Here's the thing about Twitter assholes: you can block them. This absolutely solve the problem. If there's a mob of them, you might spend alot of time blocking. This is tedious, at worst. If it starts taking up too much of your time, you may start to consider not using Twitter anymore, which we all know damn well means that the assholes are doing you a huge favor. The whole goddamn thing is a social validation Skinner box. That's the kind of medicine you should only take if your disease is a malignant political tumor. (Won't work in the US. That shit metastasized years ago.)
Now, the other bad thing about a mob of them is that, even after they block you, they can attempt to ruin your reputation. By using precisely the same methods as people have always done. If there is a problem, it's that there are people who apparently consider Some Guy on Twitter to be more credible than a British tabloid cover. Hell, until recently, that was the same fucking guy sometimes. Who is listening to such silly-ass shitrats?
Meanwhile: you can be suspended for telling a spambot to kill itself. The actual problem with Twitter moderation is that it does exactly what all mass media moderation does: it aggressively hunts down whatever isn't polite, regardless of context or content. Hence, the title of this post. They haven't had any concern for free speech for quite some time. From what I've heard, you can be shadowbanned now, which is definitely something I expect from a platform devoted to free speech. The floor is wide open to crybullies who start shit with an unpopular group by telling polite lies about them, often in a hashtag they're using, and then act just shocked when a bunch of the rabble doesn't respond in a perfectly polite manner. Or, even if they do, because if lots of people are upset with you, that's considered to inherently be an attack, now.
They play this game because they get more power if everyone is convinced there's a huge abuse problem on Twitter. These people have managed to get Twitter's ear, and convince them that they'll lose all relevance and never get shareholders ever if they don't crack down on this whole "free speech" thing. Perhaps they're right about the latter; most people in charge of large piles of money are not particularly comfortable with the idea of a platform that makes it so easy for the commoners to attack the advertising base of companies and people they feel wronged by.
Of course, the real joke here is that for all this hand-wringing about Twitter being full of horrible, scary assholes, you basically have to see them on purpose. Even in a hashtag, much more often than not, the way The Algorithm decides which tweets to actually serve you means that you will generally only see people on your "side" of the "culture war." (I need to wash my fucking hands after typing that.) Most people these days don't keep heterodox friends, especially not if they habitually retweet stuff their besties are going to take issue with. So, the only way you're going to get in a fight is if you go out and pick one.
