Necessity is the mother of invention or so the old saying goes and it has started to be proven true when one looks at the situation with regards Twitter and the technical and social response to this platform’s increasing censorship. This social media platform was once a colossus with content ranging from celebs tweeting pictures of everything from their breakfast to their bums right through to serious political discussions. It was everyone’s darling, that was until it started to bend to pressure from the political Left and to pressure from various governments, including that of the United Kingdom.
What was once claimed by Twitter management as a free speech platform has descended into a virtual one party state and recent revelations by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas organisation that Twitter staff had been shadowbanning conservatives a practise where ‘thought criminals’ are allowed remain on the platform but nobody sees their words. Twitter staff have also been kicking conservatives off of the site, not on grounds that they may have done something that a reasonable person could say was wrong, for example making a credible threat of violence, but merely on he say so of left wing Twitter staff.
The rise of Twitter’s leftist bias, which seems to have coincided with the appointment of Jack Dorsey as permanent Chief Executive Officer in 2015, is one of the things that has inspired the creation of competitors to Twitter. There are a number of these competitors now covering different styles of social media such as long form writing and video and Twitter’s dominance of the short form message service market is starting to be challenged. Twitter is being challenged by platforms such as gab.ai which although has something of the ‘bear pit’ about it, does at least respect free speech, something you can no longer say about Twitter. Although sites like gab.ai, Minds and Bitchute are at the early stages of their development, the trajectory of these sites is up rather than down as it looks to be for Twitter. I must admit that it is the behaviour of Twitter staff and management that is driving people away from the Twitter platform and the recent revelations by Project Veritas who undertook an undercover investigation of Twitter staff who said when caught off guard that people’s Direct Messages, communications that people should have a reasonable expectation of being confidential, could be examined and disclosed if necessary.
When I found out this information, a chill ran down my spine as I thought of all those who live in countries without free speech, such as the United Kingdom, who may have been arrested or intimidated by police because data from their Direct Messages to other Twitter users could have been extracted and passed to the police. Nobody really likes a ‘grass’, especially when people are being grassed up for merely having an opinion that someone doesn’t like and I believe that this revelation is going to hasten the departure of British users from the Twitter platform. After all people won’t feel safe using Twitter if they feel that some negative comment on Twitter about government immigration policy for example is going to land them in a police cell.
Since mid 2016 onwards the censorship on Twitter became worse and a number of people, nearly all conservatives or sceptics about Islam, have been removed from the platform. Twitter have even removed a number of ex Muslims who wish to warn others about the more troublesome aspects of Islamic theology or Islamic culture, something that is definitely not akin to unnecessarily shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre. This is rapidly turning Twitter into a left wing echo chamber rather than a place for free debate.
The situation regarding Twitter and censorship is bound to get much worse than it is already as later today (Monday) Project Veritas is supposed to release more information that could be highly embarrassing for Twitter. As a large number of people, ranging from hard core rightists through sensible conservatives, libertarians and the more reasonable people from the Left, have started to desert Twitter for other platforms those of us whom Twitter have rejected, often for specious or dishonest reasons are in the position where we may be able to sit back and watch Twitter metaphorically burn.
I don’t know if Twitter will recover from this mess of their own making which they created when they decided that they would be listening to the whines of various social justice warriors and Islamic grievance mongers, instead of the views of the users and imposed what is by now obvious censorship. I also don’t know if all of the challenger platforms will become as big as Twitter at its height, only time or the market will tell, but what I do know is that a door has been opened for the public into the rarifeid and elitist world of Silicon Valley and it’s extreme Left wing culture. The impression I get from reading around, is that ordinary people are starting to grow more astonished at the power and wealth that these big tech companies have managed to garner for themselves. It also seems to be the case that there is growing concern about the manner in which big tech companies are using their considerable powers to promote a form of politics that may not be advantageous to the man on the street.
I believe that social media is here to stay with us for the foreseeable future but if Twitter’s travails get any worse and, because of revelations by the likes of Project Veritas, start to reach even people outside of the group of those individuals who are politically engaged, then Twitter may not be part of that future. We do seem to be seeing how necessity, in this case having to get around Twitter’s censorship policies has become the mother of not just one invention, but many. I a way this is sad. I don’t want to see a Left wing internet and neither do I want to see a Right wing internet, instead I want to see a free internet where I can express my views freely without, as is currently the case with Twitter, worrying whether some Lefty activist will censor me or worse hand my details onto my local police force merely for expressing an opinion.
