November 20, 2020 - 7:00am
In the dim and distant days before word processing, editors used to wield a blue pencil to make changes to copy. Hence the universal symbol of censorship: to ‘blue pencil’ a piece of text means to delete, bowdlerise or otherwise interfere with it.
How nice to see Twitter keeping up the old traditions. If they don’t like your tweet or consider it suspect then out comes the blue pencil in digital form. Except, instead of taking away from your text, they might add to it with a message of their own.
Such labels begin with a little exclamation mark in a circle and then go on to say something like “Get the facts about COVID-19” or “This claim about election fraud is disputed”. Here’s an explainer straight from the little bird’s mouth. Many of Donald Trump tweets are getting this treatment right now, for instance this one:
Voter Fraud in Detroit is rampant, and has been for many years!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2020
Should Twitter be doing this? I’m not suggesting that the President Un-elect isn’t tweeting nonsense, but do we really need @jack telling us what to think? Trump’s opponents won’t believe anything he says anyway and his diehard fans will take Twitter’s intervention as further proof of liberal skulduggery.
And then there’s the grotesque inconsistency. Consider the following tweet from the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations:
China is a country with multiple religions, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism & Protestant Christianity. China has nearly 200 million believers & 380,000 clerical personnel, 144,000 places of worship & 92 religious schools. The freedom of religious belief is well protected. pic.twitter.com/LdvOa84RNQ
— Chinese Mission to UN (@Chinamission2un) November 18, 2020
“The freedom of belief is well protected”. Yes, apart for the 1 million plus Muslim Uighurs in concentration camps, the ongoing oppression of Buddhism in Tibet, the ripping down of crosses from Christian Churches and the systematic persecution of any group that refuses to submit to state control.
So, do we see Twitter adding any little blue messages to the barefaced lies of the Beijing regime? We do not. There is a little grey label that reads “China government account”, but labels like that are attached as a matter of course to all tweets from government accounts including the US and UK. Otherwise, there’s nothing added to the above tweet. Not even an exclamation mark followed by “This claim about human rights is disputed”.
Don’t forget that, in the UK, Twitter proudly declares its commitment to “countering anti-Muslim hatred online“:
Well, Muslims in the Chinese province of Xinjiang are being dehumanised on a truly terrifying scale. And it’s not solely those suffering within the camps, but also the blighted lives of the women and children on the outside. Yet, Twitter allows the Chinese state to use its platform to gaslight the world.
So there we have it: a woke corporation that speaks over President Trump, while simultaneously providing a mouthpiece for President Xi. I guess it helps having the two faces.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
peterfranklin_
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeStop using Twitter. They’re a p0rnography publisher with a side business in running a PR platform.
There should be a complete ban on using Twitter in any official government capacity. They publish videos encouraging murder and suicide. They are absolute slime.
Twitter is evil. It’s as simple as that.
‘Bought and sold for Chinese gold, such a parcel of rogues in the Media’.
I absolutely agree. And I don’t understand why more isn’t being made in the media generally – including social media – about the CCP’s other evils including running a digital dictatorship and suppressing much about the pandemic. People around the world are pointing the finger at their own governments while allowing Xi and his gang to get away scot-free.
Except it isn’t random “people” blaming their own governments but neo-liberal globalist elites making money from selling out to China who are leading the attacks.
Think I’ll tweet “The earth is flat” just to see what happens.
Not actually inconsistent, if you accept that the goal is less fact-checking and more suppressing hate-mongering. Or to put it a different way – Twitter can only stop people from being shitty online, it can’t do anything about them being shitty in real life. So is it really a bad thing that it only polices what you say on its own platform, not whether you actually live up to it elsewhere?
The real test would be if they let the Chinese government say, “no, in fact we do NOT have religious freedom, because some religions are bad and need to be stomped into the ground!” I’m not saying I’m sure they wouldn’t, only that that would be more comparable.
Didn’t somebody say “Posting on twitter makes a person a t**t”
Don`t touch it myself but a couple of my relatives are twitterati in every sense.
They are fantastically baitable at family lunches.
I prefer the term “TWIDIOTS.
Twits works nicely for me.
Given it’s mostly journalists who use Twitter I suggest the vast majority of Trump’s ‘followers’ are in fact journos. As well as those who are anti-Trump. They need their daily fix from The Donald to get worked up into a frenzy of anger against him!
I’d be happy to shut down all the social media, but then what about Unherd?
The logic of this is so obvious and perfect that a child could have thought of it, although of course I didn’t (despite a pretty serious @Jack allergy). Thanks again Mr Franklin.