July 03, 2012
(If you”re thinking, “I bet I can guess exactly what this guy looks like,” you win.)
Last week, highly vocal pro-life MP Stephen Woodworth’s ministrations to “his ailing mother” were interrupted after Barth Tweeted that Woodworth believed that “Rape is God’s will.”
Barth defended the Tweet as “satire,” but only after it was re-Tweeted “at least 10,000 times” by gullible progressives. In a hastily issued press release, Woodworth called himself a “long-time supporter” of two rape-crisis centers.
Whatever. Russell Barth’s Twitter account is still up and running, even though he was caught clearly and cruelly “trolling“ a “celebrity” of sorts. And Barth’s not even anonymous.
So whose Twitter accounts do get shut down? Oh, please.
You can flag any Twitter account as a spammer with the click of a button. Enough such complaints, and the account is deleted without warning.
Not surprisingly, organized leftists have been using this tool to “mass report” non-spamming conservative pundits such as Chris Loesch when they get sick of arguing with them online and because, as one Tweeter said, it’s “funny seeing conservatives go crazy.”
Loesch’s account was falsely tagged as spam. It was automatically blocked and his follower list erased. Then it was unblocked (with apologies from Twitter) after Loesch and his supporters complained.
Then, after the button-pushing game started up once more, it was blocked again.
As with Facebook, Twitter’s principles about “hate speech” and politics seem to default to whatever the latest “progressive” fad happens to be. Also like Facebook, its methods of handling complaints resemble a decidedly low-tech carnival Whac-A-Mole game.
Conservatives on Facebook and Twitter look like “marks” of the worst kind: the know-nothing know-it-all who’s convinced he can outmatch the carny and win a rigged game. As the sun goes down, right-wingers shuffle off the social-media fairground pissed off and their pockets empty. But when the Internet circus comes back to town next summer, they”ll line up to buy tickets again. That’s the safest bet you”ll ever make.
