gradientsrneat 8 hours ago

Way too many social media CEOs claim that if they just force their users to dox themselves, that it will somehow prevent all the toxic engagement. You need look no further than Facebook to see where it goes. Not only does the toxicity not go away, but Facebook makes tons of money off political ads and "boosted" posts; they even have had an office of sorts in China, where Facebook is banned, for the purpose of making it easier for Chinese to sell ads/engagement on Facebook. And it's not just China doing this.

I'd reckon Twitter's long-term goal isn't to make the trolls go away, but to pay for the privilege of visibility.

  • baiac 7 hours ago

    I disagree. Knowing where an account is from helps gauge its authenticity.

    • thrwaway55 6 hours ago

      All it does is open second order businesses faking the authenticity

  • paulddraper 7 hours ago

    > You need look no further than Facebook to see where it goes.

    FB has required real identities for a long, long time.

    I don’t think that case study provides a good before/after analysis.

    ——

    People are “toxic” in general. They kill each other.

    But removing anonymity reduces it.

gryn 9 hours ago

so they'll pay for VPNs/Proxies with residential IPs in their desired location.

heck twitter will probably later offer you an option to buy it themselves or an option to set your desired location if you just pay for X++ premium bot services.

  • SmirkingRevenge 9 hours ago

    I assume most accounts getting exposed now basically started with the assumption that this info would not be exposed publicly, but they will adapt.

    So this is like a one time shot of transparency, that will quickly be useless (although I’ve been hearing it has been rolled back already - some speculation is because it exposed that the majority of MAGA boosters were not US based)

    • kardianos 8 hours ago

      No, it exposed the groypers and racists masquerading as MAGA or conservatives who are from foreign countries.

      • AuthAuth 6 hours ago

        Whats the difference? Both groups are firmly MAGA and supported by MAGA.

      • IncreasePosts 8 hours ago

        Yeah, and they will delete their accounts and start over, only logging in when they're on a US terminated VPN.

        Whoever was following these people aren't taking a hard look at themselves in the mirror now. They're just searching out the same content that is "really" American.

  • tguvot 5 hours ago

    I believe Twitter shows if account uses vpn

    • skinnymuch an hour ago

      How would you know a residential ip vpn is a vpn? Twitter won’t.

explodes 12 hours ago

I welcome this change. I wonder what the actual resulting impact will be, however.

  • hbarka 11 hours ago

    Don’t wonder, it’s obvious. When you turn on the light you see the cockroaches. Any transparency changes incentives. Look how the dynamics have changed overnight. Next, Twitter has to do something about the rage engagement payola.

    Why product managers overseeing any forum platform have not implemented something easy and obvious as account location metadata is something sociologists need to study.

    • Nextgrid 10 hours ago

      > Why product managers overseeing any forum platform have not implemented something easy and obvious as account location metadata is something sociologists need to study.

      All social platforms of the last decade rely on "engagement" and bots/trolls/fake accounts/etc contribute to that, both directly and in terms of posting inflammatory content that the masses then "engage" with.

    • karlgkk 9 hours ago

      > Why product managers overseeing any forum platform have not implemented something easy and obvious as account location metadata is something sociologists need to study.

      This was a common-ish feature for a long time and major sites like 4chan have had it in one form or another I think for literally decades at this point.

    • IncreasePosts 7 hours ago

      Maybe because it is so easy to fake, that putting that signal on there lends undue credence to it.

  • add-sub-mul-div 11 hours ago

    In six months they'll make hiding your location a feature of the paid subscription.

    • signatoremo 11 hours ago

      Well, a hidden location would be a signal too

      • verdverm 10 hours ago

        Could become an in group signal, essential creating so much noise the signal is no longer valuable

        one can imagine the influencers saying they X is lying or I fear for my safety and them the whole bandwagon joining in

NedF 7 hours ago

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