Share this page!

Enter Twitter Thread URL to Unroll

Needs to be the full URL like: https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on Twitter App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Tim Sweeney Profile picture
@TimSweeneyEpic
Apr 22 • 7 tweets • 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
People in this #BlockTheBlue pressure campaign are losers and goons. They're the cool kids from junior high who worked to exclude we nerds from cool kid events, plus the losers who joined in to gain cred. The elite-only verification system sucked, been criticizing it since 2018.
An online community like this should be a meritocracy, where everyone has an equal chance, and merit is earned rather than anointed by a corporation. Old school Twitter had found a great expression of merit with following & retweeting. The best rose to the top.
Then someone well-meaningly built a system for preventing impersonation through verification. But they broke the meritocracy with a policy deeming verification only for elite "noteworthy" users, while letting Twitter employees hand out verification to their friends as a perk.
This was followed by waves of Twitter employees realizing they'd been granted a social commodity (or income stream for the crooked) and started handing out blue checks in exchange for favors or IOUs. At peak, friends of friends of Twitter employees were brokering verification.
Key point is, this had NOTHING to do with verifying identity documents to prevent impersonation. They didn't do that. Twitter employees just clicked a few buttons and you were verified.
And there's Twitter's old unwritten practice of using verification to condition user speech, for example un-verifying Louis Farakhan as punishment for his words. I strongly disagree with Louis Farakhan's views, but I'm quite sure his identity verification was never in question.
In summary, old Twitter verification was promoted as identity verification, but open only to elites they deemed "noteworthy"; it was doled out to friends of employees without identity verification or noteworthiness ; and it was revoked as punishment for speech.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Tim Sweeney

Tim Sweeney Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @TimSweeneyEpic

Tim Sweeney Profile picture
Jan 15
A very interesting development in the AI art saga: litigation against several commercialized generative AI art sites whose machine learning models were trained on art scraped from the internet without the permission of the artists who made it.
The plaintiffs take the position that machine learning trained on art produces a model that’s comparable to a lossy compression of the original work, rather than generalized learnings comparable to those of a human artist. It’s an untested area of copyright law.
This technology moved from university research labs into commercialized use very rapidly, and the case highlights that content access that might constitute fair use in a research setting may become otherwise in a commercial setting.
Read 5 tweets
Tim Sweeney Profile picture
Aug 30, 2022
Almost all of the changes in Windows 11 make it worse. Lots more nag screens, can't dock task bar horizontally (which is bad on 16:9 monitors and totally insane on widescreen), can't save files in c:\, now the task bar clock disappeared, more hard to hide crapware.
At least it's sort of acknowledged that One Drive failed since it's easy to uninstall now. But now we see a minefield of antipatterns to trick users into thinking they must create a Microsoft account to use windows, though it's bypassable. Unnecessary login to use widgets, etc.
Start menu contains a bunch of third party apps I haven't installed. Are they preinstalled, or are just links into the Microsoft Store? Are they paid ads or is Microsoft being genuinely helpful by pointing users to commonly used apps they might want? Can't tell.
Read 8 tweets
Tim Sweeney Profile picture
Jul 20, 2022
This article leads with an outright falsehood. Journalists should beware of Google PR representatives giving talking points like this - it’s no longer “spin” as it was in the earlier days of the tech industry - it’s simply lies now. And they’ve done it to us before.
I am still very bitter about the time Epic sent a confidential email to Google senior executives and general counsel, documenting our plans for Fortnite, and they took it to a naive journalist to leak it with Google talking points, not citing Google as the source.
Google maintains a list of “friendlies”, journalists who will print Google talking points without the ordinary scrutiny expected in journalistic ethics.
Read 4 tweets
Tim Sweeney Profile picture
Oct 27, 2021
This tax bill would likely end founder control of lots of independent companies - perhaps including Epic Games.

washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021…
When the press says I’m a billionaire, they don’t mean I have billions of dollars in the bank. Never had, likely never will. In my case it just means I started a company 30 years ago and my ownership stake in it is now very valuable.
For all American history, capital gains have been taxed when one sells stock. This new proposal would tax theoretical “gains” continually based on a company’s market value increasing.
Read 8 tweets
Tim Sweeney Profile picture
Sep 22, 2021
Apple lied. Apple spent a year telling the world, the court, and the press they’d "welcome Epic’s return to the App Store if they agree to play by the same rules as everyone else". Epic agreed, and now Apple has reneged in another abuse of its monopoly power over a billion users.
Just last week, Epic agreed with Apple that we would play by the same rules as everyone else.
Late last night, Apple informed Epic that Fortnite will be blacklisted from the Apple ecosystem until the exhaustion of all court appeals, which could be as long as a 5-year process.
Read 10 tweets
Tim Sweeney Profile picture
Sep 9, 2021
More insight on Apple lobbying! This practice of simultaneously engaging deeply partisan political lobbying groups on both ends of the political spectrum is really strange in the tech industry.
On one hand, they have the Chamber of Progress (progresschamber.org, "a new tech industry coalition devoted to a progressive society"). On the other extreme, they have ALEC (described in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_…), both involved in wildly unrelated social and political causes.
The right to petition government is a fundamental right in a democratic society. So, Apple has every right to lobby. But why wrap it up in partisan politics like this? Why not just advocate directly for one's views, in one's own name, or together with other like-minded companies?
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Send Email!

:(