Twitter Suspended My Account For Criticizing Andrew Yang

Billionaire CEO & Yang mega-donor Jack Dorsey silences dissent while his platform pushes Trojan Horse policy threatening U.S. welfare system.

Full disclosure: I did not wait for Twitter to explain why they suspended my account. They had three hours to respond to my ticket while I wrote this article but have not done so yet. I will update you if I am wrong about why they suspended my account—but do not expect any update.

Update 09/05: First appeal reviewed and denied without explanation.

Update 09/09: Second appeal summarily denied. Looks like we’re done with Twitter.

Background

I wrote an article criticizing Democratic candidate Andrew Yang’s UBI policy on August 19. The article advanced three main arguments:

Yang’s UBI proposal is steeped in falsehood. His messaging that “every adult American” will get $1,000 per month is a lie. Yang’s faux-UBI proposal irrationally excludes the poor from the dividend. It is not the “trickle up” approach he is advertising. Yang is economically illiterate because he favors taxes on consumption and capital instead of land values.

#GoogleAndrewYang began trending in the U.S. on August 25. The hashtag quickly went viral and was at the top of the suggested trends that are personalized for individual users. #YangMediaBlackout also went viral on August 29. The hashtags were applified by reporting by Emily Stewart at Vox and other online sources.

Left: #GoogleAndrewYang trending #2 on August 25, 2019; center: #GoogleAndrewYang as the top suggestion in personalized trends on August 25; right: #YangMediaBlackout trending #3 on August 29.

I responded to dozens of the top tweets pushing the #GoogleAndrewYang and #YangMediaBlackout hashtags with replies linking my article. The hope was that people would see my critical article linked next to tweets promoting Yang. The motivation was to help educate voters on a person who is running for President of the United States. The objective was to promote debate on the merits of Yang’s policies.

Although my repeated tweets (shown below) were identical, the replies were made to different tweets by different users. When someone responded to one of my default replies, I engaged them in a follow-up conversation. In my opinion, this is a normal way for a small voice to promote its original content. How else are you supposed to go about engaging as many people as possible in substantive discussion?

Left: My default reply on August 25, 2019; right: my default reply on August 29.

You may read all of my tweets (if you wish, excluding one picture from work showing colleagues) since I sent the default replies on August 29 and the suspension on August 31. Suffice it to say, I did not violate Twitter’s rules with those tweets.

Account suspended August 31.

Issue: Did my default tweets to dozens of accounts violate Twitter’s rules? (Not the spirit of the rules but the letter, yes.)

Twitter’s full rules on platform manipulation and spamming are here. The relevant sections are reproduced below.

Twitter’s ‘black letter law’ on manipulation and spamming.

Twitter’s rules prohibit conduct that “artificially amplifies or suppresses information” or “manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter.” The replies certainly did not suppress information. Nor did they artificially amplify information. I sat on my computer for 30 minutes manually sending the replies. There were no multiple accounts, fake accounts, automation or scripting. The replies were not commercial in nature and nothing about the engagements they received was unauthentic. If anything, people enjoyed the content and thought it worthwhile, as reflected in the high percentage of readers who completed the full eight minute article.

Stats for Andrew Yang Has No Clue, August 31.

Nor did the replies manipulate user’s experience on Twitter unless linking them information on point is manipulation. Twitter is therefore reduced to claiming my tweets disrupted other user’s experience. Twitter has more detailed rules on disrupting others’ experience.

Twitter’s subrules on misuse of their platform.

My “bulk” tweeting of “high-volume unsolicitied replies” violates the rules against posting the same content repeatedly and posting identical or nearly identical Tweets. But the replies would not even be visible to a user as they scrolled through the top tweets. If a user did click on a top tweet to expand it, my reply would only be displayed once, if at all; many of the top tweets had hundreds of replies, so mine were buried. How is this disruptive to users?

Thank the Lord, Yang does not comprise the bulk of my tweeting activity. Further, I did in fact personalize the first few replies I made. I had to resort to “spam” posting my article to reach as many voters as possible because of sheer scale of the nonsense being posted. Surely I do not have to write a personalized reply to every user in order to link them to my article on point.

My initial attempts at getting the word out.

Issue: Is Twitter retaliating against political speech that challenges its interests? (You tell me.)

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is a major backer of Yang. In my analysis of Yang’s absurd proposal to deny an equal dividend to poor Americans on welfare, I reached the conclusion that Yang’s faux-UBI was universal credit in disguise.

In its worst light, Yang’s proposal can be seen as a clear step towards a system of universal credit. Universal credit was a major reform undertaken by the socially and economically conservative Tory party in the UK as part of austerity. Universal credit’s Wikipedia page is mostly criticism of the policy.

Amassing all welfare programs into a universal program would allow a President like Trump to eliminate all welfare in one fell swoop, or to chip away at the programs slowly, as has happened in the U.K. There the policy has been described as a “collossal, costly, hellish catastrophe” and studies show it costs more than the various programs it replaced. It would seem a few people got the message.

People are getting wise to the #FANGFraudCandidate, Andrew Yang.

Yep, they definitely got the message.

It is no secret the right is trying to sneak universal credit into U.S. policy through a backdoor in UBI. The Federalist advocates UBI precisely on those grounds, while otherwise criticizing the math of Yang’s proposal.

The only valid justification for a UBI is not to replace work but to replace the perverse anti-work incentives in means-tested welfare,” Kane said. “Yang’s UBI fails to do this, instead offering a choice between the basic income or welfare payments.”

What the Federalist analysis gets wrong, is that Yang’s proposal offers no choice at all: It makes no difference to someone on $1,000 per month in benefits whether they ‘choose’ to recieve their money as welfare or as the dividend. By denying the dividend to the poor, while creating a parallel system that can replace benefits when lawmakers so choose, Yang’s faux-UBI sets the stage for a total rollback of the welfare system.

Smells Rotten

In my personal experience, I have had no previous problems when I repeatedly replied with my other articles without comment to various accounts. I may have posted the Yang material more than in those previous instances, but if I am in violation of the letter of the rules now, I certainly was then as well. Twitter also took no action after I made repeated default tweets on August 25. It was only after it became apparent I intended to use the same tactic everytime Yang was trending, on August 29, that Twitter suspended my account. It seems unlikely I got caught up in an algorithm days after the violation occured.

You have to wonder, what was it about my article specifically criticizing tech billionaires who are interested in supporting a candidate who pushes neoliberalism under the guise of progressivism, that got the Twitter team’s attention?

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