For two weeks in a row Twitter
has suspended my account for 12 hours. I did not appeal either because their
algorithms are simply full of shit. I did document how the first time they
suspended me for replying to a tweet from another user in which I said I would
feel satisfied if Rudy Giuliani was tarred & feathered ... and perhaps
castrated. Had I used the word "gelded" the algorithm would not have
suspended me, as I proved by substituting that word in my commentary after the
suspension.
In addition, I mentioned how
Rudy Giuliani has regularly used their platform to lie, and outrageously
violate their inscrutable Rules. You can browse his timeline and fine countless
tweets that were ultimately removed (no doubt because of many complaints). It's
not clear whether Rudy's account was ever suspended, but I highly doubt it.
The number of direct attacks
and dangerous publication of private individuals' personal information by Rudy
and many other Right Wing personalities are easily documentable. For four years
Twitter sat by while Trump incessantly violated every possible interpretation
of their claimed Rules of Conduct. When they finally got around to doing the
right thing in the face of over 30,000 fact checked lies, the best they could
bring themselves to do was to post a mild warning that a particular tweet from
Trump contained disputed information!
I barely have 3,000 followers.
My ability to influence anybody is extremely limited. While I do not restrict
my responses to vile, incivility to respectful language, I encourage anyone to
review my timeline. I generally give citations and references (a fairly
uncommon practice for most Twitter posters). I call out uncritical, unfounded
thinking, without regard to political ideology. I'm sure I have offended many
on the Left as well as the Right.
I stay away from self-promotion
and waving experience or credentials, trying instead to focus attention on
actual evidence, analytic evaluation of facts, consequences, responsibilities,
and historical perspective. I do regularly remind people that selfishness is
not a virtue, and the hypocrisy of Christians disparaging altruism.
On the other hand, Twitter
misses the phenomenal influence that people like Trump and Giuliani, who spend
their lives promoting themselves for personal profit, while violating all
decency, norms, laws, twisting and trampling individual and Constitutional
rights of people they consider insignificant, causing enormous injury, then
scurrying to claim free speech protection. The facts that they have promoted violence,
terrorism, bloody civil war, and the overthrow of our government are self
evident.
Twitter has repeated that any
continued violation of their Rules may lead to me being banned from their
platform. I can see where they are going. Their second 12 hour suspension was
because I said of the MAGAt cult "Can that crazy cult just hurry up and take the
poison Kool-Aid?" I was alluding to the Jonestown People's Temple
experience. Yes, that was insensitive, but I doubt in a million years any of
them would be influenced by me to poison themselves over their beloved
political views.
So, FU Twitter. You should have done a lot better job of enforcing your Rules
of Conduct. You didn't. Why? I suspect it was all about the money, and still
is. You are in large part responsible for everything we have suffered,
including the genocide of over 600,000 Americans, and the degradation of our
public discourse due to your tolerance of criminal use of opinion manufacturing
propaganda to incite murderous and seditious insurrection. You're not the
champions of free speech that you think you are.
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