You cannot mock the KKK anymore. This is how bad social media censorship has become. Author and journalist David Neiwert attempted to share his book Alt-America on Twitter but he was promptly suspended for such efforts on June 11th, 2019.
Neiwert originally wrote about the suspension in a small post over on the Daily Kos on June 11th, 2019, stating…
“Yes, Twitter suspended my account today. The reason? I have an image from the cover of my 2017 book, Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, in my profile shot. It is a clever satirical image, created by a marvelous artist at Verso Books, that transforms the stars in the flag into KKK hoods.
“When I awoke this morning and logged in to Twitter, it informed me that the image violated Twitter rules and that I would have to take it down before I could access my account.”
It’s true. He was suspended on June 11th and is still suspended as of the writing of this article. If you attempt to access his profile page on Twitter you’re met with the following notice.
You can view an image of Neiwert’s book cover below, which netted him a suspension on Twitter.
Half a week later Neiwert went back to the Daily Kos to both acknowledge the levity of a more stress-free life from no longer having access to a Twitter account, as well as his discontent with Twitter’s inconsistent censorship policies.
He decided that he wasn’t going to remove the image of his book from his Twitter profile, but instead contacted Twitter to appeal the decision, as well as justifying his reasons for doing so, writing…
“I am adamant about not removing an image that isn’t hateful, but is pure political commentary (of the admittedly sharp-elbowed kind). And I’m fighting it because the reductio ad absurdum of Twitter’s reasoning for the suspension would leave not just me, but any reporter who works to monitor and expose the activities of far-right extremists, exposed to the constant threat of being banned simply for doing our mainstream jobs as journalists.”
Well, despite his pleas for Twitter to reconsider the ban and reinstate his account along with the image of his book, Twitter denied his appeal.
The company pointed to their brand new policy on preventing the spread or display of “hateful” imagery, something that was instituted in March, 2019 following the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand.
If you visit the Media Policy page on Twitter’s help portal, they clearly state that images associated with “hate groups” are no longer allowed. In fact, when they replied to Neiwart about his suspension, they referenced this new policy, stating…
“We don’t allow hateful symbols in avatars or header images in order to protect users from unintentionally being exposed to abusive imagery that can be upsetting. We know that some people may use these symbols to confront a hateful ideology, but that’s not always obvious at first glance. In this case, additional context in the account profile clarifies the intent, but that isn’t always visible in the product. So, for example, someone viewing the header on mobile wouldn’t have the extra context, and would only see the hateful image.”
This didn’t go over well with Neiwart, because according to him, Social Justice types should be able to lambast, criticize, critique, and de-platform their ideological opponents on the Right without being impeded by social media platforms.
He also still holds to the belief that de-platforming works to curb “hate speech”, but also still has a problem with Twitter’s algorithm sucking him up into its tractor beam of censorship, writing…
“As you can imagine, Twitter itself was full of right-wing respondents who were utterly delighted at the news of my suspension. Contrarian con artists like Tim Pool and Andy Ngo, who loudly declaim in other cases about “freeze peach” or something like that, were quite happy with it. Most of them saw it as just desserts, mainly because I have made no bones about my view that de-platforming (a la Milo Yiannopoulos) works, especially when discussing how, in an open democratic society, it’s possible to reel in the kind of speech that alt-right haters specialize in spreading—but in a nation like ours with a First Amendment, it’s tricky.”
Actually, Tim Pool did a video pointing out that when you attempt to champion censorship when it’s used against your opponents, it eventually comes back to bite you on the butt.
Even with Neiwert being on the receiving end of the censorship banhammer, he still isn’t willing to let go of the idea that de-platforming and censorship is bad. In his mind the algorithm just need tweaking, and a human touch is what’s required for content curation.
What escapes Neiwert’s argument is that it’s not about being fair to those who are attempting to ally with big tech censorship. Twitter doesn’t care about Neiwert’s social justice war-mongering, they’ll censor him along with all the others just the same.
The censorship is escalating across the board, regardless of political affiliation. If this means that the typical SJWs that usually support Twitter’s policies will get caught up in the bans alongside Conservatives, Libertarians, and Liberals, then it doesn’t matter to Twitter et al. The end goal is information control, and Twitter is showing that more and more people will be swept up in the censorship vacuum as time goes on.
People like Neiwart were warned this sort of thing would happen, but they refused to listen.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
(Thanks for the news tip johntrine)
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