1y ago

Taliban Endorses Twitter Over Threads

www.vice.com Taliban Endorses Twitter Over Threads

"Other platforms cannot replace it," said a senior member of the Taliban in a tweet, explaining that Meta is "intolerant."

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.

Technology @lemmy.world

Calling all Armenian proverb explainers: All Balls, No Shaft (Musk v. Zuck)

www.vice.com /en/article/xgwg9n/taliban-endorses-twitter-over-threads

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Technology @beehaw.org

Taliban Endorses Twitter Over Threads

www.vice.com /en/article/xgwg9n/taliban-endorses-twitter-over-threads

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France @lemmy.world

Les Talibans préfèrent Twitter à Threads

www.vice.com /en/article/xgwg9n/taliban-endorses-twitter-over-threads

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175 comments

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
  
  Because facts disrupt their intended narrative. 🤡 🙄
- Freedom of their speech
- 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.
  
  People who fully agree can still hate each other. Maybe even more likely too since they occupy the same social niche.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- Funnily enough they also endorsed Trump before the 2020 election.
  
  They support only the best.
- Twitter, the only social network endorsed by the Taliban and caturd! What's not to love?
- I'm surprised the Taliban want to be associated with something so toxic.
- Well, it depends on what do you wish for Twitter.
- 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
- The Taliban were one of the first groups to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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.
- Nice little nugget there, thanks.

"Two Taliban officials even bought blue verification check marks after Musk started selling them in January"
I am dead
- Truth is often stranger than fiction.
- So funny, haha.

“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.
I know it's the Taliban but I cannot believe how braindead they are. They don't even remember that they're so anti free speech, they'll hunt down and kill dissidents especially women who have the guts to get an education.
- The taliban and Musk share the same values, then - to both of them, free speech means "you can say anything, as long as its what I like".
- See also: The CIA award for excellence in journalism.
- The only person who has true freedom of speech on Twitter is Elon Musk. If he doesn't like something you say (for example apparently he doesn't like the term 'Cisgender'), he can ban you
- It is freedom of speech for themselves.

Twitter: The terrorist's choice.
- The slogan of the century.

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.
  
  What do you mean?
- I always figured Twitter was working with the US government by keeping those accounts open, helping them track location and whatnot.
  
  Probably.

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?

Terrorists like Elon Musk. That seems like his plan.

But the real question is: which platform would Hitler use?
...not that I'd expect the answer to differ.
- Twittler?
- Mein Vook

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.

I mean, total clickbait article but hilarious nontheless.

This was a title I didn't expect to read today.
- Literally my exact thought
- NotTheOnion

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.
- Yeah I read this and was like is this new?

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
- Absolutely vile. It's quite literally on their front page.
- And I thought /pol/ was bad lol.
- 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.

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. 😼

Do they also drink Wolf Cola?

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

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.

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

I think the Dear Leader KJU should also hop on the Musk train.
- Ah train you say... so when is the hyperloop Kabul coming ??? ;-)

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.
- Good question

The Taliban should spin up their own Mastodon instance.
- Just wanna remind everyone that Mastodon also has a code of conduct, just like Lemmy does. The Taliban are explicitly not welcome on Mastodon as a platform. Nobody's gonna be able to stop them short of defederating, but just thought I'd share this.
- The Fediverse doesn't want violence. So Taliban are not welcome.

Have the Taliban considered self hosting a Mastodon instance?

"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

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

Zuck flying to Kabul for urgent talks over this critical endorsement deal

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

Lol the leader of the taliban looks like a French designer

Talibussy

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)
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=zfl8gxEWW7U
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  Good bot.
  
  Good bot.

Pure comedy. Twitter vs threads has been extremely entertaining

I'm not sure this is the kind of endorsement I would want.

This just reinforces my opinion of the Taliban as been jerks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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 glowing review!

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

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...)

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
  
  Am i wrong to think this sounds similar to slavery?
  
  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.

"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.

175 comments