So activists on the far right are distributing a list of 5000 “Antifa” Twitter accounts they hope to mass report and get banned, not for breaking any Twitter rules, but just because they want to silence everyone who disagrees with them.
If you peruse the list, you’ll run across not only a wide assortment of Antifa accounts but also those of many liberal and lefty journalists who report on the rising fascist movement, including me. You’ll also find more than a few incongruous names, including Barack Obama, Jorts the Cat, and Britney Spears.
You see, the list was apparently put together by scraping and combining the “following” lists of several activists on the left. But whoever put the list together doesn’t seem to have done any editing of the names to make sure they’re really Antifa or even vaguely political.
Those who made the list include Cardi B, Danny DeVito, Dog_rates, Infinite_scream, KidsWriteJokes, LilNasX, Monica Lewinsky, Sesame Street, the Sierra Club, and dril. There are several accounts that post nothing but pictures of cats and one that only posts alligators. There are also various government agencies, from the CDC to the FBI, the CIA, and the city government of Malibu, California, none of which are hotbeds of Antifa to the best of my knowledge. The strangest inclusion is probably LibsOfTikTok, a notorious right-wing account known for targeting trans people and drag queens.
Gwen Snyder, apparently one of those whose “following” list was scraped, posted a useful Twitter thread that helped put the list in perspective. She pointed out that the list is probably too big and sloppily put together to be used for a mass reporting campaign. But more carefully edited lists could follow, without all the extraneous names, and if even one of those gets into the hands of Elon Musk, he could very easily ban everyone on them.
So I guess I’ll unlock my account, at least for now. But given Musk’s actions on Twitter so far, many of which have been directly or indirectly inspired by far-right posters, I’m not optimistic that my account will last much longer.
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A word of warning, it’s perfectly possible Musk or his cronies will actually listen to them. I know that an anarchist organization that I follow reported that Andy Ngo (you might remember him, the douchebag obsessed with Antifa who got a milkshake to the face once) was able to get them banned despite their never actually breaking any rules.
So expect the worst. Me, I’m lucky because I never had a Twitter account to begin with and don’t plan to start now.
Very free-speechy.
It’s possible that other targeted accounts follow them, just going by what Gwen Snyder wrote. Or maybe the word “libs” was a search term? (Funny if so.)
There are those who say that you’re not truly an antifa until a right-winger calls you one, so congrats to you David, for your official promotion to antifa.
I’m just going to add a caveat that automated, bot-based reporting is also possible and it is possible to make it look organic enough, if the bot coder can settle with “it keeps random time between reports and take several days to do it” rather than “all at once right nowwww”.
Those far right-wingers on Twitter were previously “praising” Elon Musk for restoring “free speech” to them. As we all know though, a lot of people who claim to be anti-censorship are only against being censored themselves and if put in charge, would gladly censor others. We’ll see though, despite the high uptick in hate speech on Twitter since he took over as CEO and his unbanning of some hate-mongers, he still apparently claims that hate speech is still not allowed on Twitter and that the TOS hasn’t really changed. So I’m not entirely sure at this point that he’d go so far as start banning people who actively speak out against hate speech without breaking any other rules (besides, there will absolutely no advertisers left on the platform if this happens because all the remaining ones who haven’t left already would also leave).
the freest of speech
They, Twitter, have already removed, or seemed to remove, a metric funt ton of Palestinian and Palestinian rights accounts. This is hardly a surprise. Musk and the Nazis are not so slowly turning Twitter into a shittier rip off of Parler or Gab.
Wait hold on, Nazi Twitter doesn’t like dril? Say it ain’t so, joe!
I’m reminded of Nixon’s Enemies List, but extra stupid.
Dril and the CIA are on the list. It breaks my heart that I didn’t make the cut.
I’m @starlady on Mastadon. Anyone else care to leave their handle here?
Jorts is openly antifa and a great friend to organized labor, but We Rate Dogs is just pictures of cute doggos! And what about Kids Write Jokes? Won’t they think of the chiiiillldren? I don’t think dril has a political idea in his/her/their head.
Meanwhile, the FBI and *especially* the CIA are totally Fa. Malibu is full of rich white NIMBYs, so definitely not about to overthrow corporate capitalism.
I don’t know Britney’s politics. Considering how the courts treated her, I’m guessing she’s not big on fascism. Mostly she seems to be about getting her life back to normal.
@Jono: At least “Truth”Social is upfront about their ideology, not claiming they welcome everyone and punish hate speech.
@Thomas: Because the only thing fascists hate more than PoC and Jews is Muslims.
@Nequam: DOUBLE extra stupid. Even Nixon liked dogs and didn’t put them on his list. He probably would have enjoyed dog_rates on the whole.