This doesn’t make Zuckerberg special. Assuming this isn’t a deception (remember, he once called his own users “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their personal data), he’s doing the bare minimum of what we expect from social media companies—providing people with a platform to air their opinions, without letting his personal politics get in the way.
Facebook requires constant policing from the conservative media to keep the biases of their staff in check. On numerous occasions, wrongfully suspended accounts—like Pamela Geller’s—have only been reinstated following coverage from Breitbart. Facebook only took concerns over its Trending news team seriously after the conservative media got involved, and only fired them after Breitbart reported on their political biases.
GHOSTBUSTERS
“That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey Iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years.”
My love of Shakespeare has provided me with so many colorful ways to describe Twitter and its sandal-wearing, hobo-chic CEO Jack Dorsey.
Twitter’s stock has declined some 80% since 2014, and user growth has stalled since 2013. Karma and divine retribution are alive and well.
Once the most attention grabbing of the social media platforms, Twitter promised to usher in a new age of instant, democratic free expression. Its character limit encouraged users to share rapid-fire thoughts with the world, without a filter. In its early days, Twitter could justifiably claim it showed us what was on the world’s mind at any given moment.
And it was fun! It was fun to watch governments and politicians humbled in the face of the global citizenry’s un-moderated opinions. It was fun to engage in the raucous back-and-forth between liberals, conservatives and libertarians, on a platform which, for a while at least, was the opposite of a safe space. It could embarrass governments, kill officially mandated myths, and even topple dictators. It was dangerous. Naturally, I was a fan. My Twitter handle was @Nero, a nod to the Roman emperor known for his good looks, artistic soul, and for lighting his enemies on fire.
Twitter was about freedom, fun, and the humbling of authority. It was only a matter of time before progressive crybabies ruined everything. In late 2015, co-founder Jack Dorsey replaced relatively pro-free speech Dick Costolo as permanent CEO. Dorsey, a very close friend of DeRay Mckesson, had marched with Black Lives Matter in Ferguson, Missouri.34 He quickly set about turning Twitter into a sharia-compliant conservative-free zone.
Like any CEO, Dorsey can’t admit his political bias openly. On the rare occasions when he does address the issue, he insists that the platform is politically neutral. In an interview with Today Show’s Matt Lauer, Dorsey flatly denied that Twitter censors anything other than threats of violence, insisting Twitter merely existed to “empower conversation.”
Two months after Dorsey became CEO, actor Adam Baldwin received a temporary suspension for a tweet implying that conservatives and libertarians were more sexually attractive than left-wingers. (An observation that has been repeatedly confirmed by surveys and studies.35) The tweet broke none of Twitter’s rules, yet Baldwin was forced to delete it before his account was restored. This was at the same time angry death threats to Donald Trump were an unchecked daily occurrence. I knew it was only a matter of time before Dorsey came for me.
In October 2015, Fusion referred to me as “the internet’s biggest troll” with “terrifying allure.” They weren’t wrong. A few months later, Twitter removed my blue “verified” check mark. Not for any specific reason, they just saw how popular I was becoming and wanted to squash me. For this brave act, Huffington Post congratulated the platform for “standing up for women online.”36 Ugh, please.
Verified checks are given out to prominent figures likely to be impersonated. I’m probably the most impersonated individual who isn’t Beyoncé, yet Twitter still took away my check mark, for ideological reasons. At the time, it was unprecedented.
I knew from that moment Twitter was looking for any excuse to ban me, and they would eventually find one. I also knew that when they succeeded, all hell would break loose. I wasn’t disappointed, although Twitter’s shareholders probably are now.
The pretext needed to ban me turned out to be the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters, a remarkably bad film that flopped at the box office and contributed to Sony’s decision to take a near $1 billion write-down on its movie business.37 I published a catty review of the abominable flick, tarring it with my trademark reserve, as a crime against comedy. It is perhaps the only movie I’ve ever seen conceived entirely out of spite, which would have been okay, if it were funny. I castigated the abysmal performances from the lead actresses, including the inexplicably popular Leslie Jones.
The film had been attracting controversy for months before its release. When its trailer debuted on YouTube, it was immediately assailed upon by peeved pop-culture fans of the classic Bill Murray movie. They had read reports about director Paul Feig’s plan to reinvent the franchise from the ground up, as well as his seemingly sparse knowledge of the Ghostbusters universe. Feig had basically transformed a movie about four out of shape, middle-aged men, three of them white and one black to a chick flick with four out of shape, middle-aged women, three of them white and one black. Groundbreaking.
This, coupled with the fact that the promo video was intensely boring, led to it becoming the most-disliked movie trailer in YouTube’s history.
Under normal circumstances, this would not be hugely controversial. Cult franchises like Ghostbusters can be treacherous territory: upset the fans and you may be in for a lifetime of loathing. Just think of what fans did to George Lucas after The Phantom Menace hit theaters.
But these weren’t normal circumstances, and the fan’s reaction to Ghostbusters quickly became a media and political controversy. Partly as a means to market the movie, Feig and the Ghostbusters cast began denouncing its critics as “misogynist” and “right-wing.”