the dummy showed values to. greetings and salutations back in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and one nine hundred ninety s. when the internet as we know it was just a gleam in the eye of a.o.l. investors we have bulletin boards and forums it was there that we learned a valuable lesson that the person you were talking to online might not actually be who they claim to be that lesson seems to have been lost in recent years as the scourge of trolls bots and spammers have seemingly lost as their platforms like twitter have gained popularity we went from being skeptics of what we saw to assuming that a blue check or a profile picture confirmed the identity of the person communicating it is those

same trolls bots and spammers that have led twitter to lock accounts they deemed suspicious and required validation of identity to unlock however twitter didn't remove those locked accounts from the platform nor did they remove them from other users follower accounts which is what led twitter legal policy and trust in safety leave visa god to announce that this week will be removing these locked accounts from follower accounts across profiles globally as a result the number of followers displayed on many profiles may go down the estimated number of accounts to be purged nearly seventy million close to seventy percent or twenty four is close to twenty percent of its active monthly users this comes years literally years after the problem of trolls and bots was brought to their attention game or gate didn't make them decide to start protecting its users despite death and rape threats being bandied about by blue check users and their troll. armies it seems that twitter didn't really care about the problem until it

affected their advertisers in the world where worth comes from follower accounts advertisers were in no way that the influencers people who get paid to pretend like they like products didn't actually have the reach their follower accounts claimed unilever chief marketing officer keith we need told journalists last month that people having an artificially inflated follower count made up of bots of redundant accounts is that best deceiving and at worst fraud it serves no one and undermines trust in the entire system it seems like capitalism and good sooner isn't saving the day or simply building our forms of matter of communication in their image so let's watch the purge influence our way to some answers and start watching the hawks. the only legal theory that looks like real that this would be a large apart of. what it looks like you let down i got.

a little. bit uncertain. welcome everybody to watching the hockey i am tabitha wallace. and joining me from new york is my co-host tyrrel ventura you do an. always a pleasure with the wow i am shocked shocked to find out the our third grader and his three million followers. are maybe maybe that's a real person. but this random person on twitter the you know i'm amazed that this person is you know they're going to see this purge it's a long time coming and far over due here i mean these are these loft accounts like i said to be clear since that's kind of been reported a little like oh they're finally delete or they're deleting all these people but

these are people who weren't able to already blocked accounts can't tweet they can't like or read tweet and they're not served any ads but they remained in follower accounts which in a sense is is false advertising you know it's from twitter to its advertisers and to users who are engaging influencers it kind of wonders that this is really going to affect people like katy perry and taylor swift who rely on those follower accounts to demand more money for paid tweets which is where they make all the money on twitter so tight what do you think about this move and do you think it's timely. no i don't think it's timely because i think it's long overdue i mean it's hilarious as you mentioned earlier that it took business finally like waking up saying oh these people we promised all these hundreds of thousand dollars to aren't delivering in our advertising so now it's a problem but like as you alluded to back when it was game or gave back when people are being trolled back when people are being threatened and their lives are being threatened online no one batted an eye you know so it's hilarious to me to see this

happening and yeah i think it's going to affect celebrities and affect a lot because a lot of these marketing companies especially in hollywood music you know they tell you that someone is popular when really they might not be as popular as they are as they're advertising but when you see you know six million followers are just that person must be popular so i guess i must listen to what they have to say but that might not be true we see this in news media all the time. ultimately we when we kind of want to have. some kind of measurement and twitter c.e.o. jack dorsey said in march that quote ultimately we want to have a measurement of how it affects the broader society and public health but also individual health as well and in june of this year alexander woodward who's a digital organizing director for action organizing for action remarked on the effect social change use has on our real communities let's take a listen if we're thinking connection on line and we're finding shallower

connections there are loneliness rates are going up it's now considered a health epidemic and we need to have a conversation not just about what's happening on social media but whether we're actually being wise with the tools that we have. we're getting smart but can we also get wise so time to tell me you know is do you think the problem with social media influence can be solved on this user and when it's now becoming is being seen as a public health crisis it's a threat to democracy it's all of these things or are censorship advocates in some way right in saying we have to ban some people from the public square i don't believe that you ban people from the public square unless they're actively threatening someone which is the you know which you know that breaks the first amendment me here in the us in the first minute protects us in speech even online or in person you can say what you want until you cross the line we're suddenly you're actively threatening someone personally and threatening their life then it

can be no one then it can come only be considered free speech you know especially as a direct threat but i don't i don't i don't think leaving it up to an imaginary arbitrator to say ok this person is good this person is bad now if it's a fake account and it's like completely wrote a bot yeah get rid of it but if it is someone's account even as a troll they private business can say hey we don't want this person on our business but in general in terms of the country itself that we were still protected by the first amendment you can still say what you want to say and i would rather protect you know unpopular speech in order to preserve. popular speech yeah i totally agree and i think one of the things you know the last thing i want to say on this today is it's sad to see that rape and death threats were not considered a big enough issue that a an election made people actually look at it and over a few you know bought accounts and then the fact that it's really become this now

it's an advertiser's issue and it affects wall street it's sad that we couldn't protect people and public health just because it was the right thing to do it is. it is no secret that many of the social issues fueling america's modern day divisions have roots far deeper and more complicated than the most recent election season or latest cable news controversy take for example black lives matter in its current name the movement may have come to life exactly four years ago to the day after the acquittal after the controversial acquittal of george zimmerman in the trayvon martin murder trial of the long sordid his store istria of racially fueled violence against african-americans goes much further back through years of segregation jim crow post civil war reconstruction and our own and our nation's original sin the institution of slavery and in an unexpected move that became public this week the u.s. department of justice made clear it is still interested in resolving one of the most famous cold cases of this history of wrongs the brutal mississippi murder in

one nine hundred fifty five of emmett till a fourteen year old african-american visiting from chicago who was accused of making inappropriate advances on the local white woman and was later found savagely murdered and drowned in a river to this day the emmett till tragedy leaves civil rights a story ends with more questions than answers but is there a chance this may finally change. incredible story incredible story that's just come up and i mean it's interesting because i guess what spurred this was that a book came out last year and in it it was documented that both of the men who were accused of it had admitted and also that. the woman herself had admitted in interviews that it never that he hadn't done anything that the story was wrong and her husband said whatever the boy did it didn't he didn't deserve what happened to him you know it's sixty years now since the emmett till murder and the resolution

to the case is complicated by the fact that these witnesses and suspects aren't even alive some of them the to original suspects so you know we have to wonder what new information could the d.o.j. be operating on and that it mentions in this report to congress. oh yeah and i mean obviously this is a good thing at the end of the day because this was one of those cases there was a you know as you say you know it was a it was a it was a rallying cry in the civil rights movement and it shocked the nation and the time when when i think a lot of people would were choosing to ignore the violence and anger and vitriol being spewed at you know black americans so it is shocking and i'm i mean i'm like you i'm at the edge of my seat i want to know what they cover you know what what are they investigate because i'm shocked that this d.o.j. of all the o'jays of jeff sessions department of justice attorney general is actually investigating this that's what's really shocking about this story it is

pretty sure i'm amazed it's almost as if has no one told jeff sessions that this is a lie that going on because i don't feel like this is something that came across the stuff that's my personal opinion in my humble opinion i don't think this is something he was like all we really got to get on this is a civil rights nightmare. but because the case was so swiftly acquitted these two main suspects who as you said there's a lot of documentation that they later admitted that they did it and despite some pretty damning eyewitness testimony a lot of people are seeing a lot of clear parallels between emmett till and trayvon martin a few years ago when some kind of resolution to this decades old murder helps you in some of the tension that's given rise to you know modern movements black lives matter and it's you know in the black eyes matter movement. well i mean you would hope you know i it's hard because on one sense i want to say that like as a society you know black white all of us we you can't let murders go on you know

you can't let murders go on avenged in that sense you want to find justice you know no matter the crime and i think it's important because it is a file and it's a building block if we can get if we can bring justice to a case that sixty years old then there's no reason we can't bring justice to a case that good could come up next month next week. next year and we've got to learn from that that everybody no matter your career you will be held accountable for your actions and this is one of those cases the could could bring that accountability that we so desperately need right now i absolutely and you know for whatever you know however you feel about this administration they really made headlines by granting a posthumous pardon to african american boxer jack johnson and commuted the racially charged life sentence of alice marie johnson and i think this sort of renewed focus on the emmett till case can be seen as a sort of continuation of a subtle approach to writing some of those those infamous cases of of racial

injustice and hopefully even in the midst of what we're going on in the united states and abroad we can really make some make some right in this situation thank you so much for joining me from new york. thank you as we go to break operators out forget to let us know what you think of the topics we've covered on facebook and twitter that are to dot com coming up for the commercial underbelly of breastfeeding and the baby formula industry watching the. skies or financial survival. when customers go buy your dish to find. well reducing lower. that's undercutting but what's good for market is not good for the global economy. it's hard to imagine. the war

a nazi don't it was still active. in the nineteen seventies cretonne had as the chair of its board a man convicted of mass murder and slavery. a german company develops in the demise of a drug that was promoted as completely safe even during pregnancy. terrible side effects what has happened to my baby is anything but. you know she said she's just got choked up minix a little mind victims i have to this day received no compensation they never apologized for the suffering that. not only want the money i want the revenge. like a bull in a china shop donald trump style and negotiation skills were on full display at this year's annual nato gathering he was not shy about how he feels about the alliance now the trump summit is front and center would be a mere photo op or something more.

economist martin friedman remarked once that the only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits but what happens when the way to maximize profits results in eight hundred thousand child deaths per year well when a resolution to protect promote and support breastfeeding was introduced at the world health assembly this may it it wasn't expected to cause much of a stir and they didn't until last week when the new york times reported that the u.s. delegation allegedly communicated that if ecuador refused to drop the resolution washington when unleashed punishing trade measures and withdraw a crucial.