This morning, my friend @RadioFreeTom posted an op-ed in @USATODAY he wrote expressing concerns that Warren & other Ds made a mistake having a town hall on the issue of LBGTQ rights bc the Right would weaponize the material in ads in the general against the nominee. If you were
on twitter this morning, you'll know I commented negatively about the column bc my elections research shows that turnout of D and D-aligned voters will decide 2020, & these voters want these type of issues addressed. Tom disagreed. We debated. BC that's what people do when they
disagree w each other, they debate the issue, on the merits, and w/o calling each other's basic humanity into question. Despite the fact that there was nothing profane, controversial, or indecent about Tom's USA Today column, some twitter user reported it as violating twitter's
user standards. Now, don't get me wrong, twitter looked at the op-ed and ruled the content does not violate the standards, but let me tell you, it is still a problem that some people are cavalier about what they will report as violations of user standards. And as a person who has
been the victim of one or two "spoofed" user violations myself (both on FB, both of which were ruled not to violate user terms) I think @Twitter should consider making a policy where these fake reporters themselves get a suspension if posts they report are found to be fine. That
would make people be a lot more circumspect in distinguishing between content they disagree with, or even find offensive because it assaults their own morals & standards, versus content that is truly in violation of twitter's standards. Generally, my own exp on twitter has been
positive, I have only had to block 13 people even after my following expanded after my MSNBC appearances. And I thank you, followers, for making my twitter world such a great place. And my timeline is a diverse universe, precisely bc I welcome a diverse community on it. I hope
the individual that reported Tom's op-ed did not come from my community. But if it did, I hope that person will consider why it is valuable to have a free marketplace of ideas and exposure to ideas that challenge, or even offend, your own sensibilities. Much of what ails us today
in a product of the silos our contemporary society allows us to build, and wall ourselves off into. Living in a silo can be comfortable; it is reassuring to surround ourselves w people that look like you, sound like you, and think like you. But that can really distort reality and
it can lead to "group think" in which people are willing to say, do, and believe things together they would never arrive at as individuals. To a large degree, this is what we are seeing play out at a mass scale within the Republican Party, which over the past decade, used the
internet to build the last wall in an impenetrable silo first constructed via the emergence of talk radio then Fox News. The internet was the last piece of that wall- and now that the wall is complete many Republicans live in a separate universe, where reality is what a small
group of opinion leaders and 1 charismatic leader make it. We are seeing how dangerous this is daily, and we should be doing everything we can in our own lives to avoid replicating it on the other side. I'll leave you with this
