"Silence favors the oppressor, never the oppressed."
-Eli Weisel
So yesterday, I was scrolling through Twitter, retweeting memes and telling jokes, when, all of a sudden, my account (@suzukinathie) stopped working. No matter how many times I tried to refresh Twitter, it just wouldn't work.
Then I got an email from Twitter telling me my account had been permanently suspended, and it gave the following reason:
For those of you whose eyes are still fluttering with disbelief, let me give you some context:
Two days ago, the state of South Dakota executed a convicted murderer named Charles Rhines by lethal injection. Rhines had been convicted of stabbing a man to death during a robbery, and there were musings that the jury had given him a death sentence because he happened to be gay.
The ACLU, which has a long history of opposing the death penalty in general, repeated this assertion. In response, I tweeted that Charles Rhines was not being put to death for being gay; he was being put to death for the torture and murder of an innocent man - a heinous crime that clearly warrants the death penalty.
And, somehow, that tweet was flagged for "harassment and abuse". Why? Because I restated the facts of the case? Because I was trying to clarify the reason Rhines was being executed? Because I pointed out that it was Rhines' crime, not his sexuality, that had landed him on death row?
How is that harassment? How is that abuse? Did I target anyone? Did I threaten anyone? Did I tell anyone to do anything? No, no, and no!
I still don't know how the hell my tweet violated the rules, let alone why it warranted permanent suspension.
I, of course, angrily appealed the suspension, but Twitter ignored it and told me they concluded my tweet violated their rules anyway. They didn't elaborate on the specifics.
So it looks like I've been permanently exiled from Twitter. So be it.
Now, Twitter, I suppose I could go and create another account that could circumvent your attempts to prevent me from rejoining. I could create an entirely new email address linked to an entirely new phone number and open a new account entirely without your knowledge.
But this raises the question - Are you really worth all that time and effort? Will it make any difference? Will it motivate you to be less arbitrary when handing out suspensions? Will it fix your systemic problems surrounding free speech and vague rules that you don't even properly enforce??
I don't believe it will.
Well, thank you for the good memories, Twitter. Thank you for all the new friends you gave me. Thank you for the communities you allowed me to join. Thank you for introducing me to some of the most interesting and entertaining characters I've ever encountered. And, most importantly, thank you for the many fun hours of trolling Roy Moore and enabling me to share my work with the entire world.
But, if you are this sensitive and this incompetent when it comes to enforcing your rules - to the point that a simple flagging without context is enough to suspend an otherwise unblemished account - then, in all honesty, my untimely departure from your platform is YOUR loss, not mine.
You cannot stop me from spreading my message. You cannot silence me or intimidate me.
With or without your help, I will continue to speak out for what I know to be right.
And there's nothing you can do to stop that.
Comments
Post a Comment