I’m hearing a lot of pundits talk about the Trump bans as if they’re some new policy. They’re not. Facebook and Twitter have long had rules against the incitement of violence. The only thing that changed is they started enforcing them.
If you want to play pundit and say that they should be focusing on all their other problems, fine. Yes they should. But don’t you dare overlook how important this is.
When the social media companies have policies that they do not enforce, it shows every troll in the world that they don’t have to follow the rules either. That ended yesterday for the biggest troll in history.
Yes we still need to hold them accountable for their ad policies that should be illegal, for their business models that create radicalization. But don’t use those things to diminish the importance of what happened yesterday.
And if you don’t understand why the Trump bans are important, talk to a community manager. They’ll tell you what happens in a community when the users know the rules are selectively enforced.
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All the words are meaningless. They just want power and will do anything to get it. Ignore the words. Watch the actions.
They said “blue lives matter” and then beat and killed a cop. They said they were defending democracy while preventing an election certification. Now they say “we have to unify” while supporting insurrectionists.
None of their words matter. Look at what they DO.
This is the thing that took me the longest to learn because I like words, and I usually believe people when they talk.
But these insurrectionists only use words as cover. It’s just a whoosh of static to distract while they plan their next bloody battle.
Of course white supremacy existed before the internet. That’s a bullshit argument. No one is saying tech companies invented white supremacy. We’re saying they nurtured it, spread it, and accelerated it, because the CEOs can’t admit their role in spreading it.
Trump is a vile invention of America, making use of every aspect of our culture to bring out the devils in our nature. All he does is exploit our weaknesses using every opportunity. Social media was one of those exploits. I don’t believe he would have become president without it.
1. A chorus of assholes will scream bloody murder, lash out on Twitter, and get suspended, too.
2. A wave bad takes from old media and people who don’t know what censorship actually is.
And also:
3. There’s a tsunami of “if Trump gets banned why is this guy allowed?” heading for Twitter Support right now. Pray for them. It’s gonna be rough. I hope Twitter is staffed up and ready to pay some overtime.
4. You will hear the term “slippery slope” a lot. It means “if you enforce the rules here, don’t you have to do it everywhere?”
The adrenaline has worn off. Now the depression sets in.
I am completely despondent.
Now we live in a world where the President can point at the Capitol and say “attack!” and his followers do attack, and people die, and nothing much changes.