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Saturday, 28 September 2013

Thanks For Your Support

Very many thanks to my many supporters on Twitter for your continuing support. It is very much appreciated and more than a little humbling. I see that some have offered to tweet links to my blog in my absence. This would be very much appreciated, as would posting links on other media such as Reddit and Facebook.

I'm hoping that Twitter will reinstate my @RosaResurrected account soon but given their refusal to with @RosaRubicondior one never knows. As with @RosaRubicondior, there is still no response from Twitter Safety to multiple requests for an explanation in terms of specific tweets and the rule(s) they breached, so I am left wondering what to avoid tweeting even if I am reinstated.

Is there anything specific or does their silence indicate that they don't have anything specific either, and have effectively handed over policing of Twitter to whicher cabal of extremists and control freaks can organise a mass censoring of opinions they don't want people reading? Spam-blocking may have originally been a means of reporting actual spamming but even a single original tweet can be reported as spam with no comeback on the person who is effectively filing a false report. Lies or genuine, it seems to make no different to the way Twitter handles it.

I suspect to avoid another suspension I would have to refrain from tweeting anything promoting atheism and anything critical of religion and creationism. I short, I would have to desist from exposing bigots, frauds and liars. I wonder it that's what Jack Dorsey had in mind when he set Twitter up.

One thing I am becoming convinced of is that the spam-block option on Twitter is their cowardly way out of bothering to police Twitter effectively - which would require staff, money and training. Spamming is quite simply not an abuse on the scale of threats of violence, lies, harassment, personal abuse, racism, sexism, child pornography, etc and can be handled just as effectively by blocking if a user does not want to see repeated tweets, advertising, etc.

On the other hand, spam-blocking, when used to trigger a suspension, puts another form of abuse in the hands of abusers to be used apparently with impunity - the unjustified suspension, and effective censoring of adverse opinion - which I would suggest is a far more serious form of abuse than spamming. Apparently when the 'secret' is known, by using spam-blocking at the right time, a user can be suspended almost instantaneously.

By contrast, I have now had outstanding for 8 days another explicit threats of actual violent to myself and my family from a Christian with nothing more that an automated acknowledgement. Recently it took Twitter 12 days to respond to a series of explicit death threat and then their action was a polite reminder to the abuser that threats are against the rules and please don't do it again. I say again: this was a response to a repeated death threat!

I also have outstanding complaints against a particularly obnoxious and probably clinically insane individual with a history of abusive tweets who currently has several accounts suspended, some for threats of sexually explicit violence against women. This has remained unanswered for 12 days following the standard acknowledgment.

All this make one call into question Twitter's handling of complaints when organised triggering of some algorithm can instantly auto-suspend an account without any checking, yet explicit death threats, threats of violence again a user's family and a continued campaign of harassment goes unchecked because it doesn't trigger an automated response and the few staff dealing with these complaints haven't gotten round to it yet, and can then only select a response from a pre-defined drop-down list.

Once again, thanks for your continued support, and thanks in advance for anything you can do to promote my blog and particularly the message it contains for truth, honesty, humanism and respect for all people.

I think it's time we organised a campaign to make Twitter more responsible in the way it handles abuse.




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3 comments:

  1. I am very disappointed that your account has been suspended.
    Whilst I don't agree %100 with all your comments, I found your blog thought provoking and has promoted me to check the facts and yes there are some things that I have learnt along the way.
    Not every one who is on Twitter cares about the latest inane activities of celebrities.
    Yes you have promoted your blog and book sales through Twitter but what is wrong with that?
    Ricky Gervais constantly uses Twitter to promote his new show "Derick" and if I had a problem with that I would stop following him.
    Spam is mass unwanted junk promoted to people who have no interest in what is being sold. If you did that then people would vote with the unfollow button
    I can not recall one instance of you encouraging violence or any other anti-social behaviour.
    Getting somebody's account suspended because you don't like what they say and don't want other people to hear it, is cowardly. Why not challenge those views?
    Is this the modern take on theists dealing with blasphemers? I guess they can't get away with book burnings and the inquisition any more so lets get the account suspended

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks you.

      I'd just point out though that I haven't promoted sales of my book on Twitter because I haven't published it - yet. :-)

      What I promote are sales of things from Amazon through the adverts on my blog because that earns commission which I donate to Oxfam.

      Delete
  2. Your unfortunate, unfair situation just drives me nuts. You are a significant threat to certain peoples' credibility and they organize to shut you down. One particular sac of doo-doo is just sooo stupidly maddening , that i need to stay away... Considering my words to him I know that he will just tattle tell to #support!

    So, I will start promoting your blogs much more... as I mostly agree with your work... and #FF for you when i think of it. You need do nothing in return, as your work deserves it, but I have a request. Please look over my new blog site (up as of Aug 5th) FreethinkersImpact.wordpress.com for its concept and viability as a direction for the atheist community. We all do so much toward tearing down religion, but typically not enough to build the positive perception of the atheist community. Let me know, thanks.

    Thanks for your dedication... I'll see you out there!
    Artie @freeAtheism

    ReplyDelete

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