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I Was (Briefly) Suspended on X.com
I have been recently active on X.com. It is my personal attempt to support and contribute to Elon Musk’s venture. (I admire Musk’s attempts to maintain one of the few free speech platforms in the world.)
So it came as a surprise to have my account suspended:
“Violent speech”? As you can imagine, I was flummoxed by the notice. I searched the comment to figure out what I had done to violate the rules. It turns out it was an exchange involving a woman who minimized (doubted?) that President Trump had been shot in the ear at the Butler rally, and who really wished Trump were dead because of what she imagined his abortion policy to be. I snarkily responded that that Trump was very nearly killed with a bullet to the brain, but that her brain was elsewhere in her anatomy so that “were she to be” shot in the head it would not be fatal. In my mind, I was describing a cartoon event and not advocating that she or anyone else should be shot. But the algorithm thought otherwise.
I contemplated having a human review my post and exonerate me. But, I thought, that might take a while. So I just deleted my post. Within a few hours, I was restored to full functionality. Did I make the right decision?
I realized that what had started as thoughtful posting on X had devolved to reactive snark. It wasn’t a good look.
One should always observe the Golden Rule without regard to whether that person merits it. Trust me, you’ll feel better about yourself.
Published in General
I would have contested it. I have won doing that when a human overrides the AI interpretation.
The one with gold writes the rules??
I knew there would be reason to include a link. 😄
The left and their bots repeatedly flag comments they don’t like and their software reacts. AI has its limitations. When I question it, a human gets involved and I usually win. AI is weak on nuance. Sometimes it is easier to just delete the comment.
I bet you could have rewritten the comment so that your point would be made and the comment would stay. Although, I personally love the original.
I guess you can now wear that badge of honor. Since I have had occasion to mouth off, it can be satisfying, but we have to ask if it was worth the effort. Sometimes it is.
Snark as a style is tempting – and increasingly so when one is challenged by arrogant smug pretension. I have to restrain more often than I’d like. It doesn’t bring out anything good in me. My mother’s “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t” Comes to mind more often.
I’d probably have engaged on it – at the very least for educational purposes of the (youngish?) human doing the review. Not long, not aggressively but specifically, to make sure the point was understood.
I would have contested it, if only because MY comment was considered worthy of suspension, but hers evidently weren’t.
Sometimes an individual can win, but the key thing is if a social media user can get a human to review the post.
Recently Naomi Wolf had her entire account pulled at “X.” It was decided by those weighing in on the matter that either a troll who had not been axed when Musk got rid of many of the Jack Dorsey hires or else it was an AI algorithm that took her account down.
If I remember correctly, it was Alex Jones who contacted Musk and got her her account back. But most of us do not have such heavy duty, highly connected friends to help us out if we get slammed.
True, but at least the number of easily-triggered female employees at Twitter has been greatly reduced. That helps a lot.
When I was still on Twitter, I got suspended for quoting George Stephanopoulos’ book “All Too Human” about the Clinton’s “Bimbo Eruption” team.