What I learned from my Twitter jail sentence
I spent the day today in Twitter jail. Punishments are supposed to teach people lessons, so here’s my effort to extract a lesson from the experience.
TWITTER IS SHITTY AT POLICING ITS WEBSITE FOR FASCIST CONTENT!!!
Ok, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let me quickly tell you the story of what got me temporarily banned from Twitter for the first time in my life.
Twitter put me in a 12 hour lockdown because in the midst of a thread about how terrible the alt-right was and is, I posted a link to a video by former alt-right racist Baked Alaska. This guy was/is a nasty POS who helped organize the Charlottesville Nazi rally. After the shooting in NZ, however, he claims to have rethought his past. I don’t trust him, but the video he made announcing his change of heart was solid.
Alaska’s video offers a cogent explanation for how the alt-right meme culture of which he was a part produced a deranged murderer like the NZ guy. There is absolutely nothing problematic about the video. It says basically what most established journalists have said. So why did it get me put in Twitter jail?
Maybe that video just got singled out because Baked has been banned from Twitter and has a long history of saying hateful, racist things? If that’s the case, then why were a bunch of other people able to tweet it without repercussion?
Ok, maybe it’s because those other folks were blue checks and so they get a pass. If that’s the case, then why is this person’s retweet of it still up?
So it’s not that specific youtube video that tripped Twitter’s sensors and locked me in jail; and it’s also not Baked Alaska in general, because Twitter let me post his hilariously bad 2016 MAGA rap that calls for SJW’s to be deported, uses the white nationalist “ok” hand symbol, and attacks globalists.
Here’s where I would give you the logical reason for why I was put in Twitter jail.
[Space left intentionally blank.]
I honestly have no idea why I got locked in Twitter jail for the first time in my life. You’d think being on Twitter since 2014 without an issue would count for something. (Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever even had a single tweet reported by anyone for anything.) You’d think having over 10K followers, many of whom are verified, would count for something. You’d think tweeting under my own name would count for something. Nope.
For whatever reason, my account, which devotes a decent amount of space to exploring critically the past and present of the American right wing, got summarily locked down for posting exactly the sort of content Twitter should want on its platform — a mea culpa from an alt-right jagoff who now regrets his socially destructive use of social media and wants to warn the world about it.
To add insult to injury, I protested the ban and got this e-mail in response.
Apparently a human looked at what I’d posted and decided that yes, it merits a Twitter jail sentence for posting something that linked the NZ shooter to the alt-right. So am I to understand that I was banned for silencing the voices of white nationalists with my tweet? WTF?
I also like the little threat at the end of the e-mail from Twitter. It made me think twice about whether I should tweet about this episode for fear that it would get me permanently banned. It’s actually why I decided to write this up in Medium instead and post a link to this piece on Twitter.
So let me just say here…it was actually a pretty pleasant day not having to spend time on Twitter’s hell site. That said, it would be less of a hell site if it actually devoted its time and energy to policing actual fucking Nazis, instead of people like me who are trying to do what little we can to defeat them. Come on Twitter, get your shit together.