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According to Ars Technica
A number of "alt-right," pro-Trump, and self-described conservative social media personalities awoke this morning to find that they had a lot fewer followers on Twitter than they had the night before. The apparent cause was the latest culling by Twitter of accounts that in some way violated the company's terms of service, a Twitter spokesperson told Ars, including "behaviors that indicate automated activity or violations of our policies around having multiple accounts, or abuse." The sweep has some on the right accusing Twitter of politically motivated censorship.
"Twitter's tools are apolitical, and we enforce our rules without political bias," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Ars. The accounts were targeted as part of "our ongoing work in safety," the spokesperson said. "We also take action on any accounts we find that violate our terms of service, including asking account owners to confirm a phone number so we can confirm a human is behind it. That's why some people may be experiencing suspensions or locks. This is part of our ongoing, comprehensive efforts to make Twitter safer and healthier for everyone."
And at Vanity Fair:
Renewed fears of censorship have once again led some users to talk about leaving to join Gab, the so-called free-speech social network that cropped up in 2016 as an alternative to Twitter. And Gab couldn't be more pleased. Utsav Sanduja, the company's chief operating officer, told me on Wednesday that the company had seen "a surge of donations, Gab memberships, [and] user sign-ups" since Tuesday night.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by urza9814 on Friday February 23 2018, @04:20PM (1 child)
Soo...Gab? Gab is their alternative? These morons have clearly earned the banhammer.
I mean I've got nothing against Gab specifically...but they could have picked a network that is actually designed from the ground up to make these kinds of attacks difficult if not impossible. They could have gone with something like Mastadon or diaspora* or GNUSocial or whatever. They could have picked a democratic architecture; instead they've chosen to jump ship from one self-declared benevolent dictator to another....setting themselves up to fight the same battle again and again and again until they actually freakin' learn something from it.
I guess that's what you'd expect from right-wingers though...I mean decentralized, user-controlled networks? That sounds too much like socialism...better to find a more agreeable tyrant, right?
Keep in mind that if Gab actually believed in the things they claim to believe in, they could have accomplished those goals much more cheaply, easily, and effectively by starting from an existing open network. Then they just put their effort into building the best damn client they can, learning from all the existing projects and all of their rough edges. They expended a lot of unnecessary effort purely to ensure they have full control over their users. And people think they aren't planning to exploit that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @05:58PM
Welcome to "conservative" politics. Yes, the scare quotes are intentional.