—August 12, 2018
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey held a high-level policy meeting Aug. 10, to debate ways to make the social media site “safer for its users.” At least, that’s how two New York Times reporters characterized the meeting. Dorsey reportedly invited the Times reporters to the meeting in an effort to “provide more transparency about Twitter’s decision making.” However, had Dorsey truly wanted to be transparent perhaps he should have also invited a member of the conservative press.
If you happen to be a conservative Twitter user then you can’t be blamed if you might be a bit skeptical about New York Times reporting on the meeting, or, more importantly, on Twitter’s ultimate intentions. If you are a conservative Twitter user, then you are well aware that the social media site, like Facebook, Google, Instagram and others, has been actively trying to stifle conservative voices. In fact, these first days of August have been marked by a significant ramp-up by these Left-leaning sites to purge Right-leaning content from their sites.
At this juncture I could easily go off on multiple tangents to explore this enhanced attack on freedom of speech—the social media ban on Infowars and the Proud Boys, and Sen. Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) demand that social media “take down” more conservative sites, for example—but want to remain focused on the Twitter meeting, as it is so rich with irony, hypocrisy and double standards.
According to the New York Times article, the hour-long meeting primarily focused on “how to rid the site of ‘dehumanizing speech,’ even if it [does] not violate Twitter’s rules, which forbid direct threats of violence and some forms of hate speech.”
Ah yes, those strongly enforced (hah!) Twitter rules forbidding direct threats of violence…. Threaten a liberal, or any of the Left’s sacred cows (illegal immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ et al., Black Lives Matter, feminists, any minority group, etc.), even if in satire, and the Tweet is quickly removed and the author usually penalized with a suspension or other sanction.
However, if you post a Tweet threatening violence against a conservative, it will likely not be removed or sanctioned at all. Just ask President Donald Trump, the recipient of tens of thousands of Tweets threatening his life or otherwise inciting violence against him and/or his supporters. While Twitter administrators occasionally remove such threatening posts, they rarely impose any penalties on the tweets’ authors.
For another great example, “Kill white people” and other tweet themes against white folks tends to be just fine with Twitter. However, Twitter initially made a concerted effort to keep “It’s OK to be White” from trending back in November 2017 after savvy social media pranksters initiated the campaign to show how the otherwise innocuous phrase would be deemed “racist” by the Left. Apparently, it’s not OK to be white, because Twitter suspended some users who used the phrase, deleted some tweets with the phrase, and restricted Twitter users from seeing it in other instances by marking it as “sensitive content.”
And this leads us to Twitter’s Friday discussion about “dehumanizing speech.” The 19 Twitter executives at the meeting, and the two invited New York Times reporters, could easily have found samples of such speech on Twitter by perusing the Twitter history of the New York Times’ own newly named member of its prestigious editorial board—Sarah Jeong, who posted hundreds of tweets disparaging white folks over the past decade.
How about: “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins” and “Dumbshit Fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants” for just two examples?
What do you think, “dehumanizing?” While the Twitter executives apparently did not discuss Ms. Jeong’s tweets during the meeting, such tweets were recently deemed offensive by the company. Offensive, that is, when astute double-standard exposer Candace Owens reposted some of Ms. Jeong’s more egregious Tweets (including the two above) as her own by substituting “black” and/or “Jewish” for “white.” Those tweets were promptly deleted and Ms. Owens sanctioned with a 12-hour suspension from the site. While Twitter rescinded the suspension when called out for the double-standard, the point had been made.
Made, but perhaps not taken, as evidenced by the apparent lack of the Twitter executives’ discussion of Ms. Yeong’s “dehumanizing” tweets. Either the New York Times reporters chose to not report on any mention that may have been made about Ms. Yeong’s tweet history, or the Twitter executives accept the New York Times’ patently false Aug. 2, assertion that Ms. Yeong’s anti-white tweets were primarily written in reaction to racist comments tweeted at her and made in satire.
Freelance journalist Nick Monroe examined all of Ms. Yeong’s 100s of allegedly racist tweets and determined that only a dozen or so were made in response to any racist or anti-feminist tweets initially made to her. Satire, of course, is highly subjective, but Ms. Yeong’s former nonstop excoriating tweetfest against white folks seems much more of a noxious brew than a mildly intoxicating elixir.
Bottom line is that given the recent newsworthiness surrounding Ms. Yeong’s anti-white tweets (and the controversy over the New York Times hiring of her) how could they not have been part of the Twitter executive discussion about “dehumanizing” speech on their site? The answer seems to be that either the New York Times buried any such details, or Twitter has no intention of making its platform safer for conservative white folks.
—Originally published in Discernible Truth
