#Twitterfail
Ever since the Obama administration took office, Twitter has been a beacon for conservatives, allowing them to disseminate an alternative POV from the MSM, and debate ideas with their ideological opponents. At least until now. As Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air, “Twitter Eats Itself?”
I suppose it was just a matter of time before Twitter became completely unmanageable. After all, a self-policing population only works when the population is mature enough to handle the responsibility. Using the spam-reporting mechanism built into Twitter and its after-market applications, liberal activists are succeeding in tricking the Twitter system into suspending the accounts of conservatives — for instance, my friend Chris Loesch, husband of Breitbart editor Dana Loesch:
Conservative Chris Loesch, music producer and husband of radio host and CNN contributor Dana Loesch, had his Twitter account suspended on Sunday. He was apparently targeted by leftist users who utilized the “Block & Report Spam” function to trigger the social media account’s automatic spam algorithm. He was notified of his suspension via an email from Twitter claiming it was due to multiple unsolicited mentions to other users. “You will need to change your behavior to continue using Twitter,” the email admonished.
“I never threatened anyone and am careful about being concise with what I write especially in public,” Mr. Loesch told The Washington Times. “They were going to make me sign this note that said one more infraction and I would be permanently banned. I wasn’t going to do that so I wrote emails to some of their people.” …
Mr. Loesch believes the spam-reporting campaign was kicked off by comments he made in defense of his wife. “It was business as usual for her I suppose,” he said. “Veiled threats, rape and murder comments, the typical liberal misogynist slag. Being the chivalrous and testosterone filled being I am requires me to protect the woman I love and call out the haters for being the ‘anonymous internet tough guys’ they are…Needless to say they don’t like being called out and struck back by reporting me as a spammer or worse.”
Read the whole thing.
Related: Curiously — and perhaps entirely coincidentally, “@killzimmerman” was online for an “unexpectedly” long time before Twitter deleted the account.
Update: At Twitchy, Michelle Malkin’s new site devoted to recording the Twitter wars, Michelle’s staff writes that Chris Loesch’s account has been reactivated (though apparently stripped of its initial followers), but that doesn’t excuse Twitter’s initial fail: “Twitter, you have a problem: An infestation of radical flag-spam abusers.”
I am a spambot, according to the Feds. Lol. I went to the EPA haiku website last week and wrote a perfectly sarcastic expletive free haiku. I filled in my correct name, my correct email, and all requested data, and was told instantly upon submission by my beloved Federal Government, and i quote: “Clearly you’re a spambot”.
Obama just retailed his new slogan : “Forward”, which drudge has linked to as site suggesting they stole it from MSNBC’s “Lean Forward”.
Let the fun begin…
How a out “Forewarned”?
“Bend Forward, Cough”
“Two Steps Forward, Ten Steps Back”
Twitter could curtail this by flagging accounts that submit a inordinate amount of spam complaints, and then cross-check to see if those complaints are fraudulent. Then the people who are behind the ‘spam ban’ efforts could face having their own accounts suspended for abusing the system Twitter has set up.
I think the ultimate answer is a friendly reign of terror via changes in the legal system. Though the details will always have to be thought through, the basic gist is that if not done so already, the “common carrier” provisions should be explicitly applied to social media, and in particular Twitter, Facebook, and Google, the three most egregious abusers. Logical extensions of the Civil Rights Acts should be made to cover political communication discrimination, and private individuals allowed to sue for actions, with elements of racketeering law thrown in for, with compensation to be delinked from actual damages suffered–i.e., if you are caught rigging the game on what is supposedly a non-discriminatory forum, and it was political in nature, the act itself is a damage, and compensable as such.
Obviously this is a back-of-the-envelope thought, which will need to be squared away with or supersede other parts of the law. In a sense it is a pity we no longer have common law judges, because they knew how to take old rules to new situations. Today we have political consultants. Oh well. At any rate this is another thing, like Voter ID, that will evenutally happen, because there is nothing liberals control that they will not abuse eventually and people get tired of their airs of superiority and their willingness to use the law aggressively for that they wish while raising holy heck if someone thinks of turning the tables. Well tough. Let the let the lib tech geeks reap “political hate crimes” laws, internet version.