Thread by @jimstewartson

🧵 Let’s talk about “wedging” on social media.

Imagine there’s someone on Twitter saying something you don’t want them to say. Perhaps this is ideological, or perhaps you’re being paid. What do you do? First, you try to shut them up.
#RealTwitterFiles

As many of you know, I was banned three times from Twitter — the last time for a year despite never breaking the rules. Ever.

This was the result of a coordinated social media attack that included bad actors with access to Twitter tools, and influence on Twitter Safety.

I will leave the story of how I was banned and who’s responsible for another time…

Regardless, Elmo let me back on and also took the “moderation” tools away from bad actors that weaponized them. So they have resorted to a different strategy to reduce my influence. Wedging.

If you can’t shut someone up completely, you go chunk by chunk, or in special cases, person by person, to poison the reputation of the target and make it uncomfortable to be around them.

You can see this happening in most of my threads. Or in numerous insulated groups.

For example, I tweeted about someone I admire and tagged them out of respect and was retweeted by them which was nice.

But someone else with a blue check whose job is to push a false narrative, who I have had blocked for 2+ years, swooped in to lie and smear me.

This is someone who, as a profession, intentionally distracts from the truth about very important subjects that I write about, and has been accepted in some circles as an “expert.”

Part of his job is to make sure there are no other experts that will debunk him.

His goal was to “wedge” the person that I admire away from retweeting me by peppering him with lies and then bringing in an army of paid trolls to back him up.

This is textbook defamation — but it’s just Twitter, right?

The blue-checks don’t do most of the actual dirty work. They validate groups of coordinated trolls that spend their days trying to find ways to tear down the target for money.

There are at least a dozen anonymous trolls whose *full-time job* is to destroy me personally.

These trolls are experts in weaponizing social dynamics, some of whom have been trained through Erik Prince’s organizations. They will find a community of people — for example fans of a podcast — and try to poison that entire group with false allegations.

You can find allegations of me being an antisemite despite me being half-Jewish, that I’m misogynistic, homophobic, running a psyop, abusive, mentally ill, or literally anything else negative you can say about someone. To wedge them.

For the record, I am none of those things.

Regardless, these bad actors, through any means necessary, will try to isolate the target(s) and wedge them with pure lies.

If someone is going out of their way to convince you to dislike a person, question why before you believe it out of hand. Ask yourself: Are they wedging?

I wanted to bring this concept to people’s attention, not just as a defense for myself, but because it happens constantly on Twitter and I wanted to provide a bit of a framework for the strategy and mechanics, so people can defend themselves.

Any questions lmk. 🙏

Here’s a bit of background on me if you’re new to my account. I work hard and always appreciate a follow. Thanks. 🙏

https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1627840629047988225