The latest political kerfuffle in the tech world has Twitter suspending the account of noted conservative Chris Loesch, husband of noted pundit Dana Loesch. This suspension was not concerning any huge violation of the Twitter Terms of Service. It followed a very heated exchange with some liberal users on Twitter – that’s all. We call this the “latest” political kerfuffle, because this seems to happen over and over again.
First of all, let’s disavow ourselves of the notion that President Donald Trump’s presence on Twitter means something in terms of conservative political agency. Trump is the very visible tip of the spear — the one entity that Twitter cannot mess with. If Twitter were to do that, the response from conservatives would be swift and unified. Other conservative entities without the visibility of the federal executive will not drive this kind of unified response, and Twitter knows that.
Chris Loesch was actually defending his wife in the exchange that eventually got him removed from Twitter. The tweet that started the entire thing came from a no-name writer that claimed he would be unaffected if Dana Loesch were to get raped. He said this in public on Twitter, which added to the classlessness of the correspondence. Sorry for the harshness, but it comes from a liberal – what do you expect?
Chris did what any good husband would do and defended his wife. A few minutes later, after defending his wife, he was gone from Twitter. Even though he did not have the popularity of a Trump, this was enough to send conservative Twitter into a frenzy. For a while, the hashtag #FreeChrisLoesch was a top 10 trending Twitter topic. It was actually enough to get his account reinstated, which does not usually happen when a conservative gets knocked out of the box.
Twitter and other communication platforms such as YouTube and Facebook do not have the manpower to monitor every conversation, although it is rumored they do put the little manpower they do have on the realm of politics. What does this mean? It means that if enough people game the automated system, they can actually gang up on their enemies and cause things to happen.
Liberals are the only people with the time to learn how to game Twitter. Liberals are the only people who have enough time to be on Twitter in high enough numbers to affect major change. Conservatives usually have jobs. Case in point — the freelancer who got Loesch kicked off of the site is a “self-published” writer without any real credits in the world of media. Although he didn’t have any professional achievements, he definitely had the backing of many other bitter underemployed and unemployed liberals to back his opinion.
After the automated system kicks a person off of Twitter, human employees can eventually get around to the situation to monitor it individually. Unless the situation becomes very public, Twitter will never dedicate enough resources to the situation to change the “decision” of the automated algorithm.
This is exactly what happened to Loesch, and it will happen to many conservatives in the future. The solution is not to give up your day job so that you can hang out on Twitter all day with unemployed liberals. The solution is to make sure that you pick your battles well. When you go online, go with enough people to put down any liberal nonsense. Get on, get the job done, and get back to real life. Let the lesson of Loesch be your guide.
~ Liberty Planet
