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Banning users without explanation or any example of what they did wrong is now standard operating procedure for Twitter. Have a look at this latest video from Mykeru:
(Transcript here.)
So if they suspend you, they won’t even give you an example of what you did.
In light of this, it seems it’s time to revisit a topic I’ve mentioned on my blog:
There are two really important things happening on Twitter right now: one is #GamerGate and the other is Twitter’s “collaboration” with WAM! (Women, Action, and Media) to thought-police Twitter users and remove anything or anyone that “offends” feminists and other Social Justice Warriors.
Guess who offends a lot of feminists?
I can’t let these particular tweets die. I just can’t. They are too funny. And they are the perfect explanation of what “offends” feminists.
Facts and evidence. That is a very basic description of what I tweet, and because the facts don’t line up with feminist ideology, I am consistently reported as an abusive account. Here are some examples of things I tweet, for those who are not interested in the clusterfuck that is Twitter.
So much abuse, amirite?
Taylor Swift has become the soundtrack to my life on Twitter at the moment:
Players gonna play and haters gonna hate, right?
Then I go and sign up for a new Twitter account and collect all my old followers and I carry on posting abuse facts and evidence. The feminist trolls show up screaming, I give them links to credible sources, they call me stupid and huff off in a hissy fit to report me for harassment. I’m telling on you! Grown women and men acting like spoiled toddlers? Yeah, nothing new when you’re dealing with feminists.
#GamerGate critics have been very open about collecting names and subjecting them to banbot attacks to trigger automatic suspends, and I know for a fact users have targeted me for false-flagging campaigns because one of them bragged about it. She spent two months of her life false-flagging me to trigger a suspend.
The banbots can be quite effective, and even managed to bring down @Nero, but Twitter wisely restored his account promptly. There are ways to defeat the bots and they can be similarly effective. It’s much harder (although far from impossible) to defeat a human being inside Twitter, butthurt and juvenile, who chooses to suspend accounts before they have sent a single tweet.
My username was changed, my password was changed, and my email address was changed.
I am not being subjected to bot attacks that are reporting me for abuse or harassment. I am a target for a Social Justice Warrior or feminist zealot inside Twitter. I suppose a very dedicated hacker might have broken through Twitter firewalls and modified the account, but that seems highly unlikely. The juvenile changing of my username strongly suggests we are dealing with butthurt ideologues who refuse to accept that they are losing the war and that with every voice they silence, #GamerGate and #WomenAgainstFeminism grow stronger. Even Ben Dreyfuss, who writes for Mother Jones, agrees that the censorship is unwarranted.
Let me take a moment to address the Ben Dreyfuss situation. He sent out this tweet, which, taken out of context, makes him look like a giant asshole.
Someone memed the tweet with a picture of Robin Williams, and the tweet took off and Ben caught some holy hell. He tweeted me directly, and posted the context, at which point I apologized unreservedly.
The tweet was shitty, but the context does indeed explain a lot. He was goaded by a troll (let’s hope it was a troll and that guy wasn’t for real) into tweeting something he came to regret. Ben apologized and Twitter moved on. See? It’s possibly to have profoundly different ideas about issues like feminism and gaming and still act like fucking adults capable of handling an alternate and opposing point of view. “Just shut up and go away” is the refuge of the cowardly and willfully ignorant.
I understand that Twitter is a private business and can do whatever the hell it likes, but if Twitter is allowing employees to censor points of view they happen to differ with, Twitter needs to own that. Quoting from @Nero’s article up at Breitbart News today: “mass suspensions of Twitter accounts that have the temerity to publicly support press reform and reject feminist critiques of video games as irrelevant, sneering, pseudo-academic drivel are now being attempted by impotent feminist groups whose only weapon is the silencing of dissent.”
If Twitter wants to line up with the evangelists who think statistics are not facts and evidence is not proof, they are free to do so. If suppressing freedom of speech is their new business model, then let them proclaim it for all to see. Twitter is absolutely entitled to shoot themselves in the head. They can hold hands with “a press that, swamped with discredited far-Left ideology and unintelligent, poorly-trained writers, refuses to tell basic truths,” and then they can prepare to meet the same end all totalitarian regimes achieve: total and utter defeat.
I challenge Twitter to stand up to wingnut bullies and restore my original account. If Twitter can take on ISIS, how in the hell does Janet Bloomfield frighten them? Really?
Grow a pair, Twitter.
Ben Dreyfuss can handle a little heat, and you can too.
