X accused of taking money from terrorists by selling checkmarks to US enemies Elon Musk's X has been accused of flouting US sanctions by providing verified accounts to individuals and entities affiliated with Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Houthi rebels, and other personae non gratae. The allegations were leveled against the Twitter successor by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), which published a report on …
This post has been deleted by its author
Ever wonder what those hundreds of people Xitler fired did all day? Here's another perfect example of what a regulatory affairs/compliance department would stop you from doing.
Someone needs to lob a sueball at Xitler and Xitter under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Homeland Security should also freeze Xitter's assets and seize the domain given it now has violated anti-terrorism laws. Back before Xitler's takeover, Twitter walked a very fine line just allowing these people to have accounts, but since they weren't taking money from them they were just barely on the right side of the law. Xitter has now most definitely crossed the line into illegal territory. Government regulators should be wholly unsympathetic to the claims of "But we don't have the people necessary to monitor these things!" They did, but Xitler fired them, and it's no excuse for failing to follow the law. in any case If I pull the Sammy Hagar defense of, "I can't drive 55," the officer is not going to accept that as a valid excuse and will give me a speeding ticket.
Back before Xitler's takeover, Twitter walked a very fine line just allowing these people to have accounts, but since they weren't taking money from them they were just barely on the right side of the law.
Yes, that was mentioned in the article, and it indicates that among those thousands of people fired there weren't anyone working on compliance.
A more serious issue is that the media are treating many of the individuals mentioned as freedom fighters. At least in my country that happens and I assume similar patterns can be observed elsewhere.
If crimefighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires... what do freedomfighters fight?
-- George Carlin
Anyway, on a more serious note, personal views on the righteousness of the cause the person(s) are fighting for really are irrelevant here. The US government has placed them on a sanctions list, Xitter is incorporated in the US, so Xitter is expected to follow all applicable US laws and regulations. That includes not doing any kind of business with any individual or organization on the sanction list without getting prior approval. So, unless Xitler can pull such prior approval out of his ass, which seems highly unlikely, Xitter has violated some pretty serious laws, and ignorance of the law isn't considered a valid defense in the US. Personally, I find that to be rather stupid, but unfortunately my opinion on the subject doesn't represent official policy.
some others may have visible account check marks without receiving any services that would be subject to sanctions
The tick itself is the service. Musk has made that very clear.
You can't give a sanctioned group or individual a good or service that would normally be paid for for free either.
If the TPP allegations are true (trivial to prove in court), Twitter has been deliberately flouting the law and its full force must be brought to bear.
《treating many of the individuals mentioned as freedom fighters.》
The difference between terrorist and freedom fighter is often a case of from what side you looking as both have been responsible for unspeakable atrocities.
Its the commerce that is the problem here. I understand the blue tick is supposed to indicate that X has verified the account is held/controlled by the party it represents itself to be. I don't see any problem with Hezbollah etc having such an indication (a green tick, or crossed scimitars etc) subject to it being lawful for it to have a presence at all. If you had inclination to read their material at least you would know its from the beast's mouth as it were.
I would imagine restrictions, if any, on the content would apply uniformly to all account classes eg the verified account of the Ruritanian Union of Fascists would equally be restricted in their hateful content that they could publish as some far right unverified nutter from Wombledon.
Not that I believe Musk's crew verify anything as I suspect X is just taking the money and printing off another blue tick. (That a "tick" is also a disease carrying, blood sucking parasite is particularly apropos. :)
In this case the cash is piddling and why be so precious about banning these accounts if that is the intent? I wouldn't have thought US first amendment protections would apply to non resident, non US citizen, non natural persons.
Not that I have ever had any truck with any social media. If uncle Bulgaria and Rupert Hentzau want to slug it out on X no skin off my nose.
The problem comes in that they're charging money for those blue ticks. That means they are accepting money in exchange for providing a service for people who are on a US sanctions list. That is 100% illegal for any US company, which Xitter is, to do without getting prior approval from the government. So, while there's at least the possibility, that Xitler could pull out some letter from the US State Department saying that they are allowed to sell blue ticks to these individuals, the odds of that happening seem remote to the point of impossibility. You'd probably see a leprechaun riding a unicorn chasing the tooth fairy (while sober) before you saw Xitler be able to come up with any such approval.
At least in the before times of long, long ago (or at least what seems like a long time ago because Xitler is as exhausting as any ill-behaved toddler) Twitter wasn't actually selling anything to these people, merely allowing them to use what was effectively an ad supported service. Walking a very fine line, to be sure, but they were juuuust on the right side of the law. Once money changes hands, however, you're on the other side of the Rubicon.
" I wouldn't have thought US first amendment protections would apply to non resident, non US citizen, non natural persons."
US courts have repeatedly ruled that the constitution protects everyone - citizens and non- alike, within US borders
The whole idea of "proscribed organisations" skirts pretty close to what the US founders wished to avoid being imported from Europe
On a more sociological note: The amount of attention being paid to these orgs distracts from the real issues (they're symptoms, not causes) and centuries of vilent conflict have demonstrated the current situation inevitably ratchets up as horrific crimes on one side are responded with by horrific crimes on the other
We all expected South Africa to burn up that way. Nelson Mandela demonstrated another path is possible
"We all expected South Africa to burn up that way. Nelson Mandela demonstrated another path is possible"
Very much so, but those who were impoverished before majority government still appear to be impoverished, and crime rates over the past few years show a country at war with itself, for example almost 250,000 murders in the past ten-eleven years, and rated as more dangerous even than Somalia.
Given the flower of hope by Mandela (and de Klerk), it seems that flower was trampled into the dirt.
We don't have time for rational solutions!-- George Carlin
On an equally sociological note, we could do things like send money to central american countries to help stabilize them and provide economic opportunities to cut down on the number of migrants showing up at the southern border, but then what would the GOP use to keep their base angry and scared so they show up at the voting booth? The major political parties aren't really interested in solving problems because then they won't be able to motivate their base to turn out to vote for them later. So, problems just get kicked down the road until they simply cannot be ignored any longer. Then they do the absolute minimum possible to fix the issue and the cycle starts all over again.
The one thing the founders of this country seemed to be blind to, was the idea that in the future politicians wouldn't be high minded idealists like them. You'd have people like Jordan, Greene, Boebert, Gaetz, and Trump who have zero interest in governing, only in setting fire to the entire institution and using it as a distraction to steal as much wealth for themselves as they possibly can.
"On an equally sociological note, we could do things like send money to central american countries to help stabilize them and provide economic opportunities to cut down on the number of migrants showing up at the southern border"
Forget handouts they never work, better still build the wall the Repugnant Party wants. Except my version of it tells the parasite corporations that have gone to the murdering Chinese bastards with all them jobs to move those factories to central/south America. Then you have wall of factories providing them with jobs in their own countries for people who are less likely to want to destroy your society so they can continue to murder anyone they wish with impunity and impose their system to take over the planet. While we are at it tell them same corporations they will respect the human rights of people they employ there unlike in China or they face a corporate and personal death penalty for the executives in charge.
The whole idea of "proscribed organisations" skirts pretty close to what the US founders wished to avoid being imported from Europe
Ah, yes, those high-minded Founders and their staunch support for liberty, none of whom would never have supported the Alien and Sedition Acts, say, or initiated Removal, or had their allies in Congress pass the Non-importation Act and Embargo Act, which — stay with me here — proscribed commerce with certain organizations.
The Founders were clearly well within the liberal sector of European-derived political thought. Their liberalism was also qualified in all sorts of ways, and differently for each of them. Restricting commerce in various ways was certainly not at all out of the question for most of them.
Think of how it all started: America was founded by slave owners who informed us, "All men are created equal." All "men," except Indians, niggers [that's the quote, I just copy pasta'd it], and women. Remember, the founders were a small group of unelected, white, male, land-holding slave owners who also, by the way, suggested their class be the only one allowed to vote. To my mind, that is what's known as being stunningly--and embarrassingly--full of shit.-- George Carlin
Though, I have to say, Ben Franklin sounds like he would have been a blast to hang out with given his favorite hobbies included drinking and whoring.
Can we, once and for all, lay to rest the illusion that Musk is a business genius ?
He isn't even a capable business manager.
This whole affair is because Musk is stupid. He thinks the law does not apply to him and he can do and say what he wants.
This time, I hope he finds out that he really can't, and realizes what big doodoo he got himself in.
I'd say maybe it's a case similar to GWB where he drank/smoked/snorted his way down the intelligence scale, but there's really nothing to suggest he was ever competent.
I do hope that the State Department opens an investigation into this and makes him realize just how easy the SEC was going on him. White collar business crimes, like market manipulation are one thing. Actively engaging with terrorists and sanctioned individuals is a whole other level. Probably no legal means to strip him of his US citizenship, forcibly divest him of all his business assets (or at least SpaceX), and deport him back to South Africa, but I can dream.
I used to be a Tweeter and had fun.
They along came X and the fun died when it became obvious that all X wanted was the money - from anybody who'd pay.
It has its uses though, we now know that 'verified' accounts are nothing of the kind - it's just another cash grab.
He paid too much and wants his money back and the only way that's going to happen is from us.- or rather those who haven't read the memo and left.
Well somebody had to pay even if the Chief Berk hadn't entered the picture - you had fun, but Twitter Inc never made any money, so the only options were FB levels of advertising and privacy invasion, users paying directly, cutting costs, or more likely some combination of the three.
I used to enjoy scrolling through Twitter over coffee in the morning. I had a lovely curated timeline of retro tech, science and computing which was fun to peruse and often linked me to interesting, more in-depth articles. I never experienced the hateful, cesspit side of Twitter that many complained of. It seemed to me that if you were careful who you followed, with judicial use of the block / not interested functionality, you could create a pretty interesting timeline.
Within weeks of Musk taking over, my feed was infested with nut ball US right-wing politicians (which as a UK resident I had no interest in), anti-gay hate-mongering, anti-semitism, and of course Musk himself (who I definitely did not follow). It was just impossible to keep on top of it and get back to what I previously had, so I gave up and moved to Mastodon.
I hadn't logged into Twitter in over a year until earlier this week. There's a company I needed to get hold of (that's another long and frustrating story) and Twitter seemed the only way to do so. I logged in to send them a message (which I couldn't do in the end as only verified users could DM them), but whilst I was there I glanced at the timeline. The first post was a video of a drug lord being tied to an anchor and thrown overboard a ship by a rival gang, the second was CCTV footage of a father dragging his daughter around by her hair and kicking the s**t out of her for having an OnlyFans account, and the third was a very violent fight on the Tube. All these were posted by 'verified' accounts. I didn't look any further.
How in the hell could these posts possible be recommended to me given what I follow? Twitter truly is just a 4Chan clone now. XChan maybe?
How are American citizens or businesses supposed to be able to vet every customer? I doubt they can even do that for their fellow Americans. It looks like a fascist trap - a bar so low that anyone can fail, and those the government want to shut down, can be. I guess they could use it to demand all services operate with full IDs (no Facebook for you, unless you submit biometrics and passport info to head office in the states, plus a processing fee and a letter from a local cleric). This is likely to be part of the rolling tribalisation of the internet - only offer services to your own citizens within your own territory and everyone supplies ID, so your honest, trustworthy big brother of a government can keep tabs on everyone.
Did you not read TFA? The second paragraph has the answer to your question.
An account belonging to Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Hasrallah even claimed to be ID verified – meaning the Lebanese militant would have to submit a selfie and a government-issued identity card.
Also, plenty of other businesses manage to do this. Is it a PITA? Sure. That's more or less the entire point. This is also one of the things a regulatory affairs/compliance department would have handled, but Xitler, in his infinite "wisdom" decided to fire all of them. It's possible, in the past, Twitter "sold" something to someone they shouldn't have. Then as soon as it became known, the RA department immediately ordered the money be refunded, change reverted, and a revision in policy to prevent it from happening again. All followed by a voluntary report to the US State Department explaining what happened. If you recognize you made a mistake and show you did your utmost to correct and prevent it from happening again, a lot of government agencies will let you off with little more than a warning. When you show absolutely no contrition, or worse, actively resist efforts to affect changes, that's when you have the full force and weight of the US government come landing on you, as Xitler is already finding out with the SEC, and is now likely to get the DOJ all up in his business, literally and figuratively.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
