But there's reason to suspect that Twitter's policies about tamping down "abuse" won't tamp down actual "abuse," but just censor political speech.
Twitter recently announced a new "Trust and Safety Council" to help in this task. As Twitter works to "develop products, policies, and programs," the council will "help us tap into the expertise and input of organizations at the intersection of these issues more efficiently and quickly." The council is made up of dozens of organizations. Alongside unimpeachable organizations like the National Domestic Violence Hotline, there are organizations that explicitly support efforts to limit troublesome discussion. The council includes organizations like the Internet Watch Foundation, the Safer Internet Centre, and Feminist Frequency. Here's where the "Orwellian" part comes in: "speech that doesn't offend anybody" is the opposite of free expression.
After all, as Biz Stone pointed out, some tweets "downright anger a vast majority of users," and that's life. "[W]e keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content." It's also worth noting that while many organizations on Twitter's list have a progressive bent, I couldn't find one with a conservative or libertarian bent. (I can recommend, off the top of my head, the Cato Institute, FIRE, and the Becket Fund.)
This is more than just an idle fear. Last month Twitter stripped right-wing pundit Milo Yiannopoulos of his "verified" user status. Now the company has banned Robert Stacy McCain, an inflammatory right-wing writer. And apparently, not only did Twitter ban him, it also censored the hashtag that welled up in his support.
What's striking isn't just that there may be a political bias in those decisions. The more serious problems are a lack of due process and explanation, and a striking imbalance between what happens to semi-prominent Twitter personalities and the countless run-of-the-mill Twitter trolls who are still at large. And how else could it be? As Biz Stone wrote in 2011, "On a practical level, we simply cannot review all one hundred million-plus Tweets created and subsequently delivered every day." And since then, the number of tweets produced every day has quintupled. The Trust and Safety Council can't actually protect users from abuse; its only power is stop controversial users from issuing controversial opinions on Twitter.
