Left-Wing Voices Are Silenced on Twitter as Far-Right Trolls Advise Elon Musk

> “Twitter was never a healthy ‘public square’ for most of us. Let’s not rewrite history while eulogizing the hellsite,” Loder wrote on Mastodon on Sunday. “Twitter was a frightening battleground where we managed barely to claw out an uneasy existence amidst the worst violent neo-Nazi extremists who constantly published our home addresses, threatened our kids’ lives, and sent hordes of racist trolls into our mentions.”

> On Mastodon, they added, “The same principles that allowed us to survive uneasily on Twitter will be required here. Community defense, thoughtful pressure on moderation policies, and eternal vigilance. There are no safe spaces but those we make safe through constant effort. We keep us safe.” Twitter, Loder says, will take a long time to die and disappear entirely, “like a rotting whale carcass.”

What if it doesn't? What if people didn't come to Twitter for the left-wing safe space, but instead twitter was turned into a left-wing safe space because it reached a critical mass of people? Then again, what if it was never financially viable and was propped up to maintain the safe space because that was its primary purpose? As somebody who doesn't use Twitter, it seems that #Goku trending is a sign that this "new" Twitter may just be the low brow "who gives a damn about politics" culture that people really want.

This was an entirely predictable outcome. When right-wingers complain about platforms controlled by censorious leftists, what they're usually complaining about is that the platform doesn't take orders for who to ban directly from far-right propagandists. But now they've got what they want, and, at least on this website, they can have their political enemies conveniently removed under false charges.

> All four accounts had been singled out for criticism by Andy Ngo, a far-right writer whose conspiratorial, error-riddled reporting [1] on left-wing protests and social movements fuels the mass delusion that a handful of small antifascist groups are part of an imaginary shadow army called “antifa.”

Let's see these errors then. [1] is a twitter thread about Ngo's reporting on the Dayton gunman Connor Betts' presence at an anti-KKK protest 2 months before his killing spree. Ngo claims Betts came to an antifa rally and wore black-block style clothing to mask his identity.

But this is entirely false - it was not an antifa rally, but a "diverse array of anti-racist groups and individuals". He did wear sunglasses and a bandana to mask his identity, but did not wear "all black". And while he was "in the crowd", the journalist claims he was "not part of any group".

I am certain that when links to the right are found with a mass shooter, this same journalist will remain consistent, and claim there is no such thing as the alt-right, merely a "diverse array of anti-globalist groups and individuals", and that while the shooter may have attended their protests, he was "not part of any group".

Later in that thread: Ngo showed his fans an image of the small black bloc contingent at the anti-KKK protest. His fans won't hear me say they were about a dozen in a crowd of 500-600 and Betts was not with them.

Reminds me of the saying "If there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people are sitting there talking to him, you have a table with 11 Nazis." Apply this rule only to your enemies - the Good Guys can associate with whoever they want, and come out clean.

[1] https://twitter.com/RobertMackey/status/1466292569843793921

Suppressing political view points on social media is bad.

If only there were people sounding the alarm about this for the past 10 years.