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My thanks to the hundreds of Twitter supporters who tweeted in protest of the company blocking my account for the past five days. My special thanks to Ali Abunimah, who contacted the Twitter’s media team inquiring about my situation. This morning the company restored my account and I’m back in business. Ali sprang me from Twitter jail! This proves what I’ve claimed all along: that decisions like suspensions are mostly based on automated settings. If a certain number of users flag your account it will be suspended no matter what content you published. In other words, it has little or nothing to do with the actual content. I’ll bet if 1,000 users reported a Twitter account for a picture of a ham sandwich it would be suspended.
Once suspended the only means to remove the suspension (short of enduring the entire “sentence”) is if you are a celebrity or well-known public figure who can muster a viral campaign; or if the media gets interested. Once that happens Twitter will take the course of least resistance and relent, unless there is a significant down-side in doing so (i.e. Alex Jones, for example).
I’m very grateful to Ali for his solidarity in this matter.
Now back to raising hell and showing these pro-Israel goons to be what they are. Funny, some people are touchy about such language. At the r/Israel_Palestine subreddit, one of the pro-Israel mods deleted my post about this experience because the word “goon” was deemed ‘uncivil.’ Funny how calling settlers who kill Palestinians (or justify their killing) by their proper name is not permitted in “polite society,” while criticism of the acts themselves is censored.
But how else would you describe this?
I think you must be mistaken about Twitter practising censorship. For example, this is apparently quite alright.
‘“If you’re a white woman and are currently pregnant with a white baby boy.. do us all a favor and take a trip to planned parenthood.”
[Comment deleted: I don’t permit the term “zio-Nazi” here.]
Anyway, back on Twitter or no, if it were me, I’d find myself thinking twice before I posted anything equivalent to what I had once assumed were perfectly legitimate remarks.
So Hasbara still wins. If you haven’t been completely muzzled, maybe you’ve got a bark collar on now. Score it Hasbara five, Richard two instead of Hasbara twelve, Richard zero.
‘I’ll bet if 1,000 users reported a Twitter account for a picture of a ham sandwich it would be suspended.’
Of course it would be. A ham sandwich is a dog whistle for anti-semitism. Everyone knows that.
Keep preaching Richard. Sometimes people need their feelings hurt to get anything accomplished.
a question from a Hasbaroid –
How do you know it is Ali Abunimah who made Twitter change their mind. The sort of block you had is up to 7 days, not permanent.
Placing an account in read-only mode
link to help.twitter.com
@ Arik: Because the block was removed the minute Ali received a message from Twitter acknowledging his inquiry. It’s amazing what you hasbaroids want to quibble over. And because he’s done this sort of thing before and it worked then.
I don’t know — I think I liked you better when you were suspended, Richard. You had more of a fighting spirit in you. 😛
Now you’re all happy and ready to turn the aircraft carrier around for your mission accomplished moment…
Well, I hope you learned some lessons to teach the Palestinians in jails out of the experience. I’m sure they need to learn how to overcome massive censorship in a bureaucratic system.