It’s been a month since Twitter.com unveiled its new and aggressive policy cracking down on abusive behavior.
“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” wrote Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in a leaked internal memo obtained by Slate.com.
“We’re going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them,” Costolo wrote.
Specifically, Twitter aims to bottleneck and eventually plug the intimidating stream of consciousness from the right directed at those on the left.
As a result of the new policy, outspoken bloggers have been hawkishly targeted for annihilation from the social media platform.
Blogger Chuck Johnson’s Twitter account was suspended over the weekend for sending out a tweet asking for donations to take out civil rights activist DeRay McKesson.
The now-deleted tweet read: “Go to gotnews.com/donate if you want to give money to taking out @deray.”
McKesson (pictured above right) responded by tweeting, “Yes, I take this as a serious threat.”
Johnson’s account was suspended hours later.
Johnson wrote an email to a website explaining that he was “speaking metaphorically about exposing DeRay in much the same way Slate was speaking metaphorically about ‘taking out’ a Supreme Court justice.”
He said that he was merely “interested in doing some research” on McKesson, who he called “a leader of the anti-cop astroturfing currently hitting the inner city black community.”
In an interview with CNN’s Carol Costello, McKesson dismissed Johnson’s Tweet as a function of free speech.
“This isn’t free speech,” McKesson said. “That wasn’t free speech, that was hate speech.”
Another popular blogger recently found herself locked out of her Twitter account. An email from Twitter explained the new abuse language policy. It seems another Twitter user who can’t face reality filed an abuse violation complaint with Twitter.
Freedom of speech falls under the category of abusive language now. So watch what you Tweet.
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