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SJWs Strike Back: Twitter “bot” purge causes outcry from trollerati as follower counts fall
According to Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]
Right-wing tweeters see thousands of followers purged for “suspicious account behavior.”
No comment. Comments belong in the Comments section.
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.
The Horror! The Horror! (Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a literary reference.)
In response to the sudden culling of accounts, starting at around 1am Eastern Time today, some aligned with "alt-right" figures such as white supremacist Richard Spencer started the #TwitterLockOut and #TwitterPurge hashtags, and some resurfaced Project Veritas' accusations that Twitter employees were deliberately censoring "right-leaning" accounts. Spencer himself claimed to have lost over 1,000 followers over a few hours overnight; Janna "Deplorable" Wilkinson, who had her own account suspended in October, claimed to have lost 3,500 followers.
"Bot" followers, if you know what I mean. Russian bot followers.
Other coverage at CNET: Conservatives outraged by #TwitterLockout [cnet.com]
If a follower is a bot, is it really a follower? In a move it says is "without political bias," Twitter purges accounts that couldn't prove they're human.
And at Vanity Fair [vanityfair.com]:
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.
Horrible enough to flee to the alt-right ghetto of gab?
