stronger privacy standards, which is not a bad thing.

  • Boy, he's really screwed n-- hey, wait a second [cnbc.com] ....
  • It's "malicious" to use an anti-doxxing policy against ... doxxing?
  • Who could have predicted that there are party-level actors from Russia, China and the USA just waiting for Twitter to change policies so they could take advantage of whatever weakness appears?

  • Do social medias talk to each other? (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday December 05, 2021 @03:03AM (#62048625)

    If not, could they? This is basically the Reddit Game, and it's been going on for years.

  • Win stupid prizes.

    The death of Twitter is not imminent, but this certainly hastens the demise. No company of any size can suffer mismanagement forever without serious consequences or death.

  • It appears to be a correct application of the policy, but it turns out it hurt people on the left, not on the right as intended.

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