Social Media and its influence

Twitter is cracking down on hate speech and not just by looking at its own site. 

In what amounts to a major shift in Twitter policy, the company announced on Friday that it will be monitoring user's behavior "on and off the platform" and will suspend a user's account if they affiliate with violent organizations, according to an update to Twitter's Help Center on Friday. 

"You also may not affiliate with organizations that — whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform — use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes," the update reads.

Twitter isn't taking action immediately. Rather, it's given users until December 18, 2017 when it will then begin enforcing the rule. The month-long wait is due to regulations in the European Union that require companies to inform users of a new policy change 30 days prior to enforcement.

The Dec. 18 deadline also applies to using "hateful images or symbols" in profile images or profile headers. Twitter will also monitor for hate speech in usernames, display names, and profile bios.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/social-media-and-its-influence/?&tag=Twitter

It happened to me (and many others). It could happen to you.

So what happened?
Thankfully others had done their detective work while I was listening to podcasts at 30,000 feet. The message had been sent from my account (and many others) via a third-party app called Twitter Counter.

Twitter Counter requests read *and* write access to your Twitter account, in order to do its jiggery pokery counting your Twitter followers. I gave Twitter Counter access to my account in October 2014, and that clearly was a decision I now regret. Quite why it would need write access, unless it is planning its own self-promotion, I can't say.

The fact that a third-party app was used means that the hackers didn't have my Twitter password. Phew! It also meant, however, that they didn't have to try to bypass Twitter's Login Verification feature in order to tweet from mine and thousands of other Twitter users' accounts.

What should you do if you had your Twitter account hijacked in this way?

Delete the offending tweet, and revoke the offending third-party app's access to your Twitter account.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://support.twitter.com/articles/76052

http://www.scoop.it/t/social-media-and-its-influence/?&tag=Twitter