Liberals feeling the heat

The last month and a half has clearly shown that liberals can’t stand the heat. Or can they? If they say they’re going to leave Twitter, why are their accounts still live? Perhaps for the same reasons those same liberals won’t renounce their American citizenship and move to Canada. Which is that their networks are still on Twitter (and in America) and they don’t want to leave them.

Liberals talked about alternatives last spring

Last springtime, of course, Elon Musk first talked about buying Twitter. Almost immediately the liberals took public alarm. Lists of Twitter alternatives began to appear – and some of the headlines would be funny if they weren’t so mendacious. Take, for example, Yetnesh Dubey’s list of the “Ten best Twitter alternatives where free speech is respected.” It appeared in April, and included maybe one platform (Minds) that truly respects freedom of speech.

Minds allows “Not Safe for Work” content if the user tags it as such. It does not allow harassment or spam – and certain truly dangerous posts (threats, doxxing, etc.) rate an immediate ban. Other than that, you can talk about anything you please. The worst that happens is that the moderators tag your whole account as Not Safe for Work.

But every other platform on that list, like Reddit and especially Mastodon, has a reputation for censorship. Liberals control these platforms, and use censorship to create a “safe” space.

The Teal Mango has a similar list. Minds appears on it as well. So does Gab – but the author does not describe it accurately. She misrepresents the reason why the Google Play and Apple App Stores threw the Gab app off. First, while Gab once had its annoying share of off-color images, founder Andrew Torba has cleaned them off. Second, the two “app stores” banned the app for political reasons. (Gab helps you install a browser shortcut and adapts itself to any browser on any platform.)

They talk about leaving Twitter, but don’t

Also in April, Torba proposed that Elon invest in Gab – at a fraction of the price he paid for Twitter. In fact Torba warned Musk that the liberals would all decamp from Twitter if Musk opened up the platform.

That was April. Since then, Twitter accepted the buy-out. Musk tried to lower the price, after realizing that so many of the accounts were bots. But in the end he paid the agreed-upon price. And every step he has taken, has the liberals howling with outrage. Musk fired the executive echelon, and one cadre of liberals did leave – much of the staff. Later he locked half the workforce out of the servers. That turned out to be a smart move – because he discovered evidence of activity in breach of the:

• Implied contract between platform and user (especially making up rules as moderators went along),
• First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (by censoring users at the behest of government agencies), and arguably the:
• Civil law.

The Twitter Files releases prove this, and confirm what The Intercept boasted of: that Twitter has been a State actor.

Liberals want all that, because the (Deep) State is their friend. So lately they talk about leaving Twitter. But they don’t. Daniel de Visé at The Hill cited a New Scientist study that says they don’t. Of more than 140,000 people who threatened to leave, 1.6 percent actually left.

Excuses, excuses

So what excuses do liberals offer for staying on the platform? The Hill cites two kinds. Their networks are still on Twitter, and they receive information not available elsewhere. But for many of them, any information that doesn’t support their narrative is misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation. Recall that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency says much the same. (In fact, America First Legal now confirms that Twitter has its own portal for government agency use, same as Facebook.)

Tellingly, while Andrew Torba was warning Elon Musk that liberals would decamp from Twitter, Newsweek’s Ewan Palmer was despairing that liberals could find or build an alternative. He quoted Joshua Tucker at the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University on two counts:

1. Leftists would found platforms only to have people not join. Value: zero.
2. Elon Musk would not be able to afford to change Twitter’s moderational policies.

Tucker was probably speaking for himself: he likes the “safe space.” But that’s the real problem. Brandon Morse at RedState notices that the Die-hard True Believers are already taking over Mastodon and similar platforms. And they are getting other users thrown off for the slightest deviation from the (Communist?) Party Line.

People who want to silence others so they can live quietly in their own head space and hear nothing but what pleases them will eventually stagnate any space they inhabit as they force out everyone else.

Which is precisely what was happening to Twitter until Elon took over.

What will the liberals do?

CNAV has already observed that Twitter will still have its share of liberals. The most prominent of them, other than Biden administration officials and Democratic Members of Congress, might be Rob Reiner. Yes, that Rob Reiner, The Meathead himself. He dishes out as much liberal snark as ever. But CNAV has yet to find the tweet in which he threatened to quit the platform. CNAV believes he wouldn’t want to give conservatives the satisfaction of believing they could drive him off. But at least he doesn’t say anything about taking his marbles and going home. His account is not only live – it’s active.

Other liberals will say they’ll leave, but won’t. They might instead block all but fellow liberals. Then maybe no one else will hear from them – except those, like Rob Reiner, who really believe they have a message to get out.

In the meantime, Twitter is livelier than ever – because conservatives are joining, getting their accounts back, or speaking out again now that the arbitrary and capricious moderation, with its selective application of the rules and the enforcement of unwritten rules, has ended. Whether liberals want to stay a part of a real public square, is their choice.