What happened on Twitter / Originally Posted to Fetlife

I've been tired and distracted, but I'll get around to talking about this, because it is of some mild interest. In an earlier post, I mentioned the fact that my Twitter account had been suspended without just cause. Lest anybody be left with the impression that Twitter never got back to me, they did, but what they had to say was more than a little bit crazy.

The person who responded did so anonymously, something that a number of companies are allowing their people in support to do, apparently, which is bad because it invites abuse, and this was no exception. To paraphrase some very indirect prose, the anonymous respondent told me that my account on Twitter had been suspended because they were sure that I was a sock puppet.

This is not the first time that I've been accused of being one of those. Somebody here on Fetlife made that very accusation, which I found amusing, because I've been to local events. As I pointed out at the time, one of the perks of being really large (I'm 6'3") is that one gets remembered. Plus, I suppose, there is that whole mixed Jewish / Celtic background that ensures that I'd blend in nowhere, even if I wasn't running around naked as often as I have been. Yes, I'm going to be remembered, so the random sock puppet accusation game isn't going to work on me. On Fet. But on Twitter, there are no local gatherings (that I know of), so that kind of rumor mongering gets a little further. But still - this was a Twitter admin. Aren't these the people who are supposed to be trying to keep the trolling under control? Wouldn't one hope that they wouldn't be the ones engaging in it?

I ask, because this mystery Twitter admin outdid the Fet troll, at trolling. The Fet troll at least had a specific user who I was supposed the sock of, somebody I'm fairly sure I won't resemble because ... did I also mention that I'm relatively thin (I'm down to 180, making me 15 pounds lighter than the average American male). Like I said, I don't blend, so by being so specific, the Fet troll probably killed her own rumor fairly quickly. Somebody who knew that person and remembered the nude freckled, semi-curly haired sub-giant running around LRA did a quick mental comparison and that was the end of that. But the Twitter admin wasn't going to be so obliging.

According to him (or her) he (or she) didn't know whose sock puppet I was. I was supposed to tell him (or her) and mention all of my other sock puppet accounts. If I wanted my account unsuspended, I was told, I'd better come clean and share that information right away. The logic was fascinating.

Think about it. In order to be found innocent under this system, I have to confess my guilt and build a case against myself. Just one problem, aside from the fact that if I built a case against myself, I'd be back to being guilty (duh!) - I wasn't guilty. I wasn't a sock puppet. They were asking me to give them something that I didn't have to give. Compliance with such a ridiculous demand is an obvious impossibility.

So, there it stands. I'm still suspended because I have not given them something that doesn't exist. I've been given a stern warning about what will happen if I create a new account in order to bypass the suspension, which amuses me almost as greatly as this incident has annoyed me. Why would I want to sneak around in order to volunteer my time creating content, adding to the bottom line for a company that treated me this way? To Hell with them.



One might ask why they would do this sort of thing. Such a question presupposes something that is demonstrably untrue - that human beings always make rational (or seemingly rational) choices, but even if that assumption were true, I'd have to ask in response how I was supposed to know. But there are possibilities to explore.

One of them, and it's one that too many people are to quick to dismiss, is that the admin was insane. There is, as I discovered, no oversight and no appeal mechanism, so a deranged admin could sit at his post, dispensing crazy injustice for years, without his supervisors ever knowing.

Another is one that should be obvious to anybody who has ever rented. We've almost all encountered the problem of harassment by a building manager, because a lot of companies will reward their employees, not for producing results, but for generating paperwork.

Paperwork = activity = an industrious employee, earning her keep

So goes the logic, and it makes a lot of our lives miserable, because it gives a building's management team a strong incentive to bully the paying customers who rent out space in that building. I suspect that many of the social networks use a similar system, because paperwork is an easy thing to quantify. If promotions are based on something objective (something easily quantified), even if it is something stupid, that makes discrimination suits easier to squash, making the lives of those doing the promoting easier and less controversial. Sure, it's bad for the company in the long run, but managers jump from company to company, so what is bad for the company might be good for them.

One should remember a basic problem with the American justice system. If one is looking for justice in a civil matter, the system will probably fail one, but if one wants to use the system as a tool of harassment or revenge, for that purpose it is a masterpiece. Something to never forget, but in this case, I suspect that something else was at play.



While a few of the louder users of Fet will deny this, I'm fairly far to the Left, apparently to the left of Barack Obama. What I am not is Politically Correct. I am not an SJW (social justice warrior). I do care very much about whether or not individuals are being treated fairly, even when they are individuals that I personally despise. Even when the individual is named Donald Trump.

I was not at all happy to see him get elected. When rumors that he was a neo-Nazi started circulating on Twitter, I was curious about that for obvious reasons of health (getting sent to a gas chamber would be bad for me), so I did a fact check. In under two minutes, I was able to debunk that rumor with a simple link to an article in the Times of Israel, with the title "Meet the Jews in Donald Trump’s inner circle"



Let us use our common sense, I said - who is the neo-Nazi who is going to go to a Jew for advice and risk anything on the advice he gets, and who is the Jew who would be crazy enough to be that advisor? Whatever bad things one might be able to honestly say about Mr.Trump, this wasn't one of them.

Decent people wouldn't have a problem with that, but I wasn't dealing with decent people. I was dealing with rabble rousers, who, during the days following the election of Mr. Trump, were creating as much of a disruption as they possibly could, in a childish attempt to overturn an election. Rather ironically, I suppose, they probably ensured that Russian hacker interference in the US elections wouldn't be seriously investigated, because now, if one suggests that maybe Mr. Trump should not be sworn in, one encounters the closed minds of people who got tired of dealing with the anarchists over the last few weeks, and are too angry to be logical about this.

There was a lot of craziness, such as that of the girl who tried to argue in support of the partial disenfranchisement of older voters on the basis that if they had been denied the full benefit of their citizenship, that Trump would have been defeated. This was the sort of person I got to deal with, unconcerned with the rights of others, willing and eager to trample those rights in order to achieve a victory. You know the type - our good, Machiavellian friend, the SJW. Which brings us to the nasty surprise that was waiting for me. Twitter had announced the creation of a "Trust & Safety Council", giving administrative power to a number of users on Twitter, including the notorious "Feminist Frequency) and reportedly, a number of other SJWs.

Oh, yay. I've dealt with SJWs before, and I've seen them get ruthless and underhanded when others have refused to support their targeting of a lone individual, so if my anonymous crazy admin was one of these people, that would be absolutely in character for that crowd.

What can one do, other than shrug, walk on, and not give a damn as Twitter's stock price drops. Neither the company nor its employees deserve any better than the bleak future that is likely to be ahead for them. The only bad news is that when Twitter finally dies, the SJWs won't be joining the employees of that company in the unemployment lines.

Hmmm ... unless somebody could persuade Twitter to hire them on? I have no idea of how one would do that, but it's a pleasant fantasy, though not a very productive (or perhaps healthy) one. Time to let go and move on - and to remember to never invest my time on a site like that one, again.