Over the years Twitter has adopted various methods to stop abuse but has failed to enforce them. Despite of having a code of conduct, things didn’t work as planned and even worse, if user tries to take things in their hand, Twitter blocks them.
Recently Yair Rosenberg a journalist from Tablet Magazine has been a victim of such practice followed by Twitter, as his account was blocked. He created an account to expose racism on the platform.
He created the account with help of developer Neal Chandra to fight against the ongoing neo-Nazis struggle and named it “Imposter Buster”. As knows the pain of being harassed since he witnessed it when he wrote stories during 2016 presidential election.
The account used to detect racists on Twitter, precisely done by those accounts that fake as real people but were from cultural minorities run by nymphs. These accounts used to join Twitter conversations of high-profile users and make prejudiced commentary. “Imposter Bot” used to join such conversations automatically and would try to expose the troll. –
Obviously, this all made the trolls angry and they sent out reports of annoyance and junk to Twitter due to which the account was suspended in April followed by a permanent ban this month.
Justification given on permanent suspension
As continuous reports were received about the abuse of the account and posting of large amount of duplicate material forced Twitter to close the account.
“Just as they duplicitously cast themselves as minorities, they disingenuously recast our response to their ongoing abuse as harassment,” Rosenberg wrote in the op-ed.
To all this Rosenberg said he created the bot to help Twitter to identify racist but instead of welcoming his efforts he was kicked out by Twitter. Isn’t it ironic instead of supporting Twitter fired the security guard.
After asking from Twitter about the suspension of the account, a Twitter spokesperson replied and mentioned the following automated reason.
“Twitter welcomes the use of our service to counter hate speech and promote positivity, unity, and understanding. We believe this type of counter speech is a healthy use of Twitter, and a necessary part of a vibrant democracy. Everyone on Twitter must follow the Twitter Rules, including our rules that prohibit hateful conduct, as well the rules that prohibit spammy behavior and automated mentions of other people. We are regularly in touch with developers to help ensure their work fully follows the Twitter Rules and our developer policies,” the emailed statement reads.
This shows Twitter cannot keep its promise and won’t let anyone do anything that is wrong. Instead of acting to cure the disease Twitter has thrown the medicine in garbage. Nothing much can be expected after such a step.