Dear Twitter, Double Standard Much?
This afternoon, I logged into Twitter on my phone to tweet and I was greeted with the above message claiming I have violated Twitter’s rules, by using a common idiom, tweeting “Give @realDonaldTrump enough rope, eventually he will hang himself. #NationalEmergency”, not threatening anyone. I never called for anyone to hang Donald J. Trump, nor threatened to hang the Cheeto N’ Chief myself.
The reason I am so angry and defiant is because President Trump consistently posts hateful, racist and misogynist tweets, yet, no action is taken by Twitter, and given that he is the President, his words carry much more weight than a private individual, acting as a true call to action for his sheep-like base. You just have to look at the actions of his base against the press, most recently at Trump’s rally in El Paso, TX.
The first thing Twitter tries to get you to do is accept that you have done something wrong by deleting the alleged infringing tweet. Of course, I immediately rejected that offer. I refuse to allow Twitter to publicly shame me by showing that I have accepted their arbitrary ruling that I have infringed their rules.
My response to Twitter is;
“Donald Trump consistently writes hateful, misogynistic and racist tweets, yet Twitter has chosen to restrict my account due to my use of a common idiom suggesting that Donald Trump will cause his own downfall. I request that you review this action and restore my account to full functionality.”
At this point in writing this blog, I realized that Twitter actually penalizes you more for daring to defend yourself by not simply accepting their determination. Before I lodged my dispute, I was able to still read Twitter, but not tweet, nor retweet other people. Now, after the dispute, my only option is to delete the tweet and accept the alleged wrongdoing to be able to continue to read tweets; which is stupid, it’s not like I cannot get a free Email account and sign up for a new Twitter account, not that I would bother.
Further investigation reveals that Twitter has hidden the tweet on my timeline that allegedly breaches their terms and conditions, so, why even ask for me to delete? They have censored me as well as blocking my access while I am disputing the legitimacy of Twitter’s claims of infringement of their rules.
Yes, I know all this is laid out in Twitter’s Enforcement Options. Keep reading….
This is a clear double standard on behalf of Twitter. As a private company, they can dictate their own terms and conditions of use, and that would be fine if they were consistent. I have been openly threatened by Trump supporters on Twitter, yet Twitter did jack-shit about that. Not to mention Trump’s own tweets calling his base to action in regard to the press, calling them the enemy of the people, which led to violence against the press, to which, Trump responded by doubling down on Twitter.
I might well be risking my six-year-old Twitter account by taking this action, but it’s worth it, as I never perpetrated what Twitter claimed I have done. I will be updating this post as my appeal develops, if their human reviewers uphold the automated system determination, then I don’t want to be part of something that has such hypocritical double standards, allowing people with influence, such as the president, to post whatever they want while regular users with little to no influence, like me, get penalized.
Finally, as I was writing this write-up; my son said, “why don’t you just delete the tweet?”, my response to him was “I have done nothing wrong, why should I accept blame for something I did not do?” An innocent person should never accept responsibility for an action they did not take. And frankly, it’s Twitter, it’s not important enough for me to acknowledge their accusation of wrongdoing and accept the public shame.