Twitter, which is banned in China, has suspended a bunch of Chinese dissidents, apparently because the anniversary of Tiananmen Square Protests is coming up.

Again, Twitter is BANNED in the PRC, meaning they are doing this not for some callous reason that might be justified from a purely fiduciary perspective.

Sooo...why would they do this?

I'm genuinely confused. all I can come up with is these...

A: Censorious evil is in their nature, they just can't help themselves.
B: They are fanboys of totalitarianism, and want to show solidarity with anyone who oppresses the plebs.
C: China is so deeply embedded in Western academia as well as media in general and holds particular influence over America's tech weasels that they can influence decisions even when they are nominally against interest.
D: Twitter is attempting to get un-banned in China and is doing this to show that they can boot-lick with the best of Quislings.

And as I look over these possibilities, I note that they either someone operating on the emotional level of a high-school mean-girl, or the shallow, mustache-twirling motivations of a cartoon supervillain.

This bothers me. Even taking into account the obvious snark, the list begins to look like the paranoid rantings of a Bircher.

IN GENERAL, in the political realm, when people advocate for stupid/evil stuff, it's not because their worldview is that of Snidely Whiplash. There's often a flawed rationale, or some logic, based, perhaps in a different worldview. For instance, censors on the left and right wish to ban things that they feel are detrimental to society. This is a deeply flawed motivation because it's an instance where the "slippery slope" is not a fallacy (ie: where do you draw the line?) but there is, at least, an internal logic to this argument, that, while horribly flawed, is at least theoretically well intentioned.

I can't see a flawed but well intentioned argument here. I can see NO REASON, business or otherwise, that Twitter would do this at least not one that's isn't some variation of the uncharitable takes listed.

Either:
1: I'm missing something, or...
2: this happened because one or more selections from A through D is true.

I'm a Z-list blogger so 1 is on no great importance to anyone and is potentially correctable with more information.

2 however, is truly scary.

Absent some very unlikely new information* I'm going to stick by my initial assessment that this action is bad and wrong and actually evil.

However, I'm very interested to see if anyone can come up with a motivation for this action that could be reasonably defended as stupid but well-meaning.

If you have such suggestions, share them in the comments please.



_{*As an example of what might change my mind, if it turned out that all those accounts banned were actually being operated by Schaver's Detrimental Robots as part of a plan to enslave humanity by broadcasting their Ray Machine directly through computer monitors, well, then, it might be defensible. But that is...rather unlikely to be the case.}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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