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Twitter bans another conservative — 31 Comments

1. Gab was an alternative but took a big hit when a recent shooter used it.

2. Come on. The thing is called, what? Oh, yeah: “twitter”.

   So, what exactly is it that someone joining up to “tweet” doesn’t get about the platform and its creators’ mindset? It is a platform obviously designed and constructed by eye-rolling gigglers and pouts who either conceive themselves as, or seek to appeal to a population of “persons” who, must be constantly emitting bite sized observations or opinions.

   Oh, they don’t like you and “you are not welcome”. Yeah … “free expression” as a social value (not talking the 1st here) and all that shit. Grow up. It’s their sandbox. What the F*** did you expect?

3. Mikek on November 26, 2018 at 3:40 pm at 3:40 pm said:

   Gab was an alternative but took a big hit when a recent shooter used it.”

   Conservatives are not really interested in these platforms for the same reasons the social approval seeking types are, and therefore not interested in committing the time and effort into constructing and maintaining such structures.

   Liberals use it to prove they are worthy members of the circle, and conservatives only care about it insofar as they can access it to comment derisively – or critically at least – on the crotch sniffers of the left.

   We are as we all recognize on a fundamental level, thinking about this all wrong. Backwards. It’s not that liberals tend to be Chatty Cathys too, it is that the people who are that needy and emotional create and take to these outlets like – pick your own semi-obscene metaphor – are the people we call progressives.

4. And this:

   http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/25/twitter-permanently-bans-feminist-writing-men-arent-women/

5. twitter-permanently-bans-feminist-writing-men-arent-women

   Feminine females have reached a steady state distribution. The transgender spectrum is trending and hold the promise of a greater order of political congruence.

6. To progress a fascist. So, is Twitter a monopoly, a utility?

   Any alternative to Twitter will be labeled “National Socialist” by the diversity racket.

7. YouTube is being sued by Prager University for refusal to carry a significant percentage of its videos which just happen to have a mildly conservative bent. The “culture” perceives us as the enemy and all is acceptable as tools to extinguish our “radical” beliefs.

8. YouTube is being sued by Prager University

   Google bought YouTube and is limiting the use by disfavored groups. That is classic monopoly behavior. I was never interested in Twitter but You Tube is the only such application,. I read somewhere that pornhub was considering becoming an alternate to YouTube. That would be interesting.

   The leftist monotheme sites are inviting federal actions.

9. The Instapundit has suspended his Twitter account in reaction to all the conservative banning. I’d rather read blogs anyhow. Twitter will soon be a leftist echo chamber where they can pretend no one else exists — until election time.

10. You cannot make a coherent argument in 140 characters. Snark and sarcasm, on the other hand, fit easily in that format.

    I was an avid Twitter follower and user until Trump won in 2016. Following that it became a cesspool of hate and vitriol – worst was that I found myself contributing just such repugnant content. So I quit. I recently quit Facebook for similar reasons but mostly because my ‘friends’ had become rather unfriendly.

    Give it up or never join, you’ll be happier for the choice to abstain.

11. I recently quit Facebook for similar reasons but mostly because my ‘friends’ had become rather unfriendly./i>

    For this reason, I almost always turn down or ignore friend requests. My facebook “friends” are family and a few like minded individuals.

12. Quit Facebook. Never tweeted, and don’t read tweets from Twits. Am I missing anything?

    (To be honest, my wife who is addicted to FB, alerts me when there is a cute picture of our grandchildren, and I look at her screen.)

13. I use FB strictly for normal real life and cute pictures of pets. It has a practical use – you can put out news such as a family event or emergency – without having to call 50 people individually. (This is usually the first place I hear about births, weddings, illness or death of friends and family in faraway states, or who were once close but have dropped off my daily radar.) I unfollow anyone who starts obsessing about politics.

    I don’t talk politics in real life and I won’t do it under my real name on a social media site.

14. I don’t know if this is typical or not, but my Facebook circle, which includes some zealots on both sides, went berserk for a couple of months before and after the 2016 election. I think someone unfriended me because I scoffed at the idea that Trump was LITERALLY HITLER. Then almost everybody sort of withdrew and it got real quiet, with people either not posting at all or posting only family pics and other uncontroversial stuff. There was a flare-up during the Kavanaugh hearings. Of course it’s possible to limit the audience for one’s posts to some subset of friends, and I guess they could be doing that with political posts, but I doubt it, as that’s a hassle.

15. Here’s a thought:
    If conservatives (and IDW moderate liberals) completely abandon Twitter it will devour itself. The SJWs will have no one to attack but themselves.

16. “…my Facebook circle, which includes some zealots on both sides, went berserk for a couple of months before and after the 2016 election.”

    As far as FB goes, somewhere around the later Obama years, the majority of our friends and my colleagues became lefty zombies, interested only in incessant obsessing, preening and posturing about politics. It’s like they’re keeping score amongst themselves to see who can post the most political rants and memes. Literally, grandparents quit talking about grandchildren and cat owners quit posting pictures of their cats, because all they wanted to talk about 24/7/365 was lefty politics.

    It’s not new for the lefties in my life to be obsessed about politics. There are people who are my FB friends now, who I worked with 25 years ago, who walked up to me in the workplace and picked fights about politics when they somehow found out that I was a Republican. Somewhere after about 2012, they ramped up the volume to 11 and after the election in 2016, they became 10 times worse than they already were.

    I can count on both thumbs the number of zealous righties I have among my FB friends; if there are others, like me, they have gone underground. I suspect that if you see someone posting on FB about their grandkids and cats, they’re a conservative.

    It’s easy to say, “Why do you have these people in your life at all?” Because they WERE my friends and co-workers. They’re people I’ve known for years and sometimes decades. And I’m starting to realize that many of them are not that far away from being the kind of people who would turn me in for wrongthink.

17. Oldflyer & KyndyllG: yep.
    It is only good for snark and bon mots, which is why Iowahawk and Doc Zero do well there (I liked their long-form blogs better, though).

    And I like Edward’s idea. If they don’t want to let conservatives play in their cesspool sandbox, then the cons. ought to all go home.

    I followed the rabbit trails out from the LI post, and found a couple of interesting things.
    The banned feminist wrote quite a good article, and I would recommend RTWT, but the title itself presents the conundrum that a lot of people face when presented with the bifurcated dilemma of American political parties.
    https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/11/20/twitter-wants-shut-right-wants-join-dont-think-either/
    “Twitter wants me to shut up and the right wants me to join them; I don’t think I should have to do either
    I don’t want to choose between the left and the right, I want to engage in critical thought, challenge myself, and form my own opinions.”

    If you want to know which way Twitter leans (like a sapling in a 99mph wind), look no further than this graf in an article purporting to show that Twitter is really non-partisan, they just had some early problems getting their mojo on responding to bots and trolls, and their algorithms just accidentally pull in more h8ful conservatives than leftists.
    https://www.fastcompany.com/40547818/did-we-create-this-monster-how-twitter-turned-toxic
    “The ongoing, unresolved disputes over what Twitter should allow on its platform continued to flare into the fall. In October, the company reneged on a $5 million deal with the Trump campaign for a custom #CrookedHillary emoji. “There was vicious [internal] debate and back-channeling to Jack,” says a source involved. “Jack was conflicted. At the eleventh hour, he pulled the plug.” Trump allies later blasted Twitter for its perceived political bias.

    On November 8, employees were shocked as the election returns poured in, and the morning after Trump’s victory, Twitter’s headquarters were a ghost town. Employees had finally begun to take stock of the role their platform had played not only in Trump’s rise but in the polarization and radicalization of discourse.

    “We all had this ‘holy shit’ moment,” says a product team leader at the time, adding that everyone was asking the same question: “Did we create this monster?”

    In the months following Trump’s win, employees widely expected Dorsey to address Twitter’s role in the election head-on, but about a dozen sources indicate that the CEO remained mostly silent on the matter internally. “You can’t take credit for the Arab Spring without taking responsibility for Donald Trump,” says Leslie Miley, the former safety manager.”

    LI notes that Instapundit has closed his Twitter account in solidarity with Kelly and the prior victims of Twitter’s bias.

    This is Jesse Kelly’s own article about the banning. Very upbeat; I will have to add him to my list of people to read occasionally.
    http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/26/twitter-banned-literally-no-reason-end-theyll-lose/#.W_wU58F5ew0.twitter

18. Several posts I’ve read cite Kelly’s article about Alex Jones, so I thought I would link it here. This is probably what got him on the Black List aka “as soon as we can find a tweet we can almost plausibly twist as violating the rules we’ll take him down” (apparently they couldn’t find one, so they just banned him anyway).

    http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/23/the-left-wont-stop-at-alex-jones-we-are-sliding-down-a-slippery-slope/

    “The same people who ceded control of public education, the federal bureaucracy, the media, movies, and music to the left have once again found another hill not worth dying on. “It’s only social media,” they say. Yeah, fear not. Around 2.5 billion people use Facebook and Twitter. What’s the worst that can happen if we just let the left have them?

    While this denial of the slippery slope is frustrating, it is also understandable if you understand the nature of man. Very few people in this world actually enjoy fighting. It is much easier on the mind to just avoid a fight. That is why so many on the right ignore the obvious truths staring them in the face. “It’s only Alex Jones” is not necessarily something they believe to be true.

    “It’s only Alex Jones” is a comforting blanket. It’s the child who closes his eyes and covers his ears in the naïve hope that the monster disappears if you can’t see or hear him. But the monster does NOT disappear. And it is most definitely NOT just Jones. Yesterday it was Jones. Today, YouTube censored human vanilla Dennis Prager. Tomorrow, there may be a knock on YOUR door.

    Freedom is not something you acquire by practicing it. You don’t one day wake up and decide you are free. Freedom is something tangible and it requires the cooperation of others. If others will not give you that cooperation, you have to take it from them. We need to stop whistling past the graveyard and realize the left is seeking total victory. They do not want to compete in a marketplace of ideas. Their goal is to silence dissenting voices.

    Look down at where you’re standing at this very moment. That is where you draw your line in the sand. Do not give them another inch.”

19. TheOtherMcCain is on the case.

    https://theothermccain.com/2018/11/26/twitter-bans-iraq-veteran-jesse-kelly-glenn-reynolds-quits-platform-in-protest/
    “Internet platforms are simply tools for communication. When the proprietors of a platform surrender to Thought Police who attempt to prevent communication — deciding that people they disagree with cannot use these tools — they are destroying the utility of their own product.

    UPDATE: Yesterday, I urged readers to tweet a simple message — “Jonathan Yaniv Is Not a Woman #IStandWithMeghanMurphy” — and today multiple people have informed me their Twitter accounts have been suspended until they delete these messages. Twitter has surrendered to the demands of a deranged Canadian pervert, while at the same time banning Marine Corps combat veterans from their platform. ”

    Commenter Jeannette Victoria: “Twitter is all about hating correctly”

    https://theothermccain.com/2018/11/25/jonathan-yaniv-is-not-a-woman-and-istandwithmeghanmurphy/

    “The hashtag #IStandWithMeghanMurphy is being used on Twitter to raise awareness of the totalitarian transgender tendency.

    What we need is an Army of Davids, so to speak, to put the “Streisand Effect” into action here. If everyone who stands for free speech were to tweet this simple message — “Jonathan Yaniv Is Not a Woman #IStandWithMeghanMurphy” — how many thousands of messages might be generated? Could the Thought Police at Twitter ban everyone? [per the first article, they seem to be trying]

    UPDATE: Frank Camp at Daily Wire interviews Meghan Murphy:

    DW: Has this experience with Twitter changed your perspective regarding online political life?
    MURPHY: It’s blowing my mind how much power trans activists have. I’m not able to make my arguments. What they’re doing is ensuring I can’t talk about this stuff at all on Twitter.
    It’s not, “you can’t say offensive things,” or “hateful things,” or “you can’t be mean,” because what I’m saying isn’t hateful or mean or offensive in my opinion. [note to Meghan: this is what conservatives have been saying all along] I’m trying to show that this ideology is incoherent and irrational. I’m trying to get them to explain their own arguments and defend their own claims.
    If I can’t articulate my position, or ask questions – like “how can a man become a woman?” — then I can’t engage in these conversations at all.
    The fact that there’s no accountability is crazy. Twitter doesn’t respond to my appeals; they just send me these form responses that don’t actually explain their policies or explain why I can’t say what I’m saying.

    DW: Is there anything you want people to know regarding this situation that hasn’t been touched on?
    MURPHY: Like I said before, the amount of power that trans activists have over public debate is incredible and kind of scary. It’s just a few people. There are a few people who have connections to Twitter or work for Twitter who are either trans themselves or allied with this movement who are just dictating these rules.
    With the stuff that I’m saying, I have more supporters than detractors — not only online, but in the world. Most people in the world don’t believe it’s possible for a male to become female. Most people think this ideology is ridiculous. A lot of people are afraid to say so, and others are just regular people who aren’t aware this debate is going on.
    This minority of people, who have an incredible amount of power, are claiming to be the most marginalized people on the planet. You can’t really be that marginalized when you’re controlling the entire conversation, and changing legislation and policy faster than anyone else has been able to do.

    (Hat-tip: Instapundit.)”

20. Like Neo, I had never heard of Jesse Kelly before — and I read a lot of Federalist stories every week — so I took a look.
    http://thefederalist.com/author/jessekelly/
    No wonder Twitter wants him OFF their platform.

    http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/21/america-wont-see-go-without-epic-fight/
    “That brings us to the continuous internal battle we see on the Right. We have this ever-present acrimony between the factions because some of us will not accept where we are and the enemies we face.

    Some on the Right believe that tyranny in this society, as in all societies, is inevitable. The people who will micromanage every aspect of your life are not God-fearing conservatives. They are leftists, and they are vicious.

    They are not political opponents in the sense that you have a debate with them. These modern-day leftists want you to lose your job. They want to destroy you. How do you think they’re going to treat you when they finally sit in the seat of power for good? So fight them tooth and nail. Make them long for the day when you’re no longer fighting them. Be the Lakota.

    At the End, Which Will You Have Wanted to Be?
    Some on the Right will flatly reject this. They think we simply have a few minor policy quibbles with the Left. They think we would be able to settle these minor differences if it weren’t for the brutish Neanderthals who think it’s some kind of fight.

    This group really peaked in 2016 after Donald Trump won the GOP primary. They began scolding the dullards who were too stupid to just believe everything printed in The New York Times. They lecture us to this day. They live for compromise with the Left, always ignorant of the fact that just a little more big government is still big government. They are the Choctaws. “Just trust the U.S. government. I’m sure they’ll treat us well in the end if we’re nice.”

    So, back to scalping thing. When you make that long trek to the reservation the leftists have set up for you—and make that trek you will—what memories do you want to take with you? When living in the liberal utopian nightmare of 57 genders and government control over everything in your life, you will want to have been a Lakota. You’ll want to know, to remember, even just cherish the knowledge that, one day, you rode out onto the plains and made them feel pain.”

    http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/11/stop-letting-left-co-opt-every-single-social-movement/
    “The French Revolution threw off a horrible monarchy, but ended with a dictator. The Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro took down an authoritarian government—and promptly replaced it with an authoritarian government. The American left has learned from history. They now co-opt every legitimate movement and use it as a weapon to achieve political power.

    One of the easy ways to tell the difference between a legitimate movement and a grift is that legitimate movements quickly purge the false actors from their midst. Grifts welcome the false actors and purge the critics.

    Look no further than this Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fiasco and the damage it has done to the Me Too movement.
    …
    Democrat senators assumed they could take public outcry over women assaulted and use it to scuttle a Republican SCOTUS nominee. That in itself is bad enough. But it is even worse when you consider the loudest voices of the Me Too movement have been almost completely silent about what Senate Democrats did with their movement.

    Allowing the left to use your movement as a hammer to beat on the right is a quick way to water down your message and ensure the public tunes out to your cause. What happens the next time a woman tries to tell her story of assault? I’ll tell you what happens. Because of this sham of a nomination process, it will be that much harder for her to make herself believed.

    The biggest and most entrenched grift in American society is what the left has done to the civil rights movement.
    …
    Although much less prevalent, we have our bad actors on the right as well. You can argue day and night about the merits of the infamous “Never Trump” movement from the 2016 GOP presidential primary. But there is little argument left to defend the daily embarrassing conduct by those who are still clinging to that label.

    What was once supposedly a movement to “defend conservative principles” has become a Democrat-aiding con job. They’re even going to run a third-party candidate in 2020 who won’t seriously compete for a single Electoral College vote, but will help them swindle little old ladies out of their retirement funds. “Principled” Jeff Flake will be crisscrossing the country, boring people to death, and living high on the hog.

    Avoid movements. It is human nature to seek safety and security in groups, but in the end you will end up getting played for a sucker. How do I know? Because it happens to every single movement in America. It begins with your real, genuine passion about an issue. It ends with Jim Jones handing you a glass of Kool-Aid.”

21. I think we are done here.

22. I’ve disliked Twitter from the beginning. Aside from the ability to share info quickly in emergency situations, it too often serves to advance impulsive behavior and mob-like reactions.

    Actress Amanda Bynes has addiction to blame for the collapse of her once-thriving career, but Twitter certainly didn’t help:

    https://pagesix.com/2018/11/26/amanda-bynes-opens-up-about-drug-fueled-spiral-in-paper-magazine/

23. Any serious commentator who uses Twitter should also maintain a blog, and should frequently link his tweets to longer-form blog posts expanding on the subject. This also has the benefit of informing his readership of his direct blog address, for the day when Twitter bans him.

    This applies also (especially) to President Trump.

24. “…my Facebook circle, which includes some zealots on both sides, went berserk for a couple of months before and after the 2016 election.”

    Some blogs did the same thing. I used to follow and comment on a California blog called “Patterico.” I met him, Patrick Frey, through Cathy Seipp, another blogger and conservative. He is a NeverTrumper and got increasingly unhinged after the election. He finally banned me (I think. I never went back) because I disagreed with him on the Roy Moore election in Alabama. Of course he accused me of “lying” and I could not figure out what he was referring to. I think it was the forged autograph on the yearbook. Anyway, he used to blog about local, Los Angeles issues, especially the LA Times.

    I also quit Ricochet after I was suspended for using the term “TDS” for one of the posters who has a bad case of it. I had previously quit and then went back when I got into it with a group of creationists. who are apparently well represented there.

    This sort of intolerant behavior is not just on the left but is more obvious there.

25. I met him, Patrick Frey, through Cathy Seipp, another blogger and conservative. He is a NeverTrumper and got increasingly unhinged after the election. He finally banned me

    I suggested to Frey some years ago he forego discussions of economic history because he didn’t know anything himself about the subject and he was citing crank sources. He was furious and not only banned me but issued an anathema in one of his posts. I’ll leave it to someone else to opine on whether that counts as a display of clinical narcissism or not.

26. What was once supposedly a movement to “defend conservative principles” has become a Democrat-aiding con job.

    There is little or nothing in the way of a popular NeverTrump constituency. If you compare Donald Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans to those of George W. Bush, you can surmise that perhaps 4% of the Republican electorate is disgruntled. The number who are going to shiv Republicans farther down the ticket due to their irritation is smaller still.

    The purveyors of NeverTrump are to be found on Capitol Hill and Op-Ed pages. The Capital Hill contingent has been sorting itself into those willing to work with the President, those retiring from public life (Corker), those decamping to lobbying gigs (Ryan), and those content to strike poses (Sasse). As for the Op-Ed contingent, they’re on the patronage of liberal media companies (David Brooks, Jennifer Rubin), of perpetuities they or their supervisors control (David French), or of their ancestors (David Frum). Ross Douthat has managed over the years some measure of intellectual independence, perhaps because no one at The Times reads his column and knows what it says. As a rule, the media hire shills, and its a reasonable inference that any audience Brooks and Rubin and Max Boot have consists of Democrats looking for emotional validation.

27. “This sort of intolerant behavior is not just on the left but is more obvious there.” – MikeK

    I also used to read Patterico, mostly for his view of policing and law.
    Definitely not on my “to read” list for some years now.

28. Facebook has a lot of value as described above. I am also a member of a lot of fan groups for various music, TV shows, etc., and in general, the rule in these groups is that no politics or religion are allowed. The communities end up being a fun place to share our common interests, and because of that, in addition to connecting with friends and family, I get a lot of value out of Facebook.

29. I think its a very bad cultural indicator if we retreat from Twitter. It’s a new media, a new form of communication, and is used by the young. How can we give up on a front in the culture wars without a peep?

30. Kelly’s account restored:
    https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/314196/

    Twitter loses this round. (They should stick to banning lesser-known tweeters….)

31. Barry Meislin on November 28, 2018 at 8:09 am at 8:09 am said:
    …(They should stick to banning lesser-known tweeters….)
    * * *
    Ah, but that doesn’t send a big enough message.
    The small fry are just the warm-up or try-outs to see what they can get away with, like the IRS going after local Tea Parties and individual activists, before getting their cover blown by aiming too high (and you note that no one sufferd any adverse consequences for illegal subversion of the government’s power).

    They (internet, social, & legacy media) will keep at it until at some point they either DON’T feel constrained to restore accounts, or until all of the conservatives are gone anyway.
    Win-win for them, and no downside for losing either direction.
    UNLESS the left eats enough of their own to provoke some counter-action, and that will only last until the focus goes back to explicitly conservative groups.
    Camille Paglia and now (possibly) Meghan Murphy might remember what happened when the masks came off, and maybe a few more, but mostly they will be happy to just get back in the sacred circle.

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