I’m In The Twitter Timeline Again, But Now President Bush’s Speechwriter Isn’t #fail
…as of 3 weeks ago.
I was a bad blogger and didn’t follow up after I posted to Twitter regarding being back in the timeline.
The short: I didn’t hear anything from the Twitter folks until I posted on GetSatisfaction.com, a public customer service website where twitter has a presence. Within a couple days I was miraculously back in the timeline. Kudos to services like GS. Here’s the link to the thread at GS: http://cli.gs/6LyL2j
When I was finally contacted by Twitter, I received an email from them. They didn’t reply to the thread at GS. Twitter claimed I was reported as a “spammer” and it took them over a month to “research” whether or not I was a spammer. So, either a.) it’s all B.S. and people in the Twitter San Francisco HQ are sympathetic to liberal causes, will censor you, and then will drag their heels to resolve an issue like this until you make your grievance public or b.) Twitter’s system is easily gamed, whereby if enough people block you, you get blacklisted and then Twitter’s support will…drag their heels to resolve an issue like this. I mean, we’re talking about people living and working in San Francisco. It’s not really a bastion of conservative thinking in NorCal is it? Sure, have a good laugh at the conservatives being censored, right?
What prompted me to post a followup today was the fact that I just received an @ reply on Twitter from Michael Johns (@michaeljohns), a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush, in which Johns states that he’s missing from the timeline. This happened shortly after Micheal called out Barack Obama publicly on Twitter for lying. Here’s the link to all of Michael’s tweets in Twitter’s search index: http://search.twitter.com/search?from=michaeljohns You see, there are only a few tweets in the public timeline out of his 65 ( the # at the time of this writing) tweets.
I’m going to recommend that Michael piggyback on my thread at GS and post a description of his problem publicly. I’d encourage any other conservatives to do the same if they find themselves in the same situation of being censored, either by “bug”, happenstance, or intent.
“He who controls the news controls the views.”
Twitter, you need to get this corrected ASAP. It’s really starting to look suspect – even if it isn’t. #fail
That's What He Said 
guess what, same thing just happened to me on youtube i think. auto blocks, auto suspended, auto fail
the problem is that it’s been happening to so many conservatives on twitter. if it looks like a duck…
I think what you’re seeing is simple slowness at Twitter combined with some hostility to your political views by Twitter users, who probably tend to the liberal side. The span system does take blocking into account, and if people dislike your tweets and block you it will degrade your visibility. I think everyone would agree that this is a bad side effect of a new span system. It needs to be improved so political disagreements do not cause account blocking.
I know most of the people involved with Twitter and get satisfaction, and while both groups (like myself) would fall into the “extremely liberal” category they/we are also on a mission to free the media from the control of *any* formal establishment. On issues of free speech the Silicon Valley ethic is quite libertarian. We make tools for communication, and for me political speech is the form of communication most worth protecting and expanding, whatever the viewpoint.
as long as we’re human, there’s gonna be bias. meaning that hostility likely doesn’t stop with twitter users. i live in la. i’m in the tech scene. i go to sf. i know the mindset. who knows when it’s liberals on twitter blocking someone en masse triggering a “spam” categorization, or when it’s someone at twitter hq doing it manually – as they’ve admitted to doing on occasion? the minute twitter employees start engaging in *controlling* certain information, however, they start playing near the edge of not having cda protections. then what? i mean, srsly, why is michael johns not in the public timeline? if that’s not bias, i don’t know what is. i’m a recovering libertarian and was vice-chair or a few years back home in tn and i was a libertarian delegate, i know what passes for libertarianism. this dragging of the feet to take care of conservatives wrongly blocked in the system doesn’t pass for libertarianism.
as i said before, i love getsatisfaction and twitter, but there has to be a better response for these situations. taking months to resolve someone like micheal johns being “hidden” isn’t beneficial and likely causes ppl to raise an eye.
lately, i’ve been trying to experiment with how to engage ppl from different views on twitter. some issues i bring up cause me to lose 50 followers in a blink of an eye and some topics i start like #80sphotoday cause me to gain a bunch. we had a very partisan election. hopefully, we can all play nice with one another even though we *know* we’re not gonna agree.
let’s get michael johns back in the timeline. he’s a smart guy even though liberals won’t agree with him.