So Twitter has finally given Milo Yiannopoulos the boot — apparently for good — after the Breitbart “journalist” gleefully participated in, and egged on, a vicious campaign of racist abuse directed at Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones on Twitter earlier this week.
This wasn’t the first time that Milo, formerly known as @Nero, used his Twitter platform — at the time of his suspension he had 338,000 followers — to attack and abuse a popular scapegoat (or someone who merely mocked him online). It wasn’t even the worst example of his bullying.
What made the difference this time? Leslie Jones, who has a bit of a Twitter following herself, refused to stay silent in the face of the abuse she was getting, a move that no doubt increased the amount of harassment sent her way, but one that also caught the attention of the media. And so Milo finally got the ban he has so long deserved.
But what about all those others who participated in the abuse? And the rest of those who’ve turned the Twitter platform into one of the Internet’s most effective enablers of bullying and abuse?
In a statement, Twitter said it was reacting to “an uptick in the number of accounts violating [Twitter’s] policies” on abuse. But as the folks who run Twitter know all too well, the campaign against Jones, as utterly vicious as it was, wasn’t some kind of weird aberration.
It’s the sort of thing that happens every single day on Twitter to countless non-famous people — with women, and people of color, and LGBT folks, and Jews, and Muslims (basically anyone who is not a cis, white, straight, non-Jewish, non-Muslim man) being favorite targets.
Twitter also says that it will try to do better when it comes to abuse. “We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter,” the company said in its statement.
We agree. We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it’s happening and prevent repeat offenders. We have been in the process of reviewing our hateful conduct policy to prohibit additional types of abusive behavior and allow more types of reporting, with the goal of reducing the burden on the person being targeted. We’ll provide more details on those changes in the coming weeks.
This is good news. At least if it’s something more than hot air. Twitter desperately needs better policies to deal with abuse. But better policies won’t mean much if they’re not enforced. Twitter already has rules that, if enforced, would go a long way towards dealing with the abuse on the platform. But they’re simply not enforced.
Right now I don’t even bother reporting Tweets like this, because Twitter typically does nothing about them.
https://twitter.com/Bobcat665/status/735282887965085697
And even when someone does get booted off Twitter for abuse, they often return under a new name — and though this is in direct violation of Twitter’s rules, the ban evaders are so seldom punished for this violation that most don’t even bother to pretend to be anyone other than they are.
Longtime readers here will remember the saga of @JudgyBitch1 and her adventures in ban evasion.
Meanwhile, babyfaced white supremacist Matt Forney’s original account (@realMattForney) was banned some time ago; he returned as @basedMattForney. When this ban evading account was also banned, he got around this ban by starting up yet another ban evading account, under the name @oneMattForney, and did his best to round up as many of his old followers as possible.
https://twitter.com/onemattforney/status/753087810006085634
A few days later, Twitter unbanned his @basedMattForney account.
And here’s yet another banned Twitterer boasting about their success in ban evasion from a new account:
https://twitter.com/_AltRight_Anew/status/755643864036339716
And then there are all the accounts set up for no other reason than to abuse people. Like this person, who set up a new account just so they could post a single rude Tweet to me:
In case you’re wondering, the one person this Twitter account follows is, yes Donald Trump.
And then there’s this guy, also with an egg avatar, and a whopping three followers, who has spewed forth hundreds of nasty tweets directed mostly at feminists.
Here are several he sent to me, which I’ve lightly censored:
And some he’s sent to others.
So, yeah. Twitter is rotten with accounts like these, set up to do little more than harass. And if they ever get banned, it only takes a few minutes to set up another one.
Milo used his vast number of Twitter followers as a personal army. But you don’t need a lot of followers to do a lot of damage on Twitter. All you really need is an email address and a willingness to do harm.
It’s good that Twitter took down one of the platforms most vicious ringleaders of abuse. But unless Twitter can deal with the small-time goons, with their anime avatars and egg accounts, as well, it will remain one of the Internet’s most effective tools for harassment and abuse.
No, it hinges on two groups who’d never been in contact before evolving different bacterial/viral strains and thus different immune systems. The same reason why international travellers are recommended to get pre-trip immunisations today. It’s not exceptionalism, it’s just the way evolution works.
Also, the Europeans weren’t resistant to smallpox anyway. It was a very prolific killer in Europe before immunisations were invented.
Ohlmann
The Plague of Justinian, one of the first introductions of y. pestis is thought to have killed 25 million people in its initial outbreak and that number doubled in the centuries before the disease faded out for a time. When it returned as the Black Death, the disease killed as much as two thirds of Europe’s population.
Typhoid Fever may have caused the Plague of Athens which killed off a quarter of the city. Smallpox in Italy killed millions during the Antonine Plague.
(in fact, I guess I need something like https://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/ but who talk of Warmachine more than of Pathfinder, who is also a hobby of mine)
I have heard that one. There’s also a theory that it was actually a hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola. I think the virus theories are around because it spread so fast and usually plague spreads slowly because it’s from fleas on rats, not spread person to person. However, there was recently some yersinia pestis extracted from the teeth of corpses in a mass grave from the black death, so the evidence that it was the plague is pretty unshakable by now. But bacteria are pretty slutty and will swap DNA with viruses pretty often. In fact, speaking of John Snow, that’s how cholera bacteria go from pretty harmless to causing deadly epidemics. So, maybe the black death was a strain of yersinia pestis that had mutated from obtaining virus DNA of some sort? It’s pure speculation, but it would explain why the black death was as awful as it was.
Ghost Map. http://www.theghostmap.com/
It’s a great book, but if anyone plans on reading it, I must warn that there are some pretty unappetizing and graphic descriptions of the dirtier, stinkier aspects of 19th century urban life. It’s described in more detail than you usually hear or read and it isn’t pretty. I like knowing that kind of stuff though. It makes it harder to idealize the past too much. Personally, I’m happy to live in a world in which “night soil man” is no longer a job that anyone has.
*headdesk* How did I forget about that? (Probably because I was thinking the initial encounters.) Right. That thing that you said.
(In my defense? I’m absolutely exhausted, for reasons that aren’t even remotely able to be spun as positive. 🙁 )
Thank you, wwth! I have a fairly high tolerance for “gross”, especially if I’m reading about it, but warning noted. 🙂
ETA: OH! I think Extra History did something about this? At least, if it’s the one where he figured out that the upstream area where people were dumping their “night soil” was causing it, but he died anyway? Vague recollections, but it was a fascinating story, so the book is on my wishlist. 🙂
It is, it is! (I would have edited this on to my previous comment, but I got distracted by the “related books” on Amazon.)
leslie jones is back on twitter!!!! yay!!!
RE Marx and social change
Marx and Engels were fully aware of the unequal treatment of women. There’s a book about it. They just believed that capitalism was the bigger threat and that, once that problem was sorted, there would be little reason to continue other forms of inequality. This is partly why Communism was keen on breaking down the “family” (but not entirely, it was also a potential source of subversion).
So Marx was a feminist? Yes. Intersectional? Not on your nelly.
@EJ(TOO)
Blast, thanks for letting me know.
This link should work.
Bearing in mind, btw, that “family” in Marx’s time meant a husband who owned all his wife’s property, could legally beat or rape her, could have her institutionalised on the flimsiest of evidence (such as objecting to being beaten and raped) and would ordinarily retain custody of his children on the rare occasions his wife could legitimately leave.
We may not have reached perfection, but things have moved on.
@weatherwax
Very good points. Marriage still carries some of that stigma, for example ‘husband’ like animal husbandry, handler or owner, comes from ‘husbondi’ a man who owns land and stock. Presumably, his woman counts as ‘stock’ also. The ‘nuclear’ family was really a post war Madison Avenue creation intended to get women back into the home and tied to the kitchen sink after they’d got used to filling in the jobs vacated by men in military service.
Your description sounds a lot like what the Christian Right and Quiverfull patriarchs want, so maybe, some people have not moved on, they’ve gone back in time.
@weatherwax
Have you read this one?
https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm
It’s the states responsibility for bringing up children bit that sends the MRA types into a frenzy, they would prefer their barely literate, barefoot, constantly pregnant wife to do that whilst they drink beer, watch porn and fuck their sex robot.
Did I mention I was against Academisation of schools? That’s where the corporate brainwashing starts.
Off-topic, but some good news of another sort: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/07/21/myths-of-rape-should-be-dispelled-says-judge-in-mandi-gray-case.html
Re: disease vectors
So, it seems the Silk Road may have been responsible for the spread of more than just that triple bunny logo.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/22/ancient-bottom-wipers-yield-evidence-of-diseases-silk-road-chinese-liver-fluke
@Ohlmann
From what I read in current Spanish HS level textbooks (since I had to help my girlfriend’s daughter with her homework this year), the disease killing was primarily constrained to the Caribbean islands, where indigenous populations were more insular AND also they were weakened by labor, which is why the Spaniards had to introduce black slaves bought from the Portuguese traders.
The area that would later become the Southeastern US was almost depopulated and I’m fairly certain areas were hit hard as well.
Milo’s goons are now digging through Lesley’s twitter and posting her own (allegedly) racist tweets. This one is going to run for some time, I fear. (NB These appear to be actual tweets, or at least higher quality fake ones.)
Milo didn’t do anything except being rude.
The reaction against milo is exactly why certain groups are being stereotyped in ways their movement tries to dispel.
You wish to promote true censorship?
I would bet money this message will also be censored, since it remotely resembles an opposing opinion.
@Partap:
You don’t have to use euphemisms, you know. We’re not fooled and you’re not fooled. You can just say “muslims, women and black people.”
It would be a lie for me to say that I ever liked the alt-right, but about the only thing I ever respected about it is that they’re always willing to actually come out and say what they’re saying, rather than swaddling it in layers of euphemisms like cotton wool. Unfortunately you yourself don’t seem to adhere to this habit. Tell me, who are you trying to conceal your opinions from – me or you?
Another troll whining about how he will be “censored”. They never learn, do they?
@Partap
Hey, how did that bet work out?
I’ll bet that you’ll respond with more turgid, pompous, aggrieved prose.
Prove me wrong & make a lefty feminist lose her bet!
Speaking on behalf of the York tourist board…. John Snow was born in York, and is recognised/celebrated there:
http://www.york.ac.uk/healthsciences/john-snow-event/
There’s a plaque on a hotel near the river identifying his birthplace, but it’s not easy to see.
http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2013/events/john-snow/gallery/
@Virgin Mary
That’s a bit of an exaggeration — although there’s truth to the statement too.
Mad Ave. and the US government both wanted to get women back into the home after WWII.
But both of my sets of grandparents, who married at the turn of the twentieth century, lived in nuclear families.
That said, when my great-uncle, who worked in a steel mill in Pennsylvania, fell into a machine at work and was killed (no OSHA rules plus no laws about the length of a workday or work week meant that this was not an uncommon occurrence), he left behind a widow and three young children. There were no survivor benefits. For a while, the kids lived with relatives until the family could reunite. The widow never remarried, so somehow she managed. It couldn’t have been easy! And when I met her she was about 90 and was living with one of her sons.
I believe that you live in the UK. Maybe extended families are more likely to live together in your country.
@leftwingfox
“A cat is a tiny tiger living in your house.” – from part 2, which covers why certain animals could be domesticated and others possibly tame with the rest fully wild. Buffalo = tanks with hooves, and pure carnivores are pretty much not good for domestication because “their day job is murder”.
Interesting stuff. Thanks!