The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

#FreeStacy: @rsmccain ‘Will Not Be Restored’; @SexTroubleBook Suspended

Posted on | February 22, 2016 | 188 Comments

 

Notified via email:

@rsmccain
Hello,
Your account was suspended because it was found to be violating the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules), specifically our rules around participating in targeted abuse.
Your account will not be restored.
Thanks,
Twitter
Reference #ref:00DA0000000K0A8.500G000000tVGuS:ref

Twitter, Inc. 1355 Market Street, Suite 900 San Francisco, CA 94103

Well, what is “targeted abuse,” what constitutes “participating” in this behavior, and what are the “rules around” it? Where is the evidence that I have been “violating the Twitter Rules”? Who was “targeted”? What was the nature of the “abuse”? Questions like this multiply, you see, if we can be permitted to ask questions of the arbiters of “Twitter Rules,” but that’s just it: No questions allowed!

“It’s as if the grown-ups left for the weekend,
and the SJW interns are in control.”

This morning, again without explanation, the @SexTroubleBook account — which I created last year to promote my book — was suspended.

Everybody is shocked, shocked!

“Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant,
then it tries to silence good.”

Feminism is evil. But you knew that, right?

UPDATE: Robert Tracinski at The Federalist:

On Friday, Twitter suspended the account of Robert Stacy McCain, a conservative blogger and dogged critic of feminism, apparently without warning or explanation. This has led, in true Twitter fashion, to protests under the hashtag #FreeStacy.
Only a few weeks earlier, Twitter had announced the creation of a “Trust and Safety Council,” to which it appointed Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist known for denouncing “sexism” in video games, a prominent figure in the Gamergate controversy — and oh yes, a frequent target of criticism from McCain. So it sure looks like the moment Twitter gave Sarkeesian the power to do so, she started blackballing her critics. . . .
[T]he company’s decision to appoint a “Trust and Safety Council” that will be “a new and foundational part of our strategy to ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter.” Among a list of organizations described as members of the council are the Dangerous Speech Project, which has produced a set of guidelines for recognizing such “dangerous speech” — a set of criteria so vague and broad that they could encompass anything from the incitement that led the Rwandan genocide to an average afternoon on talk radio. And maybe that’s the point.
Then there is Feminist Frequency, the outlet used by Anita Sarkeesian as a platform to criticize video games for being sexist. Sarkeesian’s critics accuse her of using claims of online harassment to discredit her critics and get them kicked off of services like — you guessed it — Twitter. So when Sarkeesian and the “dangerous speech” types got appointed as Twitter’s speech police, there was reason to think they’re going to turn Twitter into a university-style “safe space” where “safety” is assured by removing advocates of opposing ideas. . . .

Read the whole thing at The Federalist.

UPDATE II: Karl Denninger reflects on how the declining value of Twitter as corporate enterprise may be hastened by their “Trust and Safety” agenda. Do they really want to be the next MySpace?

Linked at Legal Insurrection, Pax Dickinson, a thread at Memeorandum and welcome, Instapundit readers!

Lawrence Person writes:

It appears more and more that Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Council” should be more properly named “Anita Sarkeesian’s Committee To Ban People Who Say Mean Things About Her.”

I blame the public education government indoctrination system. Earlier today I got a phone call from a faculty member at a university (which I will not name) who spent 30 minutes telling me the absolute insanity that now prevails on campus. The students are ignorant of facts, but very certain of their opinions, all of which are liberal, and this is a religion for them. For many years, the public K-12 schools have been promoting a progressive agenda through their curriculum and policies, and children are taught to value intellectual abstractions (i.e., “equality,” “diversity,” etc.) to such a degree that they are incapable of thinking outside those categories. They arrive on campus with minds full of this ideological nonsense, and are unprepared to deal with contradictory facts or opposing arguments. Feminists like Anita Sarkeesian are incapable of defending themselves in a fair debate against a well-informed critic, and so the critics must be silenced. This is why the First Rule of Feminist is, “SHUT UP!”

“Twitter is revealing its transformation
from social media platform to cult.”




 

Comments

188 Responses to “#FreeStacy: @rsmccain ‘Will Not Be Restored’; @SexTroubleBook Suspended”

  1. Daniel Freeman
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:11 pm

    Last September, Anita Sarkeesian was on a Google Ideas project together with the despicable Randi Harper (and part two), who is connected to Del Harvey, Twitter’s Vice President of Trust and Safety.

  2. DeadMessenger
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:14 pm

    Hang on…I’m thinking…

  3. Some1
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:15 pm

    Since Twitter defines abuse as opinions that disagree with another person, I think everyone still on Twitter needs to report @jack for abusive behavior under those guidelines.

  4. DeadMessenger
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:17 pm

    Sure (although there seems to be an opt-out for some tracking), but I’d like to know who else is tracking me, too.

  5. Joe Joe
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:24 pm

    Where can I get an easy gig like that?

  6. DeadMessenger
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:25 pm

    I agree, and everyone should report everyone else on the grounds that all of us disagree with each other, on some point, at least.

    This just goes to demonstrate the slippery-slope idiocy of all progressive relativism.

  7. Daniel Freeman
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:26 pm

    I think Frank Herbert used them as a model for Fremen culture, but I got the remix from a Federalist article about liberal intolerance. There’s definitely a parallel.

  8. DeadMessenger
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:28 pm

    It’s not an easy gig by far. You have to constantly be on the lookout for knives coming toward your back.

    If there’s no conservative, Christian or white guy handy, the pack will turn on the nearest target.

  9. DeadMessenger
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:30 pm

    I think you should’ve used “despicable” more than once in that sentence.

  10. Wombat_socho
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:30 pm

    What do you expect from Swedes?

  11. Daniel Freeman
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:30 pm

    I like the idea of Shivver. It’s honest. Some people shiv, others shiver; are you predator or prey?

  12. Wombat_socho
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:31 pm

    You get one warning. You ever use that word “c*ckservative” around here again and you get a free whack with the banhammer.

  13. Wombat_socho
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:32 pm

    If you look at the number of Silicon Valley execs who donated to Obama in the last two elections, it’s not exactly a new thing.

  14. Wombat_socho
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:34 pm

    You are just now realizing this truth?

  15. Wombat_socho
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:36 pm

    It depends on who you follow. Most of the people I follow on there are conservatives, libertarians, Republicans, and/or #GamerGate and/or #SadPuppies people, so for me it’s like having a ringside seat at the circus. 🙂

  16. Garym
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:36 pm

    Thanks Wombat. I was getting ready to go off on him, but Trumps supporters are so closed minded, I just beat my head into a wall for 30 minutes instead.

  17. Wombat_socho
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:37 pm

    Vox and his Ilk don’t have a name announced for their software yet. You should suggest this one.

  18. Adam
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:37 pm

    Fair enough. Sometimes as an Aussie I find it hard to gauge who’s with what and how these words work. It’s changing so fast it’s hard to keep up from outside the US. I had no idea the word was so loaded.

  19. Wombat_socho
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:38 pm

    It started badly and got worse; if you weren’t aware of the connotations up here, then no worries. Welcome to the scrum.

  20. Wombat_socho
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:39 pm

    Thank you for your patience.

  21. Lord Nazh
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 10:46 pm

    It means jack-sh#t in the real world and it won’t help you get coffee in the morning, but I de-activated my twitter account today. Not even worth reading the funny tweets anymore

  22. Eucratides_Megas
    February 22nd, 2016 @ 11:50 pm

    Like most Communists they sure don’t have much faith in their ideas standing up to the heat of genuine inquiry and debate, but they are quite sure of their ability to silence you from speaking yours.

    What’s great about the internet is even when a bunch of leftists use their power to silence you, its impossible to actually be silenced. The wonderful, chaotic freedom of the web, I love it 🙂

  23. Lifeofthemind
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 12:19 am

    Twitter is of some limited utility for reading news feeds, many front line reporters file first reports live there, and to get emergency notices from OEM or MTA. As a social media I don’t get the point. Yelling at strangers that way makes less sense than Facebook, which can be used and acknowledged as a vice without crossing the creepy line. If I post a pic of a meal or a location on Twitter it would be in the nature of a diary entry, and there are now better ways to do that.

    If my rarely used account vanishes I will regret the passing of a digital record of what I cared about some years ago, in the same way that I mourned the implosion of LGF and the loss of the record of the many hours I had spent there before Charles Johnson burned it down and blocked me.

  24. Beckoning Chasm
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 1:01 am

    Twitter created the SJWs, so hopefully when Twitter dies, they’ll all go away and never be heard from again.

  25. Terenc Blakely
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 1:24 am

    The “Trust and Safety Council” is reminiscent of the “Ministry of Truth” which isn’t surprising I guess.

  26. Achilles
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 2:26 am

    Twitter sucks. It is going to be fun when the Left experiences real abuse.

  27. Olinser
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 3:17 am

    Of course not. Publically posting concrete rules and guidelines would force them to actually abide by them and admit that people like McCain did not, in fact, violate them, and that dozens of their liberal golden children actually HAVE.

    And honestly, even if they don’t want to be tied down to specific rules (a lot of moderated forums do not as well other than ‘no sexually explicit language and no cursing’), but even then they notify you of exactly what post you were warned or banned for.

    If this were actually legit and they had reasonable ban cause, they’d simply publically display whatever ban-worthy post McCain made, and that would be the end of it.

    Quite frankly I’m surprised they’ve switched to being this blatant about it. For literally MONTHS they’ve been shadowbanning various conservative Twitter accounts by outright removing trending conservative hashtags and making it so that conservative accounts cannot be seen by anybody (with no notice, I might add).

    I’m really surprised they’ve switched to being this stupid and blatant about it. I literally cannot comprehend how this was put in place in the midst of an already large Twitter stock price fall.

    If we can make this public enough, this could be the death knell for Twitter.

  28. concern00
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 3:46 am

    Face it. Twitter has a lot of other people’s money to burn in order to prevent a conservative president being elected. It doesn’t matter that the money will eventually run out. Progressives always have another target to plunder for funds.

  29. Twitter will never be the same – Rand Koch
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 3:48 am

    […] McCain posted the boilerplatish correspondence he received from Twitter, and it doesn’t look […]

  30. Fail Burton
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 4:00 am

    He did do that, and the Fremen were perfect Muslim Brotherhood Qutbists, convinced their moral superiority trumped the superior technology of the Empire. And, when they took power by controlling that future’s oil, everyone not Fremen were treated as second-class citizens and further subjugated via a 12 yr. jihad.

    In the real world, Muslim majorities are de jure 1st class citizens, and yet oppose such things when they are the minority.

  31. K-Bob
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 5:34 am

    Hey folks!

    I guess we’re all talking about this subject, so I thought I’d offer a few too many words on it.

    I think Stacy has done an excellent job of being the metaphorical canary in the coalmine when it comes to alerting us all to the death of The One Place You Can Find Everybody. Which is just a concept, which became a fad, then an obsession, then an arena of combat, then ultimately, the December end of the May to December romance.

    So while offering condolences, I simultaneously congratulate him on the well deserved attention this brings to both his writing, and the subject in which he has so diligently been working. I suppose this paragraph is where I should also place the hearty “fuck you!” I want to toss at the proprietors of twitter for ruining something that, …well, was probably doomed anyway, so fuck me for caring.

    I don’t think twitter will be replaced. It will go the way of MySpace, even if another Rupert Murdoch type sap comes along and buys it. Here’s why…

    Smart people who used twitter a lot, like Ace, are going to find out that their own content at their sites is going to improve. This is because the massive, time-sucking black hole of twitter is out of their lives, and they will feel relief. Stacy has had enough discipline to stay on project, so his forays into tweeting probably didn’t kill his productivity nearly as much as it has done for so many. So leaving twitter will become liberating… up to the point where the Internet will suck you in in other ways.

    Perhaps content platforms are going to improve the sharing aspect so that it’s easier to track things. Google or some other search engine will continue to be the place where “discovery” kinds of activity happen, and really, how hard was it to just check up on your favorite sites each day and see what was going on and share it on other sites?

    Twitter made that last thing marginally easier because of the calculus of the follow. But unfortunately it lost you more time than it helped save. It takes time to come up with that perfectly clever tweet that most people will ignore.

    Curiously, I looked at Google Trends to see how [ twitter alternatives ] was doing, and evidently the answer is, “meh.” So I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that most people stopped really giving a damn about twitter a long time ago, and were mostly staying around because it takes a high profile walk away before everyone else feels free to do likewise.

    I like it that Ali and Stacy are looking into something-that-can-be-done-about-this-bullshit. I suspect thousands of folks are furiously working on their alternatives to twitter as we type, and since the technology is old and fairly easy for any pro back-end team, there will be myriad apps clamoring for your attention. But most of you will probably assume there’s no future in them because never again will all folks be on one “tweeting” platform. So I’m hoping someone comes up with a “good enough” solution that helps you filter for content via the follow calculus.

    Until then, go back to clicking through your bookmarks and RSS feeds (or whatever replaces that) and pretend twitter was just a weird dream, like the ending of the final episode of Newhart.

  32. Daniel Freeman
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 7:16 am

    I’m liking it the more I think about it. We don’t need to be isolated from people that disagree, or even from people that don’t want to argue. I think the goal should be to make something where all kinds of people can share a platform (which means locking SJWs out of any control).

    My guess is that if there were a simple way to select between a “shiv” combat mode and a “shiver” hugbox mode, about 60% would choose the latter. Maybe even more! And that’s okay. Takes all kinds.

  33. The Hateful Lies of Feminism : The Other McCain
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 7:43 am

    […] Ms. Sarkeesian had something to do with this matter. Was this deduction valid? I don’t know. Twitter has cited nothing specific to justify its claim that I was “participating in targeted … and this opaque accusation was delivered as a verdict, so that I do not even have any way to know […]

  34. Quartermaster
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 7:48 am

    Calvinball was invented by a sociopath.

  35. Quartermaster
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 7:49 am

    No. Wall Street has given heavily to Hillary. The evil rich know who butters their bread.

  36. Daniel O'Brien
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 7:50 am

    I used the form to report @jack.

  37. Quartermaster
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 8:04 am

    If you like the word, over at Vox Day’s place it gets used a lot, although a lot of the people over there use it without really knowing what it means. There aren’t any those here, and we got invaded by a bunch of idiots that had no idea what it meant either. Wombat ended up in almost deadly combat with a bunch that had to be banned. Some of those people are also over at Vox’s place and are still whining about being banned.

  38. Melissarmurphy3
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 8:56 am

    ?my .friend’s mate Is getting 98$. HOURLY. on the internet.”….two days ago new McLaren. F1 bought after earning 18,512$,,,this was my previous month’s paycheck ,and-a little over, 17k$ Last month ..3-5 h/r of work a days ..with extra open doors & weekly. paychecks.. it’s realy the easiest work I have ever Do.. I Joined This 7 months ago and now making over 87$, p/h.Learn. More right Here!b!1108????? http://GlobalSuperEmploymentVacanciesReportsPort/GetPaid/98$hourly…. .?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:?2:::::!b!1108……

  39. Quartermaster
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 9:27 am

    Google had the motto, “Don’t be evil.” We know how long that lasted. The love of money….

  40. Quartermaster
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 9:29 am

    Sarkeesian is the Hydra.

  41. Quartermaster
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 9:32 am

    Think Afghanistan. If they don’t have the British, Soviets, or us to fight, they just fight each other.

  42. Quote of the Day: #FreeStacy Edition - Victory Girls Blog
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 10:16 am

    […] will not be restored, and the account he created last year to promote his book was also suspended. He has his own suspicions as to why this is […]

  43. Quartermaster
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 1:01 pm

    I thought the 1st episode of Newhart was a weird dream.

  44. K-Bob
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 3:03 pm

    I missed the first bunch of episodes. I only started watching to find out why people started calling me “The Other Daryl.”

  45. Brutus974
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 3:50 pm

    Also interesting is to find yourself blocked by accounts you have never interacted with.

    Disagreement will NOT be tolerated.

  46. Brutus974
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 3:50 pm

    Old USSR == progressive culture.

  47. Brutus974
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 3:56 pm

    Never interacted with her, but I’m blocked anyway.

    Funny, this never happens to anyone in her private club.

  48. Jeanette Victoria
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 4:07 pm

    Today she claims I’ve taken the anti-psychotic Risperdal for years and now I suffer from tardive dyskinesia!

    Of course it is a complete lie, I’ve never taken any anti-psychotics and certainly don’t have tardive dyskinesia!

  49. Quartermaster
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 4:13 pm

    I saw occasional snippets after that, but didn’t watch another episode start to finish. Far to inane for me.

  50. Adam
    February 23rd, 2016 @ 4:42 pm

    Funny you should say that as McCain linked to Vox the other day, and not knowing this backstory I assumed they were on the same page. I assumed wrong.