By Charles C. W. Cooke
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
A peculiar thing happened on Twitter this week: I began
to see Milo Yiannopoulos’s face everywhere. In my mentions, in my inbox, and in
my stream writ large, I have been subjected to an almost never-ending torrent
of Yiannopouloi. Like the eponymous character in Being John Malkovich, a single visage has haunted and pursued me
around the portal. Here, there, and everywhere, it has been Milo, Milo, Milo.
The proximate cause of this weird replication has been
the users of Twitter themselves. When last week, for no obvious or accountable
reason, an administrator took away Yiannopolous’s blue “verification” badge, a
host of his supporters rose up in righteous protest and traded their identities
for his. First, they altered their accounts: Out went their photos, their bios,
and their names; in came a thousand assiduous copies. And then, a hashtag game
began. Its text? “Je Suis Milo,” natch. Ostensibly, this tag was a crude
bastardization of the post–Charlie Hebdo
rallying cry. In reality, though, it had borrowed less from Paris than from
Senerchia. “I am Spartacus,” the rabble seemed to roar. “Je suis Spartacus;
nous sommes tous Spartacus!” The message: We stand and fall as one.
Despite the indignant “free speech” talk, it is worth
noting that Yiannopoulos was not removed from the service completely. Rather,
he was “de-verified,” and for no more specific reason than “recent violations
of the Twitter rules.” Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel that the site
failed to think this one through. As far as Twitter is concerned, its
“verified” program does not exist to accord certain users an official
imprimatur; it exists so that the public knows whether a person claiming to be
a public figure is, in fact, that public figure. That being so, one has to
wonder what taking away Yianoppolous’s mark achieved. Before the move, Twitter
was hosting Yiannopoulos’s “problematic” output and confirming publicly that it was genuine; now, it’s merely
hosting his “problematic” output. Even if I were to accept at face value the
claim that the web needs “cleaning up” — and, unlike some Twitter executives, I
absolutely do not — I would still struggle to comprehend the company’s
approach. As of this afternoon at least, Yiannopoulos is as capable of tweeting
as he was yesterday. He’s just doing so without a check next to his name.
Which is to say that there is no obvious connection
between his punishment and his “crime.” A few weeks back, Yiannopoulos was
suspended from Twitter completely for
adding “BuzzFeed Social Justice Editor” to his online bio, in direct violation
of the rules. Curiously, however, this infraction seems to have nothing to do
with his latest sanction. Indeed, per BuzzFeed
itself, Twitter explicitly confirmed that, “the removal of the verification
badge is not connected to that incident.” In consequence, one has little choice
but to conclude that Twitter’s terms and conditions are sufficiently
nonsensical as to hold that the price for violating the verification rules is suspension
and that the price for breaking the other
rules is de-verification. Alice got
more sense out of the Queen of Hearts.
Lest I be misunderstood, I will note for the record that
Twitter’s management is free to institute whatever rules it desires, however
comical or opaque they might be. But, by the same token, Twitter’s users are
free to call them out for their asininity. Unlike the government, social-media
companies are not prohibited from indulging in viewpoint discrimination, and,
that being so, there is little recourse available to those who find themselves
singled out online. Except, that is,
for those people to withdraw their business or shout, “you’re an ass” at the
top of their lungs.
As a frequent user of the site, I intend to take the
latter course. Certainly, there is a need for some rules — specifically those that prohibit actual threats or the
clear incitement of illegal behavior — but there is no good reason that those
regulations cannot perfectly shadow the contours of the law. In an ideal
environment, users on Twitter and beyond would be punished in the same way that
they are under the First Amendment: for the nature
of their words and not for their political or ideological preferences. By
singling out Yiannopoulos — and then by refusing to explain its decision —
Twitter has revealed itself to be long way from that ideal.
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