Are you kidding me? Who TF is @SmashRacismDC? I looked them up and they had only 800+ followers on Instagram. This is in no way, shape or form a prominent left wing account.
> Provide one example of a prominent “left wing account” that ought to have been banned because they doxxed someone or made violent threats that wasn’t banned. I’ll wait. Did Bernie Sanders tweet that we should hang Mike Pence?
I'll give you plenty. How about this? Kathy Griffin. 2.1 million followers. She posted a photo of her holding a decapitated head of the President of USA: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4556566/Kathy-Griff...
That is a direct threat of assassination towards the sitting President of the United States. Whether you like him or hate him you do not get to threaten a sitting President with decapitation.
But what did Twitter do? Read it in Kathy Griffin's own words: https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1348355262155878404
Quoting her verbatim: "All I had to do was delete the post". That is all that these hate inciting leftist handles get on Twitter. A slap on the wrists. All that was required for her to do is issue a fake apology and then delete her tweet. But then she posts tweets gloating about how she could get away so easily. Utterly shameful!
Did Twitter not ban Steve Bannon for calling for beheading of Dr Fauci (and rightly so)? I support the ban on Steve Bannon. But when Twitter can ban Steve Bannon and it lets go of Kathy Griffin that is when I have a problem. This is clearly selective enforcement of policy. Because it is ideological. Twitter is known to employ people who are left wing leaning and do not have tolerance for right wingers. Jack Dorsey admitted it himself. So it is obvious that their ideological beliefs have percolated through to even moderating content. That is fine if that is what they want their platform to be. No issues with that. But when they start taking a moral high ground and dictating to Parler on what is right and what is wrong I call them bloody hypocrites. Because that is what they have also been doing themselves! They are no saints.
Also, let us not forget what Twitter was. Twitter was a platform that enabled ISIS propaganda to spread unchecked for 2 years - from 2013 to 2015 until finally it deleted all terror material from the site after intense public pressure. And during those 2 years they enabled ISIS to recruit sympathizers from across the World. Twitter even got sued in 2016 for the same : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/14/widow-ame...
Quoting from the article:
"Tamara Fields, a Florida woman whose husband Lloyd died in the 9 November attack, accused Twitter of having knowingly let the militant Islamist group use its network to spread propaganda, raise money and attract recruits. She said the San Francisco-based company had until recently given Isis an “unfettered” ability to maintain official Twitter accounts.
“Without Twitter, the explosive growth of Isis over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” says the complaint filed on Wednesday in the federal court in Oakland, California.
Fields says that at the time of her husband’s death, Isis had an estimated 70,000 Twitter accounts, posting 90 tweets per minute."
Was Twitter ever held accountable for this? Never. It will never be held accountable. Because rules on facilitating hate speech and terror networks only apply to Parler. Not to Twitter, Facebook and Google. These platforms are above the Law and above everyone else. You and me included.
> I don’t consider myself a left winger. Name a prominent mainstream conservative (in the vein of say Bush) that ought to have been banned that wasn’t. I’ll wait.
There isn't any left. Those who ought to have been banned have been banned along with those who did nothing egregious. It was a proper purge. Either you are with the Establishment and Big Tech or you are purged. As simple as that. So now the only thing left is to ask Twitter when it is going to take action on prominent left wing accounts that violated its policies but Twitter gave them a free pass.
> I can’t name a single mainstream libertarian, paleoconservative, neoconservative, kooky rationalist, or anarcho-primitivist who has been banned, and that’s simply because the Cato Institute and Less Wrong don’t go around saying we should execute politicians by firing squad.
Because you have your eyes and ears closed. Maybe you should take a good look at the photo Kathy Griffin posted. You don't need anyone to say they will "execute politicians by firing squad" when they themselves hold the decapitated head of the sitting President of the United States.
> If that’s the only kind of intellectual contribution you have to make to society, I think you need to take a long hard look at your priorities.
Calling out hypocrisy has nothing to do with intellectual contributions to society. Both can co-exist. Just because you are incapable of calling out hypocrisy doesn't mean I shouldn't. I'll do what I feel I should do with my life and you can do what you feel with your life. Thankfully I am not a Citizen of USA else I'll be shunned/shamed/cancelled/boycotted/banned or worse killed for my beliefs or my skin color. You are happy being in a Big Tech dominated, censored internet, with an invisible social ranking system which can boot you out based on the political flavour of the day... then that is your choice. Remember that what is popular today will not be 20 years from now. Politics change, people change. You may in the future be at the receiving end of such a digital purge too because a Party of your opposing belief might come to power. Why? Because the red line has been crossed when it comes to censorship. A precedent has been set. Now it can be used for the right reasons or misused for the wrong reasons. Knowing how humans think I am leaning safely towards the latter.