You won’t read this because I’m in Twitmo.
My account was suspended a week ago. Repeated e-mails to Twitter support have gotten no real response.
Twitter has a legal right to do this. They are under no legal obligation to explain it.
But there is a moral responsibility.
Twitter has become a vital publicity stream for millions of people around the world. I didn’t realize until last week just how vital it was. The free web continues to shrink in size, and Twitter is an increasing part of it. In some ways it has taken the place of Google. We go to Twitter to learn what’s happening in the world. The only force that can compete with it is Reddit.
I blame Trump for that. Trump and his Trumpkins stole all our attention for years, and Twitter is where that attention was both focused and blasted into the world. Twitter’s banning of Trump was a turning point. The stock is up since it happened.
But we’re ignoring both the standards and the process by which Twitter acted and is continuing to act on others. I’ll admit to having been rude to Trumpkins when they were rude to me and others. I gave as good as I got. In the one tweet Twitter sent me to explain my firing, I wrote that Democrats will “hang” Trump around Republicans for decades to come. I was referring to how Republicans made anti-war Democrats illegitimate, right through the 2004 election, and how they “waved the bloody shirt” after the Civil War. Shoe’s on the other foot, I said.
Not an unusual point of view. But the use of the word “hanging” hung up some Twitterati and got Twitter support mad. Or, perhaps, Twitter had been collecting complaints against me for some time.
Fact is I don’t know.
People can be banished from Twitter without knowing what they did wrong or being given any chance to fix it. The standards Twitter is using are opaque and vague. The process Twitter support is using is equally opaque and vague.
There’s a honeymoon with that process right now because it resulted in Trump’s banishment. Twitter has become too powerful. How do I know? A piece here on Rupert Murdoch, published before my banishment, got hundreds of page views. An almost identical piece, after it, got 3.
Please don’t read this as special pleading. This is a systemic problem, not a personal one. The problem is only going to get bigger until it’s fixed.
