Tag Archives: Amazon

Why I Returned to Twitter

By J Robert Smith

  • Dec. 14, 2022
  • 3 min read

In January of 2021, when Twitter brass suspended Donald Trump’s very popular and powerful account, it was the last straw for me.

I’d been on Twitter since the autumn of 2013, as I recall. By July 2020, with a lot of sweat equity, I’d built my account to nearly 16,000 followers. I was adding an estimated 100-200 followers daily during that tumultuous summer. The riots and general lawlessness that Democrats were permitting in the cities they ran were fueling my following. Then there was the contentious presidential race. With frequent posts about the Trump-Biden dustup, my profile was rising and reach spreading. A conservative surging in popularity was always a red flag among Twitter’s woke monitors.

Then, suddenly, my new followers slowed to a trickle. Some days, nothing. Then over the course of the next few weeks, my existing following started to dwindle. I went to a Germany-based platform that determines if your Twitter account is being “shadow-banned,” among other surreptitious means of muzzling members conservatives. My account was being shadow-banned.

Went the reports, Twitter was allegedly purging “bots,” phony accounts. By November 2020, as I recollect, I’d lost about 4,000 followers. Sure, bots have been and are a problem at Twitter. They inflate Twitter’s aggregate count. Twitter’s member volume helps sell advertising and ups pricing.

But purging bots in the middle of a hotly contested election season? Elon Musk questioned Twitter’s price tag in negotiations because, he contended, the platform’s value was inflated by Twitter execs allowing bots to increase its value. Seems a little too coincidently, doesn’t it?

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The Trials Ahead

J Robert Smith

  • Jan. 13, 2021
  • 5 min read

During last Friday night’s Twitter purge, if I read it once, I read it dozens of times: posters sense of shock that a mass expulsion was underway. Two of the more common exclamations were: “This is unreal!” and “Unbelievable!” These lamentations came from some notable names, too. I was astonished that people – particularly those who should know better – were astonished. Then in the wee hours of Saturday morning, having witnessed enough virtual carnage, I deactivated my Twitter account, never to resurrect it – short of the miraculous: Jack Dorsey selling his misbegotten enterprise to Donald J. Trump.

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NEWS FEED FRIDAY: Bust Up Big Tech? Not the Democrats’ Way

J Robert Smith

  • Aug. 23, 2019
  • 2 min read

Big Tech is too big, yet Americans’ access to their internet services are too constrained — so it’s time for a government takeover, Sen. Elizabeth Warren says.

— Washington Times, August 23, 2019

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Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon, et al, aren’t too big. They’re too biased. Not that that should fuss Democrats and the left, because that bias goes their way. But Democrats still want Big Tech under government’s thumb. Why? Their power hunger is never satisfied.
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