From Instapundit, who shut his own Twitter feed down yesterday.
TWITTER’S GONE CRAZY BANNING PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT, so I’ve deactivated my Twitter account.
Flashback: Despite Twitter’s Protests, The Stifling of Conservative Speech On The Platform Is Real.
UPDATE: People seem to want more, and although there’s nothing duller than posting a screed on why you’re quitting a platform, here’s the gist: I’ve never liked Twitter even though I’ve used it. I was a late adopter, and with good reason. It’s the crystal meth of social media — addictive and destructive, yet simultaneously unsatisfying. When I’m off it I’m happier than when I’m on it. That it’s also being run by crappy SJW types who break their promises, to users, shareholders, and the government, of free speech is just the final reason. Why should I provide free content to people I don’t like, who hate me? I’m currently working on a book on social media, and I keep coming back to the point that Twitter is far and away the most socially destructive of the various platforms. So I decided to suspend them, as they are suspending others. At least I’m giving my reasons, which is more than they’ve done usually.
He’s right, Twitter is a cesspool. And, the company that won’t give me the blue checkmark and appears to have shadowbanned my content? They’ve certainly been biased towards against WUWT. Is it worth keeping my Twitter account?
Given the attacks, character assassinations, childishness, and boorishness I endure there daily, I’ve thought more than a few times about why I bother to continue publishing on Twitter.
The inevitable answer I always come back to is: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. Twitter can only work if people of principle stand up and use it as a tool to fight back.
As for my detractors; Best wishes, I forgive you, because I know you are unable to help yourselves.
What is needed is an alternative platform where users can send and receive Twitter tweets, as well as those banned by Twitter. Perhaps you could set attributes yourself of what to ban or not ban. A successful launch would be worth.. like… hundreds of dollars.
I advocate, but can’t afford to build myself, a platorm to compete with all social media, in which speech, within bounds of legality, would be truly free. That means often offensive, but inoffensive speech doesn’t need constitutional protection. Almost anything might go, but for advocating violence or other lawlessness. Also no porn. The Internet already features plenty of that.
This giant alternative could combine all functions of GOOG (email, phone OS, YouTube, etc), Facebook (to include WhatsApp), Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and all other social media. Plenty of rich libertarians could fund such a startup. There already are some independent, limited services, but they tend to be fringe, if not indeed dark.
And like cable TV or AMZN Prime, the service could charge a small annual fee rather than collect and sell personal data. Plus maybe run ads not targeted toward individual users, as with print, radio and TV of yore.
John
I’m afraid as admirable as your intentions might be, they are unenforceable.
Just one simple example. What do you consider porn?
It might be a flash of a breast, but of what gender? It might be the illustration of copulation, but I find images of war and violence far more offensive than that. It might be a drawing, photograph or a movie, or of course an animation. I could go on but it’s just a can or worms.
Even the exposure of a woman’s hair is offensive to some. The Japanese are happy to show male genitals in a sexual context but not a woman’s (might be the other way around) which to some would be sexist and discriminatory as well as obscene. So where do you draw the line when a platform straddles every country, faith and culture in the world?
Twitter and Facebook have set themselves an unenviable task, doubtless entirely unwittingly, but they must deal with the demands of minority groups, as our governments do. In my opinion, minority groups are shaping the political landscape whilst the silent majority stand by impotently. Calling to Ban one thing or another puts you in the category of a minority group yourself, which of course you are anyway.
I suspect suppression of political views is something completely different. We are all allowed political views, in fact, as we are all awarded a single, invaluable vote we have a responsibility to hold political views, something that escaped me in my youth.
In fact, perhaps that’s your idea for a discussion platform. Everything is banned other than political discussions. Facebook started as the germ of an idea in a university dorm room, no reason the next social revolution can’t begin in your study.
If people had a settings page where they could ban or allow things on a sliding scale, they couldn’t complain about being banned or what was banned for them since individual users would filter out views which they deem offensive. Want to ban anything resembling porn? Set that filter all the way to the side. Want to ban anything from communists? Set that filter to the right.
These social media platforms all have their filters set universally. Let people do it themselves.
It’s hard to replace twitter, or Facebook. But if you had a social media account that automatically posted to your existing Facebook account, and which let posts through for you to see on your social account, then you can accomplish this. Posts made on the new platform would show on other users accounts on the platform without having to go through Facebook.
A market share of 5% is probably not sustainable, but imagine the market value of a platform that achieve a 15% market share.
“It’s hard to replace twitter, or Facebook.” ?????
Don’t have either one, and therefore am not having a hard time at all.
If Twitter is banning conservative speech someone ought to mention that to Trump. If he stopped using Twitter in favor of some other one Twitter would crash and burn, and the replacement would catapult into market relevance.
Steve O
How many filters would a world need?
The list is endless.
In the early internet days, we also didn’t have filters. If you landed on a page you didn’t like, you left. Simple really.
“A market share of 5% is probably not sustainable, ”
That may be why Google+ is going to shut down. Too bad.
There’s a social media site called The Well, set up by Whole Earth Catalog people long ago. It charges $20 a year. There’s also another pay to play media site set up a year ago whose name I forget.
I believe Kim Dotcom has made some noise about doing that, not that it matters to me. So far have avoided all “social media” platforms, and find no need for a phone that’s likely smarter than I am.
Isn’t FREELY an alternative?
I have just joined a twitter-like platform – gab.ai or gab.com. They don’t censor anything. You may come across something you don’t want to see, but you can just mute it. Others who have been banned by Twitter are now on gab.
I would suggest you look into the OANN FreeTalk24.com app.
Somewhat related to the topic of social media, I’m still not sure what happened to Anthony Watts’s Facebook page sometime on November 24th. All of his posts on the recent wildfire in paradise east of Chico suddently disappeared. The latest post he has visible on his account is a fundraser for Alzeimer’s research. I hope things have settled down over there. I don’t actually live near the area (I’m in Dayton, Ohio), but I read this blog regularly when there is some trending hyped-up environmental issue trending on news pages.
I had a stalker type go nuclear on me over the weekend, so I locked it down on purpose. Only friends can view my FB page now.
we can ban twitter, don’t use it don’t read it. when the left is doing nothing but talking to themselves who will care?
Steve – there is. It’s called Gab. They’re getting blacklisted and are having to relocate their hosting etc. but check them out. They may be back.
Don’t do social media. Won’t do social media. I’ve never needed such a platform and I will never need such a platform. I’m a social conservative therefore considered hopelessly alt-right, whatever that’s supposed to mean, so my opinion counts for nothing when it comes to trendy snowflakes and SJWs. There’s enough lefty hate in the world why go looking for it?
+42
+1
Some folks classify blogs, such as WUWT, as a form of social media. link
This is social media.
We just communicated socially. Have never done twitter, I prefer more in depth discussions.
Ditto.
Most of us have enough to do. If you want instant communication with someone you’re related to or friends with, pick up the phone and talk.
I have been banned, blocks and called a Russian Bot when I got 100,000 comments about pushing back on Sharia Law as being against women.
I like you, Anthony, I won’t leave the public square…
Walter
I’ll do you one better. Exactly 8 days ago my wife set up and tried to activate a twitter account. 4 hours after the request she received an email that her account had been suspended for violations of twitter rules. She then followed the appeals process given and the next morning received a notice she had been permanently banned for violations of twitter rules.
What did she put up on twitter?
Surely Twitter’s censorship must break their protections under DMCA rules?
Try Binky – Antisocial Media – you’ll love it! More enjoyable, and exactly as futile as the ‘real thing’!
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/i-tried-the-app-that-literally-does-nothing-and-i-secretly-loved-it/
thank you for that! The article was great, and although I won’t download Binky–it was amusing
‘Twitter can only work if people of principle stand up and use it as a tool to fight back.’
Broken tools should ofttimes be discarded.
This is not meant to be a pithy put down. I left Twitter years ago due to the toxic nature of the platform. I couldn’t take it. You are made of sterner stuff than I am.
It’s hard to fight back when they ban everyone who disagrees with them.
I’ve mentioned Obama’s meeting with MIT last year – this is the toxic fruit of that meeting.
And naturally, all while touting the moral high-ground – see they’re calling it ‘banning mis-information and hate-speech’.
Irony, hypocrisy – words just aren’t enough.
Gab.com
Which was the system used by the shooter at the synagogue in Pittsburgh!
You give people a person or group that it’s okay to persecute, they will.
That’s the simple mechanic of fascism.
The only thing that David Cameron, ex-PM of GB, can be really remembered for, apart from giving us a referendum on EU membership, is that he said: ‘Too many Twitters make a Twat!’. Very true.
If Twitter is all lefty all the time, it’s destined to become the CNN or ESPN of social media. Don’t participate.
Very high emotional content, almost zero deep discussion of any issue.
It is dangerous as the Left has become childlike angry, with no plan, beyond spend more money. The Left’s rhetoric has become violent, hateful, destructive.
Attacking Government Officials in restaurants is civil war. Bill Maher, said the Government officials are lucky their servers or the kitchen staff did not spit in their food. Perhaps poison would also be OK?
The Government should have immediately closed the restaurant. We have the right to safe restaurants regardless of political party or gender or ethnicity or religion.
Take open borders as another example. There are 80 million refuges. There are likely 500 million people who would leave their country and move to the US if we truly had an open border.
Open borders would do nothing to fix the failure to launch countries which is the real problem.
Open borders would led to shanty towns around every major centre. Just like South Africa.
South Africa has the largest difference between rich and poor people in the world, as well as 27% unemployment. South Africa may be hell for poor people but is better than other places in Africa as immigrants travel to Africa looking for a better life.
There is no made in Africa goods, due to the lack of law and order, electricity, roads, honest tax collection, garbage collection, and so on, in almost every African country.
If we want to truly help Africa (1.2 billion people) we need to bring law and order, and electrical power to city states. (A region that is safe for businesses and factories to set up in.)
Willliam Astley
“If we want to truly help Africa (1.2 billion people) we need to bring law and order, and electrical power to city states. (A region that is safe for businesses and factories to set up in.)
Sorry William, but that’s Colonialism and as much as I believe the concept delivered more good than bad eventually, I’m in the minority.
We can empower these countries to modernise and create wealth, but Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) was considered the bread basket of Africa, run roughly to Colonial standards, without the brutality, yet the marxist Mugabe still decimated the entire country with his unrealistic idealism.
So what do we do with Africa? Give them more money, give them more resources, give them more expertise, leave them alone? After all, the place has had as many years as the west to develop and still hasn’t despite all the international aid.
So you are saying that sinking in deep mud is better than being on dry land where at least on dry land you can feed your family even though your employer is getting rich off your labour? i agree with the motto GIVE ME FREEDOM OR GIVE ME DEATH, but working for somebody (which is what colonialism really is) IS NOT SLAVERY. As long as you have the vote, then you have freedom. Colonialism is NOT apartheid. In Canada, most of our industry has always been owned by the Americans, but we don’t consider ourselves as slaves. The problem with Zimbabwe and South Africa is that they turned to Marxist philosophy. Unfortunately giving people the vote allows them to make their own mistakes. However like a child who gets burned on the stove, it seems to be a necessity for certain cultures to go through that pain. I am not arguing for colonialism without the vote. You have to give people the right to determine their own destiny. However as was done in Chile, you can cut the Marxism off by the knees and save the country. Dictators usually last only their lifetime(many exceptions I know) but Marxist systems are much harder to get rid of. There is no easy answer and every case is different but the lack of capitalist teaching in our schools leads to most adolescents becoming socialists.
Alan evangelical socialism.
When you give a generation of people liberty, they squander it on ‘isms’. When a generation earns its own liberty they will defend what they strove for. Millennials see liberty as an entitlement and don’t understand what it means to earn it. They also have no clue how fast it disappears when ‘isms’ take over.
The lessons of WW2 have been forgotten and only the derogatory terms are still remembered and applied to those who disagree with leftist extremists. Just like back then.
Alan Tomalty
Either I didn’t make myself clear, you misunderstood me, or I misunderstood you.
I support latter day Colonialism. Zimbabwe was far better off with it than without it.
When Ghandi kicked the British out of India, the place turned into a living nightmare. But strangely the country retains English as a valued language and it’s laws are remarkably similar. Western technology is steadily marching it into the 21st Century and life is generally getting better.
By way of one small example. The well respected TaTa conglomerate of India owns Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and there are few better built vehicles on the worlds roads today.
Alan Tomalty
My opinion is that now more than ever Africa in particular needs a land purchase version of Colonialism.
The continent has been staggering along on global grace for nigh on 200 years and is little more than a basket case of natural resources plundered by pirates.
How long does it take the west to learn their lesson? Or perhaps, more tellingly, how long can Africa continue to take the piss out the west?
There are of course notable exceptions but they are exceptions.
My feelings about Africa are complex; my feelings about what-to-do are simple. No matter what we do in Africa, people are going to scream hatred at us. If we do nothing, people are going to scream at us. (These may or may not be the same people.)
If we’re going to get screamed at no matter what we do or don’t do, it’s a lot cheaper, and less work, to not do.
Ellen
I find it difficult to disagree with you.
I think, whatever is done , its mainly to benefit the industrial aid complex and to make people feel good about themselves. People who have lived for 10’s of thousands of years in a location and still need outsiders to provide support and provide clean water sources are probably beyond help and cant be dragged towards modern civilisation by any amount of money. The handwringers want to talk about a couple hundred years of colonialism and ignore the thousands of years of cultural stagnation.
Interesting times are around the corner as China prepares to extract any and all resouces without carrying any racial baggage or concerns.
Colonialism is exactly what they need.
Your ideas about Zimbabwe are wholly wrong. It wasn’t run on Colonial standards, once Mugabe took over, it was run on African tribal standards.
If you weren’t a ZANU member & thus a Shona speaker, you were ZAPU & thus an Ndebele & a minority. The two merged only when Mugabe had defeated Nkomo politically & militarily.
“Open borders would led to shanty towns around every major centre. Just like South Africa.”
Have you been to the San Francisco Bay Area lately? While not condensed in one area, you don’t need to go to other countries to see shanty towns.
It is disgusting and heartbreaking to see what progressive-socialists have let this once beautiful area become.
BobH
@Adam
From https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/10/24/voyage-of-the-banned/
“General Twitter Alternative
A whole lot of folks got chased of Twitter and went to Gab.ai:
https://gab.ai/
Another Twitter alternative is “Twister” that is all peer-2-peer:
http://twister.net.co/
There are also many other alternatives listed here:
https://alternativeto.net/software/twitter/
Mastodon, Minds, Diaspora, Tumbler, GNU Social, Friendica, Known, Ello, ZeroMe, Patchwork, Libertree, Musteus, Pumpio, Openbook, Plurk, Hawaar, THINK thenlive, BroadTags, Grewpler, Amino, Pawoo, Plag, Kweknet, Scuttlebutt.nz, MeWe, Tweet It!, MicroBlog, Chaino, Futurenet, …..and many many more.
So perhaps some kind of evaluation of the alternatives and a subset needs to be identified.”
Is tweeting where one uses a pound sign?
Right. Like this “pound me too movement”
I was on Twitter for about a year 2015- 2016. It became very apparent as the election primaries were going that there were many may bots (not a real human behind the name) on Twitter. I deleted everything and haven’t looked back. I hope Twitter simply dies and all its SJW workers find themselves serving me coffee at Starbucks and living once again with their parents. That would be social justice.
Twitter is becoming like Stalin’s purges. Even some lefty loyalists are now taking a metaphorical bullet.
You patronise Starbucks?
A few months ago a political gossip site in the UK (Guido Fawkes – https://order-order.com/) tried to get a day where people would only say nice things about each other on Twitter. I think it went down like a lead balloon.
Rob
Good old Guido. 🙂
All these social platforms that are banning conservative posts are shooting themselves in the foot. Like a restaurant that turns away customers.
They become less useful to the CIA if they are only covering 50% of the population.
Other sites will emerge to take their place, like GAB.ai
NASA live
Mars landing feed
https://youtu.be/Ne-KubwLzio
“biased towards WUWT”
I realize that you meant they have a bias in regard to WUWT, but “bias against” gets that across better.
Best regards from the Nitpick Patrol. And thanks for all you do on behalf of civilization, Anthony.
fixed, thanks
Quote (O.P.) : ” … attacks … and boorishness ….” Those have been seen here on WUWT comment threads often enough as well. Yet since being re-educated, I mean learning, to embrace my inner child I have no complaint about any “childishness”.
When the West’s sinistral folk finally get rid of all the opposition, the echo chamber will push up the suicide rate among them. They already loath themselves for a remote connection with rhe Age of Reason, The Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, The Green Revolution, the Tech Rev, etc. which they see as insensitivity toward those who weren’t participants in these developments.
Do the “progressives” not see that this is condescention, that it assumes that non-Westerners aren’t sophisticated enough for such enterprise? Do they not see that thinking those of non Western cultures need шнуте lefty handlers and protectors to invent and promulgate “diversity”and all the other “social justice” policies to shore up something the diversity-branded are deemed by the progs to lack is the most most egregious form of гасisм and neocolonialism yet devised. This is post normal segregation. Tearing down civilization because it’s an afront to the diversity-branded created by “progs”is, too .
It’s bizarre to see businesses like Twitter and Facebook, who seem to think that their best interests lie with actively driving away half of the people who use their products, half of the people that might work for them, and half of the people that might invest in them. Some day, this is going to be a business school case study into self-destructive business practices.
Personally, I see almost no value from using Twitter. I’ve had a couple pseudonymous accounts over the years, but rarely (almost never) used them. Occasionally, I like to browse the feeds during breaking-news events, otherwise I generally have no interest in it.
My advice would be to leave immediately, but of course you have to look at where your audience comes from. If Twitter is feeding you substantial numbers of visits, then I guess you should stay. Either way, I’d say that you should start exploring the blockchain space. There are a number of emerging sites/blockchains that pay contributors instead of advertisers. When those platforms come up to speed, Facebook and Twitter are “dead sites walking”, so you should really start getting ready for that day.
I have an account, and I have never received or sent a tweet. Not once, ever. And I have at least one follower, a multi-millionaire circus executive. Absolutely true.
I expect one day he will issue an order to send in the clown.
Crispin in Waterloo
You’re followed by a clown?
I’ve warned you before, when you’re in one of your far flung destinations someone will finger you (if you’ll pardon the innuendo) and it’s liable to be a clown. ~eye’s squeezed tight shut~ Nope, I refuse to let that image into my head!
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I was permanently suspended recently, and despite asking three times, they never said why. Most likely due to jokes about #VoteWednesday aimed at Democrats. A joke other people used. Or, it could have been a few #NPC (non-player character) jokes. Yet, liberals who call for assassinating Trump aren’t even given a timeout.
I left my Twitter account without ever having used it to post anything.
It wasn’t even because of the political bias. I thought the user interface sucked to the back teeth. It’s awful.
Microsoft made their hundreds of billions by offering a (sometimes disputedly) user-friendly product.
At least they tried, once or twice, to satisfy consumer demand. Twitter is a step back. Two decades at least.
Twitter is another company that the BBC has illegally given a lot of free advertising to. Like Tesla.
Neither of them have a product that will actually work in the marketplace, but are being kept afloat by free advertising plus constant references and puff-pieces.
What about social media economics? Is there any revenue associated with twitter or facebook? Bit of a novice in this matter.
I dont do either and frankly am astounded that anyone uses twitter to the degree some seem to do so. So many articles today are just a series of tweets captured in the article, so I have to read stuff I normally wouldnt read
Don’t need a book on social media, or the net. Whole thing can be summed up by the following statement:
The internet is the Krell machine.
If you don’t recognize the inference, watch the old Sci-Fi movie, Forbidden Planet. You’ll have seen a good movie, and my comment will then make sense.
Twitter is evil. By engaging evil you teach evil to be better at being evil. Cordon off the evil so others don’t engage and leave it alone.
I’m fairly new to Twitter and I haven’t seen the punishment of the right like many here see.
I joined after Hurricane Florence when we had no electricity or cable for about 10 days. Spectrum Cable was not responsive to phone calls so I opened a Twitter account and actually got in touch with them that way. Some service providers will respond on social media when they do not respond to phone calls.
After that I started following others including several skeptic climate change tweeters, which led me to a number of conservative accounts.
Someone please give me some examples of the practices talked about here. Maybe it would help me recognize these abuses when I see them.
spalding craft
I have a Twitter account although I rarely use it. My interests are Motor racing and Rugby, so not much more than a bit of information, which is all I’m interested in.
Some people however, use it as a means of social interaction rather than an information feed, that’s when the trouble starts.
Businesses are quite rightly looking to social media as a means of disseminating information, which is quite right. Better one Tweet than 1,000 phone calls to say the same thing.
Anthony benefits from it as a PR source I suspect, and I can respect that, although there is a price to pay. Considering the reach of WUWT across social media, any publicity is good publicity.
I’m just amazed at the industry of the man across 3 platforms, a blog (the best in the world) a Facebook site and a Twitter feed, all of which demand attention. And the guy frequently answers posts on here personally, and no doubt on the other sites, organises Mods. and contributors, earns a crust, gives his time to fire victims, and still gets some sleep. The man is a living dynamo.
I’m knackered just keeping up with reading WUWT never mind the rest!
Well, you won’t see it on Twitter will you? By definition. You wouldn’t have heard much (truthful) about the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Radio Moscow either.
I’m not saying that Twitter is competent enough to censor each and every viewpoint they don’t approve of. The AI computer algorithms simply aren’t good enough. All they do achieve is making sure that such viewpoints and ideas only get spread more slowly. Off course, when I say “all” they achieve is that, that is all the traditional media needs to do when censoring viewpoints. If something becomes widely known 10 years after the event, who cares? That is how real censorship works.
For every story and controversy there is always someone who knows ‘the truth’, but if nobody else hears them then it doesn’t matter, does it?
I tweet fairly regularly by responding to other twitter accounts. I don’t sound off by initiating my own tweets. Obviously I’m a very small fish in a very large pond, and I don’t get abusive or angry. My tweets get posted right away but I guess that can always change.
I must say I find the process a bit addictive. I follow about 20 accounts and they’re always interesting things to talk about. I haven’t seen much social intereaction but of course that’s a large part of communication.
Thanks to those who responded with some helpful info.
Project Veritas did an undercover sting operation on Twitter. In the video, eight employees explain how they censor content that they don’t like.
You can watch the video here:
Thank you.
The way to stop lefty extremists is to let them be heard in full.
I don’t use any of the social media stuff like twitter or facebook. I also don’t watch TV. Guess I am odd but my mind just doesn’t allow it and I don’t want to give my time to someone who wants to sell me an agenda/propaganda.
I spent last night digging on line for drawings on how the Otto engine worked, that lead to who Otto was and then it lead me to how the Diesel engine was developed by Rudolf Diesel and then Karl Benz. At the end of the night I was working through some on line drawings on how a steam crane worked.
jjs
There are few things more satisfying than using the library of the internet to learn from.
But then there are people who say “I’ll never use the internet, it’s full of Trotskyists and paedophiles.”
But it depends on how one looks at things. I prefer to think of the majority of people across the world brought together by FB and Twitter rather than the few who abuse it.
Just think, without the internet you and I would never have met. 🙂
Buggy Whips don’t warrant eternal vigilance – Twitter is a Propaganda outlet and nothing more.
Neuter them.
I am glad I saw this post and comments today, and realize that Twitter may be faltering. I have an account, but don’t really tweet much, but it has been handy for the 50 news organizations I follow to read headlines including WUWT. It is very handy for that, but from what I see of the tweets and trolling, it can be like digital hell. I don’t get any advertising ever, since run a good ad blocker on a Mac/iPad/iPhone with most cookies disabled so can’t complain about that, but wonder how they make much actual money with ads on a phone? Who is going to buy anything that they see an ad on their phone, presuming they even see the ad or want to look at it. If I land on a webpage with blinking and nauseous ads on other computers, I am gone instantly. The advertising model is broken as a revenue generator. I can’t fathom a company paying good money to advertise on Twitter or FB or anywhere on the internet, unless it is some form of website that makes advertising that makes it easy for what I am looking for. Amazon would be an example of a successful advertising and retail company wrapped up onto one. I want to be in charge of my advertising viewing, and whomever figures this out is going to be the next multibillionaire.
Which reminds me, I bought 1000 shares of Twitter a few years back when they hit rock bottom, and they actually tripled up to last spring/summer and really wished I would have sold then. I am still a bit better than a double so I think I should sell these and use the gain against the other losses that are now adding up since the markets are tanking now that a mild recession is being planned out. Thank goodness for the people who allow ads. I can just see them banning Trump some day, and then they do probably go to Zero. He has probably made them a lot of share value, but not sure they are that well run anymore. I could see some kid in a dorm room inventing a much better social media site that would put both FaceBook and Twitter out of business. After all, it is just another form of digital vaporware. Here today, gone tomorrow.
P.S. Even though I don’t get any ads on WUWT, I would be prepared to pay for a subscription service here if it had some neat additional features and perhaps only the paid members could comment. Or some type of filter that could be turned on to hide the boring trolls that sneak in every once in a while and mess it up. As a Generalist in learning, I am indebted to a lot of smart people here that have enriched my life with a lot of knowledge, the type you couldn’t really get just going to school. Actually, I think you can glean a lot of wisdom here, which is a different beast than just knowledge. This site would be worth paying for.
https://assets.amuniversal.com/35c9e250510101363b24005056a9545d
Some have mentioned Gab, which is alternative to Twitter. Gab recently was deplatformed by their ISP, their domain registrar and all of their payment providers. Some claim this was done because under pressure from Twitter, but no one can confirm that.
The official reason given was that Gab was banned the ban had to do to the Pittsburgh shooter who killed multiple people at a synagogue and had an active account on Gab. This a curious assertion considering that known antisemite Louis Farrakhan has an “official” Twitter account.
To put things in prospective. In 2017 four black teenagers kidnapped and tortured a mentally disabled white kid. They were charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
They streamed the incident on Facebook Live. Of course, Facebook didn’t suffer any repercussions at all.
As a fiction writer, I got a Twitter account because many internet sites on marketing fiction said it was essential. I never posted a Tweet, but I looked at the Tweets of many literary agents (90% live in New York City) and found most to be hysterically anti-Trump, concerned only with cheap trendy fiction devoid of literary value, biased towards gender and ethnic minorities, and uninterested in anything new and different. The literary world is also, even more so, susceptible to Group-Think and political correctness than science and politics, and this is a red flag for this civilization, as fiction has always been the vanguard of new ideas. As in many industries, publishing is dominated by a handful of companies, and if you can’t sell to them, you can’t sell, period. A few writers have been able to break out of this stranglehold by self-publishing, but only a few. So we beat on, boats against the current…
After 2 full years, I have now been banned from commenting at the Guardian
Yesterday, one of my comments was designated a featured comment.
Today, I linked to this
and was banned from all future participation
How about suing them for fraud, breach of contract, violation of the common carrier obligations (Title II of the 1934/96 Communications Act), and use of forced labor by threat of abuse of law (18 U.S. Code §1589 & §1593)? The latter refers to Twitter’s “terms of conduct” and other legally fictional documents on which it relies to force users to create content content for it for free?
Also, I don’t think they are protected under Section 230, because their censorship not voluntary, but fulfilling their obligations under various deals with foreign governments and the US left.
I laugh a those who swear f u overbook is the only way to stay in touch and up to date
if I want to contact friends I Email them direct ditto sharing pics etc
if I want news I go to MY choice of uncensored newspages usually alt, but some msm for laugh
I dont use any msoft engines or browsers, I adblock,
apart from here and a few other blogs I spend a fair bit of time hunting up info I sure cant get any other way, for a myriad of curiousities and interests I have.
people I know using antisocial media dont even know whats happening on the state or locally let alone much world news I find
its a very closed clique in most instances
oz— looks like me & you got the same mindset. That’s almost a carbon copy of how I use it.
I might add that I threw out my TV back in ’96’ & have ‘missed’ it so much I have never thought I
wanted to get another one. Haven’t watched a movie in about that same time either. If I want to be
entertained I go to the mall & watch the myriad number of strange & interesting people for a couple hours,(especially around holidays) or maybe to the local Walmart. But that’s my choice which in my opinion is much better than having it shoved down my throat by some talking head that looks good but is dumber than a door nail & is reading something that someone else wrote, or worse yet,suffering some blowhard thespian or musician that thinks their soapbox status gives them the right to lecture me what to do or think,vote, etc.
I’ve been on Twitter for years. By “on” I mean that I subscribe to a few individuals and news/weather/sports sites to create a basic news-ticker for myself when I’m in front of the computer. It’s been years since I tweeted anything, so I provide no content to the beast and I don’t engage in any twitter conversations.
That’s probably not what they had in mind when they created twitter. 😉