Taliban Endorses Twitter Over Threads

NevermindNoMind@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 921 points – Taliban Endorses Twitter Over Threads
vice.com

Anas Haqqani, a senior leader in the Taliban, has officially endorsed Twitter over Facebook-owned competitor Threads.

“Twitter has two important advantages over other social media platforms,” Haqqani said in an English post on Twitter. “The first privilege is the freedom of speech. The second privilege is the public nature & credibility of Twitter. Twitter doesn't have an intolerant policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it.”

Twitter has fallen out of favor with many people since Elon Musk took over the company last year...The Taliban, however, seems to love it. Two Taliban officials even bought blue verification check marks after Musk started selling them in January.

Haqqani noted that the biggest draw of Twitter was this lax moderation policy...Facebook and TikTok both view the Taliban as a terrorist organization and disallow them from posting. It’s a ban that persists to this day.

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Pretty funny to see a member of the Taliban espouse freedom of speech. I really doubt that

It's just like Elons definition. To these people freedom of speech means freedom to say what they want and not be challenged by pesky things like facts.

Freedom from consequence for me but not for thee

Freedom of speech for Muslim men and not women or infidels.

You forgot the quotation marks. It's "Freedom of Speech." ;)

It's not THE freedom of speech, it's Elon's freedom of speech. As in, he's free to choose what's shared on the platform he forcibly acquired.

This is not a good look. The Taliban supporting something is never good.

A handful of years ago, US Republicans were losing their shit over Muslims and the Taliban, basically saying they were the biggest threat. I'm honestly waiting for them to realize that their views are almost completely aligned with the Taliban's. Both against abortion and LGBTQ rights, both want religion in schools and to get rid of the separation of church and state, etc. It doesn't at all surprise me that Republicans and the Taliban have the same preferred social media.

Just like how people you can't stand the most just subconsciously remind you of yourself, republicans can't stand the taliban because it's like looking in a mirror for them.

That's because they're both authoritarians.

It's the same reason Tankies hate Nazi's when they're both essentially the same thing in practice despite their economic outlooks being opposite. Authoritarianism is authoritarianism, everything else is just a different flavor.

Christian authoritarians think they're good and muslim's sharia law bad, but in reality they're just two religions trying to force their shit on everyone else. They physically cannot see that it's the same because to them it's "morally correct" and therefore not authoritarianism.

It makes no sense but it makes sense to the general public. When it ceases to make sense to the general public, it will be seen as you and I see it. I'm not holding my breath until the general public figures this out. You really can't fix dumb and uneducated. It's what politicians count on. Your dumb and uneducated vote manipulated by key terms thrown out there and reproduced in whatever media you like and is willing to send to you.

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Twitter, the only social network endorsed by the Taliban and caturd! What's not to love?

Well, it depends on what do you wish for Twitter.

The Taliban were one of the first groups to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It's the Taliban, the appropriate action is to ignore everything they say because they're religious extremists who commit violent actions against random citizens of their own and other nations.

I they said Twitter was bad and endorsed Threads would you still give a shit? lol

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This is some !nottheonion@lemmy.world stuff

Sweet. Thank you for the link! Is there an ate the onion community out there yet?

I'm new to Lemmy and have my account on Aussie.zone. Do I need to register an account on the lemmy.world instance for that link to work? I'm using the Connect app on Android if that helps.

Nope, your app should be able to send you there by clicking that ID. If it isn't, then that's likely a feature that is still being implemented (it's the equivalent to r/subreddit on Reddit).

Btw in case you haven't noticed, you're already commenting on a Post from lemmy.world, so no, you don't need a separate account.

"Two Taliban officials even bought blue verification check marks after Musk started selling them in January"

I am dead

I remember back around 2012-2013 ISIS using twitter to post gore videos and twitter was lazy asf about dealing with it

social media sites give 0 fucks about properly moderating anything but popular euro languages

At the time Facebook fueled a genocide in Myanmar they had practically no moderation for Burmese content, if I recall correctly.

I always figured Twitter was working with the US government by keeping those accounts open, helping them track location and whatnot.

Hahahaha this is genuinely HILARIOUS.

Thank you, I needed that.

Twitter had been like that even before Elon tho. Let's not also forget Facebook is fine and dandy with ISIS and other extremist groups

That should be a good thing in your view tho, no? Aren't you the one defending the presence of extremists into online platforms? Shouldn't Facebook and Twitter allow and even put under the spotlight these kind of ideologies?

Fuck it man, go for a full racist party then; why limit yourself to institutionalised racism when you can have ignorant racism directly?

We have that already with the left and the right. Have you been living under a rock last 30 years?

As far as I am aware the only openly racist party being allowed on social media is the alt-right (the institutionalised right on the other hand is still clever enough to keep its racism hidden behind a façade of economics bullshit).

Pray tell, which extremist left wing organisation have been supporting twitter, threads or any other social media platform?

And since you are there, can you please explain how can you post a message without using your brain?

Terrorists like Elon Musk. That seems like his plan.

Prolly the best endorsement for Threads over Twitter. Dang never thought I'd be rooting for Mark

I am rooting for neither. This is not a lesser of two evils situation. Lemmy, Mastodon, and others do exist.

Oh same. But for users. I know brands won't come to Lemmy or Mastodon just yet and I'd rather get my sports news from Threads than Twitter.

Plus... Seeing Musk seethe is always so relaxing and fun

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I'm speechless at how ludicrous this headline is. I feel like even the Onion would reject it for being too bonkers.

Not that this changes anything but it's worth noting that the Taliban were provided a platform on Twitter even before they took power and before even Elon acquired it.

Right now Facebook is also full of hate-speech by Islamists who circumvent hate-speech filters by writing in Arabic or Parsi, as Meta's AI in those languages is a complete failure, very biased as it's trained on hateful content already as laws in those countries favor hate-speech (as an example, in Saudi Arabia being an atheist is considered "terrorism" and in most MENA countries homophobic content is normal) and moderators are sourced locally and hence also very biased.

There's a disturbing trend of big tech being comfortable hosting extremists and borderline terrorist spokespeople. And my unpopular guess is that it is obviously because the US wants the Taliban and other Islamist groups to be legitimized. Why? I'm not sure, geopolitics is totally above my pay grade. But it is clear that historically the US had no issues siding with hardcore Islamists in the MENA region and right now there is a clear trend to normalize Islamist propaganda online.

Reminder that the Taliban are still preventing girls from going to school since they took over, despite a certain president assuring us that the US isn't abandoning Afghan women and that the Taliban have "changed" anyway, and they cracked down on female university students too.

They're okay with it because it looks good for the bean counters and KPIs. There's no KPI for "we removed hate speech visibility by 50%" but there is one for "we got 50 million new users from MENA on our platform to show ads to."

Why is Facebook not beholden to the countries in which it provides service to provide the service those countries and people prefer?

Your problem is with those countries and people, not with social media.

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I mean, total clickbait article but hilarious nontheless.

if they really want freedom of speech, then they should use gab.com

Dear lord...

This comment made me open an incognito window and type in gab.com and I can assure you "Dear lord" is an understatement

The top post is a horrifyingly racist diatribe by an "American of Japanese descent" then the second post is Tru*mp insisting that 'ol Joe has a coke problem

WTF

I tried it too, but it seems my pihole already has that domain fully blocked. Probably for the best.

Phew, good little pihole!

I'm halfway through setting one up but having trouble with it potentially buggering up my streaming TV box that came with the router. Wife will kill me if she can't watch her Poirot

you should be able to whitelist devices. Or alternatively have it running without a blocklist and check what domains the box needs, then whitelist them.

Wow. This place is ridiculous.

I bet a quarter of the users are FBI agents. We need more "safe" spaces for this. Rather have all the right-wing terrorists in one spot instead of scattered to the wind.

This may seem surprising, but Parag Agarwal, the Twitter CEO before elongated muskrat had a history of supporting isis views from his old tweets (there was a whole news article on it that has sadly been deleted). Really twitter CEOs have been fucked up politically since the beginning.

So I read threads google play store reviews and most of them are bots. I think meta is using bots to hype threads downloads and stupid media might have taken money from zuck to post the news. Influencers and celebrities are definitely paid to use threads and the sheeps follow.

Using an existing product to artificially inflate user counts for a new product and padding it out with bots. That sounds nothing like......eh who am I kidding. This sounds exactly like zuck. And I be the bots are his family.

i only heard of threads literally 2 days ago from here

This is so sad that it's fucking hilarious. Now we have social media competing for the fucking worst human beings on the planet to join their platform. It just goes to show how being an evil asshole is profitable. 😼

Ah, yes, I was waiting for the Taliban to tell me which one of these two online clusterfucks to start using.

I'm surprised they even care about Twitter, wouldn't they want to be underground?

They are governing Afghanistan, why wouldn't they have a Twitter?

Plus, even ISIS used Twitter (and maybe still does?). It's a good propaganda tool.

Twitter: owned by Saudi Arabia, endorsed by the Taliban. Great new tagline!

I think the Dear Leader KJU should also hop on the Musk train.

Ah train you say... so when is the hyperloop Kabul coming ??? ;-)

Why endorse a social media app? What kind of war are they fighting

The Talliban accusing a company (Meta) of having intolerant policies is perhaps the most insanely hypocritical thing I've heard. I love it! "They don't tolerate our intolerance"

Two Taliban officials even bought blue verification check marks after Musk started selling them in January.

Isn't it illegal to take money from terrorist organizations?

I think they have to be on a sanctions list for it to be illegal. The Taliban is almost certainly on it though.

The Taliban should spin up their own Mastodon instance.

Have the Taliban considered self hosting a Mastodon instance?

Wow. When you've lost the Talaban who do you have, really?

"Twitter doesn’t have an intolerant policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it.” -- if your brain shutdown at this point as well, I'd like to welcome you to... if your brain shutdown at this point as well

Anyone remember the movie Middle Men (2009), a film based on Christopher Mallick's experience running an internet billing company that managed payments for paid porn sites? The film bombed at the box office, but there was one scene of interest which, in relevance to Haqqani's complaining is a good reminder as to why his complains about Meta are a moot point considering what happens to terrorists who use the internet. (Might be a little NSFW)

Pure comedy. Twitter vs threads has been extremely entertaining

Lol the leader of the taliban looks like a French designer

From "free speech absolutist" to "free speech extremist" 😃

I'm confident that the Taliban would never endorse me and I like it that way.

This is like the always sunny episode where Boko Haram endorses Wolf Cola.

So the alt-right and nazis flock to threads and the taliban endorse twitter. It just seems like losers all around.

"Twitter, if it's good enough for the Taliban, it's good enough for you."

This ruins my analogy of Meta federating with Activity Pub being like the Taliban promising to be good guys this time round.

“Twitter has two important advantages over other social media platforms,” Haqqani said in an English post on Twitter. “The first privilege is the freedom of speech. The second privilege is the public nature & credibility of Twitter. Twitter doesn't have an intolerant policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it.”

I.. am out of words...

What a fucking glowing recommendation and endorsement from an absolutely reputable organization. /s

On the other hand, I feel for those engineers at Twitter. Yeah they are choosing to stay, but one, for those of them who really believe in Twitter as a tool, it's not so easy to leave it behind all because corporate leadership is acting dumb, and two, even though Twitter still looks great on a resume, switching jobs is not as easy as stopping to go work for one place on one day and starting in another the next.

I have a feeling almost everyone left is on an H-1B visa so if they quit, they'll be deported

That is highly possible. I have a few coworkers on my job (software QA) that are on an H-1B. They have to be very calculated about both their professional and even personal life decisions because it all hinges on having/keeping a job.

Why not get those quirky Taliban guys over to America for a Twitter ad campaign, Elon. He could probably throw in a tour of Space X launch site or the Tesla car factory in Texas? (Just keep all the female employees out of sight, shh, mums the word...)

“We like any place where the leader declares cisgender to be a slur.”

No idea why people are still buying Teslas when the Taliban are literally a fan of the CEO.

"I can't believe Meta would do this to us! Is it wrong for us to be a patriarchial homophobic anti-Christian, anti-Jewish group online without having someone tell us we can't be our true authentic selves? How dare Mark Zuckerberg do this to us! At least Elon will let us be who we are. Now if you excuse me, I have to to let the leopards at the Kabul Zoo eat my face." --Taliban Senior Leader

Great news. I was waiting to hear what they thought about it...

I'm not their fan but I hope facebook can leverage this on their marketing.

"The Taliban prefers Twitter over Threads. So I've got that going for me, which is nice." - Elon Musk, probably.

Okay but, like, here's the ultimate test of best friendship, Anas:

Coke or Pepsi?

I bet facebook/ meta paid them to endorse the birdsite.

I’m sure you’re probably joking, but in case you weren’t, that would set Meta up for some federal crime type of trouble.

Good thing businesses don’t regularly break laws and just pay a relatively small fee in order to continue doing business. /s

Snark aside, I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if Zuckerfuck could afford to either just pay the fines or bribe public officials to letting this happen.