TheCounter: "We're aware that our service was hacked and have started an investigation into the matter.We've already taken measures to contain such abuse"
Looks like they run a followers scam as well with the promoted twitter account. How can they guarantee 1% views conversion. They probably make accounts that sign up for their service secretly follow the promoted accounts.
As an aside, I wonder what the history books will say about our time in 100 years or so. It's interesting to think that we are all a part, no matter how large or small, of history in the making. For better or worse.
I'm gambling on "The Oil Age". Political strife will be placed in the context of petroleum geopolitics, energy sectors, climate change, and what will be dubbed "The first migration" (if ocean levels rise as some predict, there will be a second migration for 10% of global population [1])
You can wrap, among other things, the 70's OPEC wars, 79 Iranian revolution, 9/11 and the rise of Trump in a nice tiny bow and create a coarsely accurate depiction of history over those 45 years. You can even have a little side story about things like the 1985 "We Are the World" charity song without missing a beat.
In the long run, things like Facebook and Snapchat will probably be as relevant and well-known as say, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Never heard of it? It's a charter member of the Dow Jones Transportation Average (the predecessor to the DJIA) and an important company from the 1800s ...
When I was in combat training (U.S., mid 2000s), a corporal who was teaching a munitions class one day started pointing to things and listing off random objects. Clothes, chairs, computer, projector, weapon lubricant, etc. He asked what all of these had in common. The answer was that they all contain petroleum derivatives. And that's why we go, he said. The 18-year-old idiot me didn't understand, so that night I went into my Green Monster (didn't have internet) and started reading about recent U.S. military involvement. It culminated in a rather dramatic mental image of Iraqi forces retreating through Kuwait and burning hundreds and hundreds of oil wells as they went. I was still very confused, but I was overcome with a sharp feeling that I was a pawn in a game being played by gods I couldn't see or hear or meet or understand, a game that had been going on since before I was born. I became depressed and cursed my father for not teaching me anything at all useful about the world.
I don't know why I wrote all of that. Maybe just to say that I'm sorry for my part in all of this bullshit.
> what the history books will say about our time in 100 years or so
The history books will be written by the victors. What the history says will depend hugely on whether we have free informational continuity between now and then or a massive legal/totalitarian/military/nuclear/catastrophic "wipe" destroying that.
(Less dramatically, this is obviously the era when intelligence agencies are fighting and the internet is their battleground. ""Cyberwarfare"" is not about turning off power stations, it's about destroying your opponent's ability to do normal open democratic politics. There's even tension between US domestic security services - the FBI director Comey is clearly pro-Trump while the CIA are not, and Trump has gutted the US State Department which has traditionally been the department for interfering with other countries.)
History is written within the perspective of the writers and benign things constantly drive revisionism. It's often to support a mythical narrative and provide some kind of cohesive abstract framework to justify policy positions and a depiction of an austere past.
For instance, free speech, as we know it, really came around WW1-era and was due to people like Learned Hand convincing Oliver Wendell Holmes. But since then, history has been seemingly rewritten to make it look like it was part of the revolutionary war.
There's plenty of other things ... non-citizens could vote up to 1926. The "American Dream" was coined in 1931 and was essentially backdated to colonial times, etc.
Accurate realities will bunch the pants of essentially everyone regardless of politics. One could argue being openly gay, for instance, in the 1800s was not seen as insufferable. James Buchanan, the 15th president, lived with a man and was referred to by terms that were contemporary to homosexual. I've done fairly extensive private research and can't find it being a controversial thing during his campaign, even though this was a well known fact (I've meant to do some more microfish reading at the library about it). See, there I go messing up the narrative of progressivism and civil rights. Sorry.
The guy after him, Lincoln, was seen so unfavorably at the time that he won the popular vote in 1864 by only 10% - this was after everyone who disliked him had ostensibly already left. You think he'd be a landslide in the remaining states.
There's a narrative of a cordial press during FDR being too polite to take photographs of the man in a wheelchair. Nope, the secret service would confiscate your camera, possibly strip you of press privileges and destroy your film. Kinda like a repressive state.
This isn't the tropish "victors write the history" - this is a more nuanced instance of people framing benign things to support a narrative arc and defend a lensing through the politics of storytelling. The deviations, far-reaching connections, and omissions, can often reveal preferences on what the underlying culture of the author would prefer them to see and can be as revealing as the text itself.
> messing up the narrative of progressivism and civil rights
Is it? There's a whole subfield of queer history devoted to getting an accurate record of this kind of thing. Arguing that it's always been present in society but treated very differently by different societies.
It does mess up the Whig view of progressiveness being on a ratchet.
I think in a 100 years there won't be many history books being written. Think of what climate change is gong to do in just the next 30 years, and then be honest with yourself about the next 100. Look at what a small amount of migration has done to global politics, and imagine a couple of billion on the move.
Look at nationalism and populism on the rise. We've passed the point of no-return I think... that will be the lesson for any surviving future historians.
I think you underestimate the adaptative capacities of human society. If global warming doesn't exterminate all human life it'll take about one generation for people to get used to it. On the scale of human history a single generation really isn't much.
2016 was the first year I've lived through where I thought to myself "This is a year people will list in the history books." In the same way people know dates like 1929 or 1848; I don't necessarily think things will turn out that consequential in the long run, but I can envision children asking me "So what was it like to live through that?"
To paraphrase in a marxist kind of way, I am pretty sure the delta between "to everybody according to their need, from everyone according to their ability" has never been greater. This may be kind of off topic, but while SV likes to talk about being a meritocracy, and corporate earnings and productivity for each engineer working here are staggering, the reality is that the tools SV is creating are not helping things enough. While FB and Google and Uber might be solving some interesting problems, I would tend to say that there are a lot of very talented people here whose talents could be better spent. While engineering is great, what about running for public office? It is clear those roles are not attracting the kind of people we actually want in them.
I see that as a symptom of how futile most public office has become. Maybe term-limits would help, maybe other things would. If we want to fix the problem though, I think the answer starts with the candidates, not just trying to re-engineer a system to persist in spite of all apparent efforts to subvert it. I guess we can all watch, though.
//kind of off topic, but I felt like this was the place to say it.
Quite so; the 'Great Game' of empires is most definitely back on. My take on this is that Putin is rather masterfully playing the Dutch Nativists and the Turkish autocrats against the social-liberal middle. Having the Turkish President denouncing the Dutch and Germans as nazis while also feeding the nationalist fantasies of Wilders and the various proto-fascist parties around Europe must be pretty entertaining for him; I bet he laughs himself to sleep every night.
This will be known as the social media era of politics. For good (greater engagement, faster news dissemination) and for bad (staggering polarisation, fake news).
I think this will persist for quite some time e.g decades until the next era arrives which will see more earth-friendly, people-centric, less capitalist views come to the fore e.g base income, renewable at all costs etc as automation and climate change reek havoc.
I wouldn't be that sure - the tensions escalated before today's Dutch elections, but the cause of the escalation was the current ruling party (the PM banned some turkish gatherings/protests, and then blocked a Turkish minister's plane from landing in the Netherlands). So one could argue that the mainstream party tried to woo right-wing-ish voters by taking a stronger stance against Turks/muslims.
The stance taken wasn't against Turks or Muslims though. It was against an authoritarian ruler campaigning in another country to grab even more power for himself.
I agree, but the PM (Rutte) and his party are definitely benefiting. He had many opportunities before to go harder on Erdogan i.e. when Erdogan bought oil from IS but "we" needed him to keep refugees out of Europe.
The stance is certainly not against Muslims although people might feel it that way. It is against the fact the pro-Erdogan Turks and anti-Erdogan Turks and Curds etc cause unrest in the Netherlands. Most people are welcoming of other cultures but not when they bring their political unrest with them. This whole circus was a signal to Turkey to keep Turkish politics within Turkey. Still, I'm certain our PM would have been less strong if there weren't any elections.
I don't understand Erdogan though, he called on the dutch Turks to not vote for the current PM and Geert Wilders (PVV, far right, anti immigration, pro Netherlands), and now this?! He must know that the couple of Turks that will listen to this will be overwhelmed by Dutchies wanting to vote anything that Erdogan doesn't like... It's like he is intentionally putting oil on the fire, helping PVV. Why is the very important questions, what does he or some other party have to gain? Who benefits from poor EU/Turkey relations?
Edit: after thinking some more: Of course Erdogan is the one who benefits greatly from the created "us against them sentiment" of the Turks. It distracts from all the turmoil and the approaching power grab.
Putting oil on the fire is a core part of Erdoğan's strategy. He's afraid that not enough Turks will vote in a couple weeks for the constitutional reform that will establish himself as dictator for life, so he has been trying to stoke nationalist resentment against EU countries for the last months, so that when they respond to his provocations he can represent himself as defender of the Turkish nation from outside attacks.
Erdoğan never missed an opportunity to escalate the situation.
The German government remained mostly calm despite numerous incidents such as preventing government officials from visiting German soldiers stationed in Turkey, the frivolous lawsuit where German citizen and journalist Deniz Yücel is accused of "terrorism", threats of sanctions for preventing public speeches of Turkish government officials (foreign officials have no free-speech rights in Germany, their speeches happen entirely at the pleasure of the German government), and regular Nazi name-calling of German politicians.
The Netherlands however have elections this week where a far-right populist could get many votes, so the current ruling party there (VVD) wants to position itself strongly against Erdoğan's aggressive antics in order to retain conservative voters. This is understandable, but of course it has the disadvantage that it plays right into Erdoğan's strategy.
but the cause of the escalation was the current ruling party
Of Turkey, yes. There's an understanding amongst democratic countries that you do not interfere in national elections. Sending a member of the cabinet to another country during national elections is interfering. Any Dutch government should have sent them packing, and the Turkish government was actually counting on that: now Erdogan has additional ammunition to paint the EU as an enemy. It surprises me that he hasn't declared The Netherlands to be secretly ruled by Gulen yet.
Do you really think it would have gone down nicely if the European Commission would have campaigned in England during the Brexit campaign? Or if Putin would have gone to the US to campaign for Trump?
A Turkish minister's plane was denied landing rights because he intended to address a rally; the rally itself was not banned. Following that, a Turkish education minister was escorted out of the country after trying to address a rally that was surreptitiously arranged by the Turkish consulate. That rally was disbanded after it became unsafe.
This was the decision of local and state governments and was done because in the past similar protests became impossible to control. It's fair enough to allow protests about Dutch policies but a whole different story when it is purely about an internal Turkish issue.
You can't blame the Dutch for not rolling out the red carpet especially so close to an election.
It is a disaster in terms of democratic values to block a Minister 30 meters away from the Consulate and send her back. And no, nobody believes in the security argument. This move helped the right wing in both countries for the coming elections.
>It is a disaster in terms of democratic values to block a Minister 30 meters away from the Consulate and send her back.
A minister of the Turkish government is not entitled to campaign in the Netherlands. She was asked not to do so, yet the consulate arranged for a rally and she attepmted to address that rally. She was therefore escorted out of the country as she abused her privelege of being there.
It's not as if a Dutch politician were blocked from campaigning a pro-Turkish message; this is about a member of a foreign government campaigning to Dutch citizens in the Netherlands (ironically campaigning for the furtherance of a regime which is increasingly undemocratic).
It's curious to me that anti-globalism in the west is so often supportive of authoriatirian rulers and religious extremists elsewhere. It's not as if there's any inconsistency in denouncing Trump, Putin, and Erdogan in one breath. Reminds me of European Communists like Sartre that campaigned for equality in the west while refusing to acknowledge the horrors of Stalin's rule.
> It's curious to me that anti-globalism in the west is so often supportive of authoriatirian rulers and religious extremists elsewhere.
Globalism is orthogonal to the nature of the global regime. Let us not forget that Communist International was also a globalist movement.
I personally don't know about the "so often" bit, but certainly that is the meme that is pushed by (globalist owned) Media. But should we accept that as a fact, then considering the fact that multiple powers would exist would provide at least the hope of future remedy to citizens of unsavory regimes.
The /only/ hope for remedy for citizens of a (authoritarian) One World Government is catastrophic system failure. That is it.
Exactly. To be clear, there is no doubt in my mind that the future of Humanity has to be unified, but I don't believe we're there yet whether we consider the governed or the self-appointed lords, and yet another atempt to create "the new man" to fit in the ideological template imho will entail an awful lot of awfulness.
To be honest I don't find this kind of vague hinting to be at all constructive in discussions. I would greatly prefer if people either voiced their opinions clearly or kept them private.
Ok to be clear , right before multiple European elections , Putins new pal Erdogan is inciting riots, calling people Nazis because they didn't want to host his rallies for a domestic Turkish issue. Obviously these have some domestic benefit for Erdogan but also for far right European parties, many of which already have some financial links to Russia.
"A senior executive with Qatar’s TV network Al Jazeera was closely involved with setting up the London news website Middle East Eye, some of whose staff have links to organisations sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood."
well let us state that given the friendliness between Turkey and Russia despite the arguably staged assassination that they're either conveniently pulling in the same direction or perhaps batting for the same team.
So we can point the attack at the party potentially standing to gain from EU disruption (Russia) or at Turkey itself. Probably the most dull argument (aka most likely to be true) is that this is the work of an enthusiastic member of Erdogan's fanbase.
And to be honest I find this kind of passive-agressiveness unneeded and fairly cynical. You should have avoided typing that because you have added absolutely nothing to the discussion, and you missed the point of a rhetorical question and showed ignorance of the current political status of Turkish/NE relations, added to that the bigger geopolitical context.
Every now and then I end up helping someone I know out with their twitter strategy or something on their PC. The number of full access 3rd party integrations people willingly sign up to and the number of browser plugins people happily add always shocks me.
Part of the problem is that getting your account hacked is such a widespread problem that people just accept it and there isn't much incentive for developers to invest heavily in preventing poor user decisions that exacerbate the situation.
Ideally developers of services like Twitter - and all those random SaaS apps you pipeline important business information to - should invest in:
* Better language about granting access rights up front. Chrome is always impressing me with their approach to language on HTTPS warning dialogs etc. Anyone allowing API access should spend lots of time crafting how they explain their token system to users.
* Requiring manual re-confirmation of access rights for integrations after a certain period of no use.
* Detecting unusual access patterns for integrations - usually this integration posts once per day per account, now it's posting continually.
Hopefully there are machine learning startup teams working on this. I'm sure at least some companies would care enough to send a log of 3rd party integration interactions to a machine learning startup and receive alerts of anonymous behaviour back.
(Yes, I know the irony of suggesting the answer to excessive 3rd party integration is a startup that provides anomaly detection as a service - but I doubt most small services offering integrations would be able to engineer a strong system like this...)
>Who ever that was, just handed Geet Wilder's the election. Well played
I'm not sure you understand the mechanics of the election in the NL. The parties campain for seats in the Tweede Kamer, and no party will win a clear majority of seats. Therefore a coalition government will have to be formed among the leading parties. The other leading parties have refused to work with Wilders due to his anti-Muslim statements, and recent polls have shown fewer expected seats for the PVV. In no way has the election been handed to PVV.
Geert isn't going to 'win' the election. Unless he manages to fill the government entirely with only his party, which is exceedingly unlikely, there's no one who will want to co-govern with the man.
Not taking any stance on the matter of who's the hacker and what are their intentions, but Erdogan has compared the German and Dutch administration Nazi multiple times by now in public speeches, so the tweets content are pretty much his stance boiled down to 140 chars.
He is pushing for a referendum that remind Europe of how Nazi Germany started.
To "defame" someone it must be false or attack his honour. This hack is just going along the lines he traced.
https://twitter.com/thecounter/status/841935867925139458
"This isn't TwitterCounter's first time. It's happened before. If you rely on it, it's time to pick better tools."
https://twitter.com/FR314/status/841925814417555460
http://press.twittercounter.com/139716-twitter-counter-accou...
UPD TheCounter: "Assuming this abuse is indeed done using our system, we’ve blocked all ability to post tweets and changed our Twitter app key."
https://twitter.com/thecounter/status/841941624238284800