[scrollaway]

> It's just the right thing to do.

That sounds like a sweeping statement with little forethought when you're talking about a platform that enabled protests in dictatorial regimes.

Step back here: Fake users, sold by the thousands to give credibility and a megaphone to whoever shells out money: bad. Identity verification: A solution with many consequences to be weighed before jumping on the bandwagon.

And dictatures aside, I have no desire to give Twitter my ID or passport.

[freehunter]

I mean... we are the best of the best of the best, top of the class when it comes to technology and especially creative solutions enabled by technology. We have world-leading machine learning capabilities and hundreds of engineers working around the clock for money that, not that long ago, would have been completely unheard of. We have talent. We have time. We have money. We have passion. We have absolute shitloads of data on everyone, whether they use our platform or not.

We don't need a passport or state-issued ID to determine if someone is a real user. That's the laziest solution any tech company has ever come up with, and it's deliberately lazy.

Facebook and Twitter can already tell if you're a human or not, shit Google lets you just click a button to tell them you're a human and then they determine if they believe you or not. All based on info they already have.

We're the best software engineers the world has ever seen on the cusp of an AI revolution... we don't need your passport. We just don't want to find out the truth, so we make it so hard no one will do it.

[scrollaway]

When I last checked my google ad profile (and this was a while ago; now it contains a lot less info probably because I opted out of a bunch of stuff), it was full of errors. Google did get my gender right but they put me in the wrong age range and a bunch of interests were out of whack. Good thing this was for ads, rather than a heuristic to ban me.

Best of the best, top of the class is not infallible. It's good enough to sell, because even something as low as 80% accuracy is good enough for things like "Do you want to subscribe to weekly pop tv news", it's not good enough when at the other end you get your account banned.

Google has, on this very site, built up a horrible reputation of using automated processes and having too many users to give those affected by those processes some good recovery. What you're describing is a recipe to replicate that.

99% is not good enough. 99.99% accuracy gets you 0.01% false positives. That's crazy low, right? It's also 100k users when you have 1bn users. Those fancy AI processes are nowhere near that.

[ImSkeptical]

I have the same experience with ads all the time. Like, I get ads from Google to buy the Pixel XL 2 while I'm browsing the web on the Pixel XL 2 I recently bought from Google on the same account I'm currently signed in to Google with... Or Amazon will give me ads for books and things I recently purchased through Amazon.

I think a lot of their abilities are overstated.

[reaperducer]

It's not Google's fault. It's the people buying the ads who are too lazy or don't know how to do proper targeting.

I've met three people in my life who were employed primarily to place ads on the internet. All three were glorified secretarial drones who fell into the position because nobody else wanted to do it.

[rspeer]

"Lazy"? It seems to me that the ad ecosystem is incredibly complicated (for example, not even Google understands how malvertising gets on Google's ad network).

Any person who knows how to effectively place Internet ads has such high-status skills that they don't have to actually do it.

[drdaeman]

> We have absolute shitloads of data on everyone, whether they use our platform or not.

We^W They may have shitloads of data, but I'm very skeptical we^W they can use this data in any meaningful way. At least, for now.

I don't know what's wrong but despite all that data giant AD companies are supposed to have, I never ever saw any relevant ads, even when I've specifically wanted to see one. Unless I've already bought something - then, sure thing, I'm spammed with more of the same (which is, again absolutely useless - I've already made a purchase).

> We don't need a passport or state-issued ID to determine if someone is a real user.

I don't think we are even capable to come to a consensus what does this mean - to be a "real user".

Am I? What about my alter ego, posting about something I don't feel like publicly associating with (like, porn)? What about a whistle-blowing throwaway account I may create if I learn something fishy? Or what about a "thoughts are my own but went through editorial" corporate representative persona account? And that's just the obvious cases.

[borplk]

You underestimate the difficulty and complexity of that problem.

I'm increasingly seeing this annoying trend of people hand waving about how a given problem can be solved with data/AI/ML/DL.

[newobj]

"I mean... we are the best of the best of the best, top of the class when it comes to technology and especially creative solutions enabled by technology. We have world-leading machine learning capabilities and hundreds of engineers working around the clock for money that, not that long ago, would have been completely unheard of. We have talent. We have time. We have money. We have passion. We have absolute shitloads of data on everyone, whether they use our platform or not."

- now just imagine the speech was pointed at the bad actors. and that's why this is not as easy as you make it sound.

[CDRdude]

>We're the best software engineers the world has ever seen

Maybe some of you are, but people like me read HN too ;-)

[zimpenfish]

As with my estimate of real-world influencers on HN ("a handful"), I'd suggest there's probably the same amount of "world best software engineers" on HN (and no, I'm definitely not including myself in that.)

[newobj]

I know you're not saying that anonymous social networks are /strictly/ better than verified, but to maybe round this thought out explicitly - I think it's potentially naive to think that governments won't be able to wield social networks even more effectively than "freedom fighters". Whenever they catch up. Arab Spring was round 1, but I feel like round 2+ may have already played out in state actors' favors. Who knows.

Relatedly: if you participate or "observe" any online communities of marginalized people, you may have noticed there are starting to be earnest conversations of whether or not "free speech" is actually more easily wielded to abuse them, than they can use it to have a voice.

Just food for thought. A lot of built-in assumptions are being tested right now.

[scrollaway]

Stepping back from the whole arab spring thing: Let's think about what identity verification actually means for the user.

Let's assume for a second Twitter has a magic wand that, without consequences, automatically deletes fake users used for marketing purposes.

Now what does identity verification actually do for the remainder of the users? In what way does it benefit them? In what ways does it inconvenience them? In what ways does it put them at risk?

Should there be a process in place, that is required of the entire userbase, just to fix the fake user problem? A problem that most users aren't even sort of aware of (otherwise the NYT article wouldn't have been as successful as it was).

We do a lot of reactionary things as a society that follow this exact pattern: Put massive processes in place to remove tiny bits of risk. Governments do that and justify it all the time, cf. the "Terrorism" or "For the children" memes. You often read people's complaints here on the ridiculous security theater that the TSA is, how it doesn't solve anything and inconveniences everyone for something that happens to people less often than winning the lottery.

This, is that. The pattern is: You have a tiny problem, you fix it with something which impacts your entire userbase because you didn't stop to think whether there are more targeted solutions, or even whether it's worth it.

[Note: I argue lower down that AI and statistics aren't the correct fix for this either... gotta keep digging. Maybe the "correct fix" is a mix of identity verification and statistical analysis.]

[scott_s]

> I think it's potentially naive to think that governments won't be able to wield social networks even more effectively than "freedom fighters".

That exact thing is happening. The Reply All podcast did an excellent piece on the dominant political party in Mexico using armies of people on Twitter - not bots, but people - to drown out news they didn't like, and eventually, to harass people. Show, with full transcript: https://gimletmedia.com/episode/112-the-prophet/

[intopieces]

Enabled protests in dictatorial regimes, sure. But let’s not overstate social media’s positive impact: nearly a decade after the Arab Spring, few governments outside of Tunisia look markedly different.

The ability of state actors to use social media to spread propaganda should also be considered in our tally of social media impact. The jury is still out on whether they are a net good.

[scrollaway]

This isn't an argument about whether social media is a net positive. This is about people, and whether Twitter protects its users at risk, or builds a system which just begs for government to request their real names.

[intopieces]

It is an argument about whether lack of verification on these platforms is worth preserving. That is not proved convincingly by the instances of protests they allow, since this same practice also allows propaganda.

[twinkletwinkle]

Would it be possible to do a 1-time verification, and then throw away the data? Twitter needs to see a driver's license or passport once, not keep a scan of it.

[macintux]

That seems fraught with peril also. Does Twitter do any check of the data? If not, you've probably just dramatically expanded the market for fake IDs. If so, can governments monitor such verification attempts and associate them with new accounts? If you're living under a hostile regime would you trust Twitter with your ID regardless of assertions of confidentiality?

And there are many people who lack a driver's license and passport. Are they disenfranchised?

[kaoD]

> not keep a scan of it

What prevents me from using the same id in bot accounts then? Verification implies they have to keep some form of personal identification.

[bduerst]

That's a different problem though. What if you could do identification that didn't involve giving someone your passport?

Authentication adds a potential cost-of-reputation to social media content that you post, which in turn may raise the value of the content. If there were a safe, secure way to do it, then why not?

[eecc]

Oh great, so now we’d be tied down by chains of conformity. How’s that for a surprising change of meaning to the phrase “Global Village”!

[bduerst]

Could you explain how you be tied down by chains of conformity?