The popular social media platform Twitter today introduces it’s harsh new terms of service which Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey believes will enhance users experience, but will instead turn Twitter into a sterile place where diversity of opinion is not allowed. In a supreme irony Jack Dorsey chose today, Josef Stalin’s birthday of all days, to impose a policy that is likely to see many more mainstream conservatives and critics of Islam and of Leftist removed from Twitter.
In addition Twitter will also monitor other sites that the Twitter user visits in order to check that user is not engaging in ‘wrongthink’ a policy that is being seen by many commentators as intrusive and sinister. The new policy means that a researcher for example who is a Twitter user who visits sites that the Twitter management disapprove of could find their Twitter account taken away not for anything that they may have done on the Twitter platform itself, but for their perceived activities elsewhere. Twitter can no more say that they are a platform that supports free speech.
A combination of pressure from Twitter’s Arab investors, a chorus of loud authoritarian social justice warriors and various identity politics grievance mongers coupled with Jack Dorsey’s own alleged leftist leanings, has sent Twitter down the path of heavily curated and censored speech. I doubt this is going to end well for Twitter as people banned from the platform unjustly are going to kick up a stink or move to other platforms that have a lighter touch when it comes to moderation such as Gab for example.
In the run up to the new terms of service, there has been a whole slew of bannings and suspensions from Twitter mostly brought about it seems by mass false reporting of tweets by leftist and Islamic groups. But it’s not merely the ‘far right’ that is being removed from Twitter, there are a whole lot of mainstream conservatives, Trump supporters, ex Muslims, critics of Islam, critics of the transgender agenda and even classical liberals like Sargon of Akkad who have been kicked off of the Twitter platform, often it appears not for any real solid reason but because someone has been ‘offended’ by what they’ve seen.
If Jack Dorsey is tying to create a monothought clique on Twitter then he’s plainly going the right way about it. However it’s a monothought clique that will get smaller and smaller as time goes by as those who are interested in vigorous debate are removed leaving behind just those who agree with Jack Dorsey and the SJW’s. Judging by what has been happening on Gab over the last few weeks as Twitter refugees who are either expelled or voluntarily walk from Twitter and who sign up for Gab instead, Twitter looks as if it is in for a bit of a rough time.
I’ve seen a massive number of sign ups of new users on Gab and the majority of them seem to have made the switch either because they have been censored by Twitter or who feel uncomfortable with Twitter monitoring their browsing history. Others from more oppressive states where free speech is not allowed, such as Britain for example, are also leaving Twitter as they are worried that this new policy will cause an uptick in the number of British Twitter users who are arrested for ‘wrongthink’ by police acting on information supplied by Twitter themselves. Would you want to speak your mind on a platform full of police informers and censors? A lot of people do not seem to want to operate in that environment and have therefore voted with their feet.
A lot of people are going to find themselves shocked by the fact that they will have their Twitter accounts removed for expressing relatively innocuous opinions that offend the SJW’s and the powerful Islamic interests that now influence the Twitter management. Such people may probably not return to Twitter and will instead go elsewhere leaving Twitter as a place where people have to look over their shoulders every time they post on the platform or visit sites that Jack Dorsey and those around him do not approve of, such a place is a deeply unpleasant environment to operate in and the negative publicity will end up hurting Twitter both in the bottom line and in how the platform is perceived. A social media platform is only profitable and relevant so long as those using it trust it not to misuse the customers data, interfere with their speech or act as a police informer, Twitter I’m sad to say can no longer be trusted not to do such things.
The author of this piece can be contacted on the gab.ai platform by visiting @Fahrenheit211
