If you’re someone who pays close attention to your Twitter timeline rather than just scrolling for cute cat pictures you may have noticed something very strange with the service. I became suspicious something was going on when people like Milo Yiannopoulos and Mark Kern practically disappeared off the face of the earth on my timeline as did Mercedes Carrera though in her case there was the even stranger event of me somehow unfollowing her altogether. Three people who i could barely go ten minutes without seeing something being posted from them. It seems they were being “shadowbanned” they hadn’t been kicked off the service (because, especially in Milo’s case, there would be an uproar) but instead their tweets weren’t being put on people’s timelines in real time. Basically they were being silenced and Twitter was banking on people not noticing. Sadly for them, you kind of notice when a presence like Milo disappears, when you no longer get assaulted by navels from Mark and obviously Mercedes disappearing is very noticeable.
So that begs the question of why? It seems in recent months Twitter, like other social media, has been doubling down on silencing “wrongthink” which usually translates to anyone with a conservative viewpoint or just pretty much anyone who isn’t towing the “progressive” line. Just like how Facebook, at the urging of the German Chancellor, has been silencing anyone who dares raise questions about the refugee crisis in Europe ( http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-mic-pressing-facebook-ceo-over-anti-immigrant-posts.html ) it seems Twitter has been following suit in pursuing an agenda that goes completely against the idea of free speech.
In order to do that they have created the “Trust and Safety Council” a name which Orwell himself would have probably been very proud of. A team of all sorts of organisations that is apparently meant to make Twitter “safer” ( https://blog.twitter.com/2016/announcing-the-twitter-trust-safety-council ) and make you feel free to express yourself (as long as you have the right sort of politics. Apparently these people haven’t heard of the “people you follow” option when it comes to your notifications. The easier and quickest way to shut down any form of “harassment” ) Going through the list you wonder just how on earth Twitter can supposedly be for free speech and safety when they have known harassers like Randi Harper ( http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/06/29/harping-on-the-hypocrisy-and-lies-of-twitters-most-notorious-anti-abuse-activist-randi-harper-part-1/ ) working with them and the folks at Feminist Frequency who have shown a distinct disdain for any form of free expression and who have shut down any discussion when it comes to their content. The same people who were at the UN trying to censor the internet now have perfect chance to do so on one of the biggest social media platforms on it.
We’re already seeing people disappearing off Twitter due to “violations” which routinely boil down to them having a differing opinion to those who are in power (who at the same time moan about how they’re oppressed and being silenced, yet wield all the power) and i’m sure it’s only going to get worse. People like Milo won’t be going anywhere anytime soon on Twitter (barring a completely idiotic PR move by someone on the team) we’ve already seen the uproar about a verification tick, but for smaller voices like myself who are trying to get to that level we find ourselves with constant hurdles in the way and even being told we’ve been thrown out of the race. This is a very dangerous precedent for free speech and the ability to have a free exchange in the marketplace of ideas, a marketplace Twitter and it’s group of authoritarians are aiming to shut down.
The only bright spot about it all is that they may not even get to fully enact their blissful Utopian nightmare as the Twitter share price is dropping by the day. It seems with every new day Twitter plunges to another historic low. As we see with everything from comics to sci-fi to video games when you pander to the regressive left your profits drop drastically because shockingly the average person doesn’t like to be told what they can and can’t say, they don’t like to be labelled things they aren’t with no proof, especially not on the internet, which is where the majority of people finally get to have a voice that they don’t have in real life.
Twitter is probably doomed, as we see here
and choosing the path they’ve chosen that’s unlikely to change anytime soon now. The only hope folks like us, who value free speech, have is that somewhere there’s a social media platform ran by people who do believe in freedom of expression and will let that run free. Twitter has chosen its demise, they’ve chosen the fascist route and it’s just another attack on the very essence of the internet by people who don’t understand it and who want to use it purely for their own propaganda. Eventually the time will come when people have had enough and judging by Twitter’s stock price, that time is now.
Independent Expression 