Scott Tibbs
Why is Twitter sending "pornography" to users without their consent?
By Scott Tibbs, December 5, 2022
When I was suspended from Twitter back in 2019 for
posting a harmless meme, they sent me a notification which by their own standards was "age-restricted adult content." I only recently found out that Twitter considers its own content moderation notifications to be pornography. Of course, Twitter's Terms of Service forbids sending pornography to users without their consent, and considers it to be harassment. Therefore, Twitter's own moderation team is breaking the site's terms of service.
Of course, there is nothing "pornographic" about the screenshot I posted, and Twitter knows it. Labeling my post as "adult content" is hypocrisy in its purest form, but it is also a fraudulent lie. Twitter was humiliated when it was caught censoring harmless satirical memes, and is now engaged in a cover-up. At least they allowed the post to remain, but falsely accusing me of posting pornography is arguably even worse than removing the post entirely.
Elon Musk has claimed that
"comedy is now legal on Twitter", but apparently screenshots of Twitter's own enforcement actions are "adult content." If comedy actually is legal on Twitter, the person who posted the obviously satirical video of Joe Biden dancing to the 1988 rap song
"F*** Tha Police" should also have his account restored. Obvious satire is not and will never be "misinformation."
The entire controversy is laughable. The original meme contained no harmful misinformation about voting. It was a satirical take on the real-world controversy over "Russian interference" in the 2016 election, and social media companies were hypersensitive about that topic. There is nothing about my screenshot of the enforcement notice that is harmful or pornographic.
Back in 2012, Twitter executives claimed to be
"the free speech wing of the free speech party," but started running away from that commitment in 2016 with the rise of Donald Trump and "alt right" trolls on the platform. Facebook got more heat and more threats from Congress, but Twitter knew that harassment by federal legislators and regulators would not be confined to their main rival. Plus, "woke" employees within Twitter and "woke" activists pressuring Twitter moved the company to adopt more and more strict policies about what could be said. This reached a fever pitch in 2020 with crackdowns on the (almost certainly true) theory that COVID-19 was manufactured by the Chinese government.
It is time for Twitter to move back to its roots, but there is an embedded "deep state" within the company that will need to be overcome. Whether Musk can clean things up, or whether he will surrender to demands for censorship remains to be seen. I personally am betting on the latter, especially as we move closer to 2024. There have been a few hopeful signs, but Musk has shown he can be as sensitive as the previous regime. In the meantime, the only place for true free speech remains Gab.
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