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Twitter Rushes to Protect Feelings of Sick Old White Man After Failing Everyone Else

Reading Time: 4 minutes.

An angry Twitter bird shouts profanity, covering up what a diverse group of birds is trying to say.Don’t worry about buying salt this week, because I’m delivering an entire truckload to you in this post today.

Twitter has announced that they’d suspend anyone wishing COVID-19 harms or kills Donald Trump. After Trump allowed more than 207,000 Americans to die of the disease, and infect over 7,400,000 Americans*, American’s are not allowed to hope Trump receives the same treatment he’s pushed on everyone else. It is what it is.

But it’s more than the fact that Twitter is rushing to protect the feelings of a man and his followers who have been so selfish, callous, and cruel during this pandemic. It’s more than the fact that these are the same people who allowed the disease to become so pervasive and so deadly in the United States. It’s the fact that this is the first time Twitter has actually enforced this rule.

For years, Twitter allowed women, racial minorities, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ people, and many more to face harassment on their platform. These people faced doxxing and actual, believable death threats, not just a few people saying, “Karma’s a bitch, huh, Trump?” These threats aren’t from people reveling in schadenfreude, but people actually pledging to carry out acts of violence. Twitter has largely allowed them to go unchecked.

They even allowed Trump to retweet a video saying, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” The tweet is still available on their platform.

Why when it was women, LGBTQ people, and racial and religious minorities did Twitter turn a blind eye? Because Twitter, like Facebook, has two sets of rules for their users. There’s the strict application of the rules for liberal voices and minorities, and a lax set of rules for conservatives.

Otherwise they’d never stick around, and Twitter believes they can’t afford to lose those voices.

They can. In fact, at this rate, they can’t afford not to lose those voices.

The Application of Rules

I was the older of two children. I know what it feels like to live by a separate set of rules. I spent most of high school perpetually grounded from ‘B’s while my brother roped in ‘C’s, and do not get me started on cleaning up the toys after my younger brother would throw them everywhere. I had to set a “good example.”

This feels the same. The liberals, women, anti-racists, LGBTQ people, and religious minorities are the older siblings in the room. Twitter, Facebook, and even the media expect us to be so much better. They don’t expect the same rationality or compassion from conservatives. This is how you get a social network where violence against women spreads among hate groups, but no one can even say Trump deserves each and every cough from a disease he himself made so prevalent.

https://twitter.com/rgay/status/1312217110593122304?s=20

Twitter is now applying a rule for a person without any actual threats of violence. People are sharing schadenfreude, that is, joy at seeing something bad happen to someone who has done something bad. It’s joy in karmic justice. That in no way is anywhere close to the death threats, calls for harmful conversion therapy, rape threats, dissolution of civil rights, doxxing, and harassment people face on Twitter.

Twitter believes conservative feelings are more important than liberal lives, and it shows.

Worthless Users

But should they? Are conservative voices even worth sacrificing your platform to coddle? The idea of this off-balance rule enforcement is that conservatives are, basically, whiny babies. The moment you tell them they can’t post hate speech, organize a Nazi rally, or harass a woman to the point that she has to move multiple times, and they whine and cry about it on Fox News. Next thing you know, Twitter’s in front of the senate trying to explain to these man children that violence is against their rules, can’t they just, try not harming other people who disagree with them?

This is exactly the problem though. It’s why so many of my non-male friends don’t want to even look at Twitter. It’s so full of hate and vitriol that many targets of this harassment don’t want to step foot in there. Who could blame a trans woman for not wanting to be on Twitter when large and notable TERFs on Twitter like J.K Rowling continue to encourage dehumanization and violence? Who could blame a female software developer for staying silent when Twitter allowed Gamergate to tear through its platform?

https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/1312211554629152769?s=20

It’s true that Twitter’s afraid of losing their conservative users by punishing their most violent subset of users, but they wouldn’t lose the conservative voices that matter. There are far more conservative users and politicians who can make their point without threats of violence or hate speech. They may whine about their most hateful base leaving the network, but it won’t be enough for them to leave the platform.

In other words, Twitter is choosing their most violent, hateful, right-wing users over all of the moderate, left-leaning, female, and minority users they could have. These hateful voices aren’t driving interactions, they’re silencing it. They’re a net negative. They’re worse than worthless, they’re harmful.

This Isn’t a Bad Policy

https://twitter.com/ava/status/1312226894750740480?s=20

I don’t want to sound like I want to sit on Twitter and scream about how Trump deserves the same gasping, lonely, painful death he has inflicted on 207,000+ other Americans. I don’t. What I want is for Twitter to learn from their mistakes in the past and strongly enforce this rule on their platform from here on out. Ban those wishing for Trump’s death. Also ban those wishing for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ death. Ban those calling for the rape of female politicians, journalists, and developers. Ban the TERFs. Ban the Nazis, Jack. Don’t continue to apply your rules to only the left-leaning subset of your users.

https://twitter.com/morninggloria/status/1312174906059026432?s=20

Apply your rules equally. No place on the internet should be a gathering place for those wishing violence, pain, or suffering. Twitter should be a place where both Donald Trump and Roxane Gay feel safe to share their content. It’s not.

Twitter needs to learn from this outrage. They’ve shown they can step in to protect the feelings of one user. Perhaps now they can show us they’re willing to step in to protect the actual lives of their female, LGBTQ, Muslim, Jewish, Black, Latino, and other minority users. I’m glad that Twitter wants to protect Trump’s feelings as he hopefully recovers. Now they need to step in to protect everyone else.

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1312498514002243584?s=20

Hey, Twitter? Be best.

https://twitter.com/shamblepop/status/1312181750152396800?s=20

 

Sources/Further Reading:

* When I started writing this article, there were under 7.4 million cases in the U.S. By the time I was proofreading it, there were over 7.4 million cases in the U.S. Nearly 10,000 new cases in the time it took to refresh a website.

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