Twitter

Rebranding censorship as “accountability”

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged censorship Kamala Harris Twitter on by

In an article attempting to show that Kamala Harris didn’t call for shutting down X, an AP “Fact Focus” article inadvertently shows that she is an advocate of censorship. (As is Trump, but that’s for a different article.) It shows that a particular claim — that an old video by Harris “has threatened to censor both X and Musk” — is inaccurate, but it uses this to cast a shade over the fact that Harris has called for censorship of social media. The article goes on to quote that call verbatim:

The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.

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Thug threatens pro-China freedom activist — and me

This entry was posted in Personal and tagged China fandom Twitter on by

I’d wondered if China’s thugs would ever threaten me for all the posts I’ve made about the China Worldcon. Well, you know what they say: Be careful what you wish for, or you may live in interesting times. Before the sun came up this morning, I had my life threatened on Twitter. Since originally posting this, I’ve received new information and updated this post.

Let’s start at the beginning. In today’s news I read that one Xiaolei Wu was arrested for threatening violence against a pro-Chinese freedom activist. I did a search on Twitter to see what I could find about Xiaolei Wu and found a post by a person using that name. As we know all too well, names on Twitter prove nothing, but this person claimed to “represent the future of China” and was begging to the Chinese ambassador for help. I later learned that the holder of this account is an impersonator, so I was threatened, but as a bad joke and not by the same person who was arrested. Here’s the reply I got:
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To Hell with Twitter

This entry was posted in Personal and tagged Twitter on by

I am furious. Therefore I will choose my words very carefully.

The ex-Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad posted on Twitter: “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.” In context, he was cheering on the brutal murder of Samuel Paty. Twitter did not suspend his account and was slow to delete that tweet.

I responded with what I consider an appropriate level of outrage and called on Twitter to remove his account.

As a result, my Twitter account is now suspended. If Twitter went to the trouble of suspending an account as obscure as mine (524 followers, last I checked), it likely did the same to a lot of other people criticizing Mahathir Mohamad, though I don’t know.
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Twitter notes

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged publicity social media Twitter on by

Since I’m promoting self-published work, I should work on my visibility on Twitter. That’s what everyone says. Don’t look for expert advice here, since I haven’t topped 500 followers. However, I’ve been making an extra effort lately, and I can offer some notes on how it’s worked.

Not that I like Twitter very much. It’s manipulative, giving publicity boosts to some tweets and accounts while leaving others in the shadows. Whether “shadowbanning” is real may be a matter of how you define it; certainly some users find themselves consigned to low visibility. Twitter is a game where the dealer hides the cards and doesn’t tell you the rules.

But if you play, you can improve your visibility. The first step is to link to your profile a lot. Probably I need to do more of that.
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