Conservative Bias? Twitter Bans Famous 'Resistance' Heroes

from the less-Krass,-more-class dept

Social media’s war on conservatives continues, this time taking out accounts linked to… the so-called #Resistance?

Twitter has permanently banned prominent anti-Trump brothers Brian and Ed Krassenstein, alleging that two of the biggest stars of #Resistance Twitter had broken the site’s rules about operating fake accounts and purchasing fake interactions with their accounts.

“The Twitter Rules apply to everyone,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “Operating multiple fake accounts and purchasing account interactions are strictly prohibited. Engaging in these behaviors will result in permanent suspension from the service.”

When not fawning over G-men-turned-Resistance heroes like James Comey, they were hammering F5 on Donald Trump’s Twitter page. They may not have been the first to respond, but they were some of the accounts that did the most business, racking up retweets and likes with each amateurish counter to Trump’s latest announcement, assertion, or declaration of fake news.

Now, there’s the question of how much of that Twitter business was legit. The Krassensteins claim nothing about this was inorganic. They deny buying followers or bots to give their accounts more prominence and rack up more internet points.

It could be Twitter is mistaken. Moderation at scale is hard, as has been hammered home by several posts here recently. What Twitter thought it saw happening with the Krassensteins’ accounts may have been benign, rather than malignant.

But the Krassensteins’ past as grifters may be indicative of current behavior.

Long before they took up the #Resistance mantle, the Krassensteins began hawking dubious investment advice—way back in 2003—on a pair of internet forums, selling ads to online money-making operations that included a number of apparent scams, including some run by people later convicted on charges ranging from fraud to capital murder.

According to prosecutors, the services the Krassensteins promoted on their websites duped thousands of “investors” into funding Ponzi scheme-type scams and even resulted in some downloading a virus that emptied their accounts on an anonymous online-payment platform used by the Krassensteins themselves, before it was shut down as part of a major federal money-laundering investigation.

Whether you view the Krassensteins as opportunists or brave speakers of truth to power, the conclusion here is inescapable: Twitter doesn’t just target conservatives for removal. While it appears this moderation happens far more often to conservatives, Hanlon and his razor suggest prominent alt-right accounts are engaging in questionable behavior more frequently than those without this particular slant. A lot has been made of social media’s supposedly-leftist stance, but it’s just as likely far right grifters like Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl violated the terms of service repeatedly before being permabanned.

The banning of the Krassenstein brothers won’t budge the needle on this debate, though. Both sides have plenty of circumstantial evidence to point to as evidence of social media bias. And Twitter is still routinely suspending accounts that no one believes have violated the Twitter Rules, only to reinstate them after a bit of investigation, suggesting Twitter’s moderation efforts are far from perfect and unlikely to ever reach a point that will satisfy its many critics.

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Comments on “Conservative Bias? Twitter Bans Famous 'Resistance' Heroes”

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89 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Huh.

It proves his master plan is working. His agents have replaced the chemical in the airplane fumes from the one made with babies to one made with barbecue, so the frogs that Twitter moderators eat at dinnertime are no longer gay.

It’s the only logical explanation for this.

Anonymous Coward says:

It’s a bad time to be a popular internet platform.

You’re damned if you moderate any accounts ("censorship").
You’re damned if you don’t moderate accounts.
You’re damned if you fail to moderate the correct accounts according to diametrically opposed opinions.

You’re just all-around damned.

Mike Masnick (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

A platform could choose to only take down content that is illegal. That would be a SAFE bet. Everything else is just according to the ever shifting goalposts of the ToS.

Spam is legal. In many/most cases harassment is legal. In many/most cases being a total asshole is legal. A platform that is full of such things is unlikely to last long as it diminished usefulness for everyone else.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

A platform that is full of such things is unlikely to last long as it diminished usefulness for everyone else.

That might depend on the quality of filtering tools available to the users. There are lots of possibilties here that haven’t been thoroughly explored, e.g., posts from new accounts could be shown randomly with a low probability until the account gains a good reputation; blocking an account could also block its clique.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Re:

Why is that easier than setting a code of conduct and getting rid of people who break it?

Nobody claimed it was easier—but see the Techdirt articles on why content moderation is impossible. People fundamentally disagree on what should be allowed, and how to interpret whatever rules exist. A system that gives people more individual control, rather than letting some central body decide what they can see and say, might have significant benefits. Doubly so if we’re talking about decentralized systems that eschew such authority by design.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:4 Re:

"A system that gives people more individual control, rather than letting some central body decide what they can see and say, might have significant benefits. Doubly so if we’re talking about decentralized systems that eschew such authority by design."

Wasn’t that exactly the way that Reddit started out, by letting each sub-Reddit moderate their own members (or not) as they saw fit? But over time, Reddit became more and more centralized in authority and rule-bound, and quite frankly, authoritarian, with its increasingly pervasive snitch culture. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman was forced to admit to personally editing comments that criticized him.

Sadly, this seems to be the direction that all these large sites go, from a free speech Wild West to an authoritarian nanny state.

And we already had "decentralized systems that eschew such authority by design" — that was Usenet, since 30 years ago, and it’s remained true to its original concepts and goals. It’s just a shame that almost no one still talks on Usenet anymore.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:5 Re:

Wasn’t that exactly the way that Reddit started out, by letting each sub-Reddit moderate their own members (or not) as they saw fit?

No, Reddit is (was) essentially a collection of fiefdoms. Some arbitrary person/group—whoever first thought of the idea of talking about some subject—has near absolute control, and then Reddit site admins have control over them. It’s not much different than web forums: whoever created the first popular one for a topic, and didn’t piss off the users too much, likely still gets to make the rules.

What I mean is that if (for example) I want to talk about circa-1935 transistor radios, I shouldn’t have to find some pre-existing group for that and abide by their arbitrary rules. Instead I’d post under the topic, and then if you thought I was full of shit you’d hide my posts, and then maybe it would implicitly downrank my close social network (and implicitly hide my posts and similar ones from users with similar preferences to you). But anyone looking into this topic could make their own decisions about what they want to see. This is not a fully fleshed-out idea obviously; more of a research topic.

Yes, USENET was kind of like that, but didn’t have this type of moderation. You could put a specific person onto your twit list, maybe nuke whole threads started by them, but you got no help with it. Every new user would have to deal with their shit until they realized the person was useless and blocked them, if they even knew how. (A "moderated" list was centrally managed, like a subreddit.)

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

"That would be a SAFE bet."

No, it wouldn’t. Sane people and decent advertisers would not frequent such a place because being a shitty person and/or troll is not illegal and yet they infest every platform that doesn’t enforce some kind of social standard.

The problem is that the crappy people do not wish to admit that they are wrong, or even in the minority. So, methods must be enforce to ensure they don’t ruin things for everybody else. This is not controversial anywhere offline. If someone’s loud and abusive in a store, a bar or a restaurant, you don’t wait until he actually assaults someone until you kick him out.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

Yes, it’s called being part of a society, where everybody has agreed standards for everything from social mores to laws. Your rights are not being infringed because a majority of people around you have decided that they’re rather not associate with somebody who acts like you. Most people have learned this well before puberty, but apparently not everybody.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Re:

Your rights are not being infringed because a majority of people around you have decided

We’re not talking about "a majority of people", we’re generally talking about a small group somewhere in California (…making the rules, with a large group in a low-wage country enforcing them). The idea of "around you" doesn’t work online.

And it’s disingenous to claim that any action supported by a majority is automatically compatible with human rights.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:4 Re:

"The idea of "around you" doesn’t work online"|

Yes it does. Twitter’s TOCs represent a community. They are agreed to by everybody there, and most people have no problem abiding. If you don’t like it, go to a community that allows you to be whatever you are that Twitter finds so offensive. Grow up and exercise your own freedom of choice rather than demanding that others not be able to exercise theirs.

"And it’s disingenous to claim that any action supported by a majority is automatically compatible with human rights."

It’s also disingenuous to claim that the ability to post on a random privately owned website has anything to do with human rights.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

Whenever a Twitter killer, Youtube killer, or Facebook killer shows up all of the people that have been kicked out of Twitter, Youtube, or Facebook swarm these new places and fill it with their bile. Then those "killer websites" die off since they can’t moderate the deluge of shit being levied on them.

Your proposals would not work and have been shown not to work.

The loudest criers for free speech are the first to scream about how it’s "Merry Christmas" not "Happy Holidays" and throw shit fits about it and post stickers on their cars stating such things.

No one truly wants unrestricted free speech. They just want to be free to say what they WANT to say and be free from hearing anything they DON’T WANT to hear.

Zof (profile) says:

I'm just sad for this site now.

This bizarre collection of logical fallacies protecting the echo chamber is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen here. I honestly have no idea how you can sleep at night. Literally an hour ago, a had a friend email me because he got banned from twitter for linking to a site that proved a recent study from Harvard about e-cig juice and lung cells was fake. He linked to proof Joseph Wu is owned by Philip Morris. He was almost immediately banned from Twitter. Twitter is owned by the 1 percenters and corporation.

<b>that’s why the only people even trying to defend twitter anymore are either 1 percenters or corporations, or owed by them.</b>

Extraordinarily Onomastic says:

Re: I'm just sad for this site now.

Don’t be "sad" for the site! THEY KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING.

Enjoy it for entertainment. I view the regulars as ankle-biters and it’s fun to watch drool all over my shoes, snarling in frustration because unable to bite through.

On other hand, one should try to avoid commenting here because only gives the ankle-biters a target: their mere ad hom looks like activity on this otherwise wacky fading site…

Mike Masnick (profile) says:

Re: I'm just sad for this site now.

Literally an hour ago, a had a friend email me because he got banned from twitter for linking to a site that proved a recent study from Harvard about e-cig juice and lung cells was fake.

Even if what you say is true (and I have my doubts), how is that evidence of anti-conservative bias?

Extraordinarily Onomastic says:

First, note that they're charged with ACTIONS, not just views...

The actual charge, not your mis-statement of it, is that Twitter removes conservatives "a priori" rather than for any specific cause.

You even try to hedge that FACT:

While it appears this moderation happens far more often to conservatives, Hanlon and his razor suggest prominent alt-right accounts are engaging in questionable behavior more frequently than those without this particular slant.

But "suggests" isn’t actuality. It’s just your weaseling to try and claim that the apples and oranges you chose to compare are exactly the same.

But besides that, even if were equivalent, doesn’t make it okay! So long as comments / actions are within common law, Twitter is acting as censor in UN-American way and needs to be taken apart until NONE of The Public is subject to its arbitrary corporatism.

[And to be clear: "operating fake accounts and purchasing fake interactions" is outside of common law. Key word is FAKE. — Like the astro-turfing here.]

Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Maybe you can answer this question for once.

Let’s say Twitter admins announce tomorrow that Twitter will no longer host a specific type of content. The content is legal and people can post that content anywhere else. But Twitter admins say “we don’t do that here” and ban that content from Twitter anyway.

What law, statute, or “common law” court precedent says Twitter must host content its admins don’t want to host?

Wendy Cockcroft (profile) says:

Re: First, note that they're charged with ACTIONS, not just view

Twitter is acting as censor in UN-American way and needs to be taken apart until NONE of The Public is subject to its arbitrary corporatism.

Erm, which member of The Public is subject to its arbitrary corporatism? I’m not. I can choose between going on Twitter and posting within its rules (don’t be a jerk) or not going on Twitter and doing something else instead.

Whether you’re in a shop buying something or just walking down the street there are rules that apply to everyone. If you’re in a shop or in the street and behave obnoxiously sooner or later you’ll be removed for the obnoxious behaviour.

Your comments are hidden here (I click the Report button on them) because you’re obnoxious. Now stop whining.

Anonymous Coward says:

Laura Loomer

Tim Cushing’s left-right analogy completely misses the mark. Twitter’s banning of ‘leftists’ for provably fraudulent behavior is not the same as banning ‘rightists’ for offering politically-incorrect opinions or stating provable facts that are not allowed to be stated.

Laura Loomer was banned from Twitter for criticizing a politician, daring to mention that Ilhan Omar’s Islam religion discriminates against LBGTQ people. Yet plenty of leftist Twitter members routinely say similar things about V.P. Mike Pence and his Christianity, yet this is apparentlly perfectly alright acording to the Gods That Rule Twitter. That’s because criticizing Christianity can never be Hate Speech, unlike saying the exact same thing against another religion (such as fundamentalist Islam) that’s much more deserving of that criticism.

Laura Loomer was also banned from Uber and Lyft for saying she didn’t want to be picked up by a Muslim driver. Yes, Loomer is an unrepentant bigot and attention-whore troll, but it’s worth pointing out that only "right wing" bigots ever get punished, while "left-wing" bigots are given a free pass to spew hate to their heart’s content.

Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re:

Laura Loomer was banned from Twitter for criticizing a politician

Did she criticize Omar for supporting a specific anti-LGBT policy, or did she smear all Muslims as anti-LGBT without proof?

plenty of leftist Twitter members routinely say similar things about V.P. Mike Pence and his Christianity

Do they smear Christianity as a whole, or do they criticize Pence and like-minded politicians for using religion to justify his support of anti-LGBT policies?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Laura Loomer

Journalist Nick Monroe had compiled an impressive collecton of left-wing hate, direct threats of violence, and incitment of violence, arson, and vandalism that he reported to Twitter management … who then did nothing about it.

I would have linked to some of his posts, but unfortunately Nick Monroe was recently banned from Twitter (for having a duplicate account six years ago) and his account deleted.

It’s an odd thing, but it seems that right-wing critics who compile evidence of social media’s pervasive left-wing bias … always seem to get themselves banned for one reason or another. And the entire body of evidence against the site they’re on conveniently deleted, or course.

But in retrospect, Nick Monroe was a fool if he didn’t see it coming.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Laura Loomer

I asked for examples of "left wing bigots are given a free pass to spew hate to their heart’s content" and you posted about some twitter banned dude.
Where is the left wing bias?
Where is the spewing of hate?
Where is the free pass?

Dude got banned, is there a reason stated by twit? I’m sure the TOS has a bunch of good stuff in it, you read it? Me neither – but I am not the one making … what are you doing ?

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Laura Loomer

"Dude got banned, is there a reason stated by twit?"

It shouldn’t matter. An honest journalist wouldn’t use Twitter as his sole outlet for evidence against Twitter, and even if he was that clumsy he would quickly republish via whichever publication he works for, his personal blog, whatever. He wouldn’t be depending on the whims of the target of his investigation.

That the only evidence was apparently on Twitter alone means the story is bullshit. Either AC is lying, or the "journalist" pulled a neat scam on the less critically thinking.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:4

An honest journalist wouldn’t use Twitter as his sole outlet for evidence against Twitter, and even if he was that clumsy he would quickly republish via whichever publication he works for, his personal blog, whatever. He wouldn’t be depending on the whims of the target of his investigation.

To be fair it’s possible that he was/is an ‘honest journalist’, just a really stupid one for hosting all of his ‘evidence’ on the very same platform it was aimed at.

Of course without some actual evidence the claims are nicely dismissed via Hitchen’s Razor, so further musing is kinda moot at this point.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:5 Re:

It’s certainly possible that he was clumsy, naive or otherwise honestly hosting the evidence on Twitter. But, since there it absolutely nothing stopping him from reposting it elsewhere, the absence of another source is very suspicious. No matter the whining from these guys, there are a great many alternative platforms. At this point, the issue is not it’s lack of availability on Twitter, but it’s lack of availability anywhere else.

Unless he was literally posting the only copy in existence on there, and didn’t have a local copy. In which case, the wild incompetence means that any "evidence" he gathered to begin with was probably just as useless.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:6 Re:

Oh I’m not objecting to any of the points you’re raising(at best he was grossly incompetent, and that’s assuming the claims have any merit whatsoever), my only objection was the ‘An honest journalist wouldn’t…‘ line, as it’s bad enough when the government uses that one and I don’t want to see it spread, if for no other reason than it makes it easier for the government to run with the argument for their own ends.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:7 Re:

That’s fair, it’s just that if given the choice between believing a professional journalist would unwittingly host the only evidence he had on the very platform he was investigating, or instead that he was instead chumming the waters with a fake conspiracy, I’d more readily believe the latter.

Of course, all of this assumes that a word the originating AC said was remotely true, which is also not in evidence.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Laura Loomer

"who then did nothing about it"

Citation? I wonder if they actually did nothing, or they just looked at the list and recognised it as the whining of false persecution it was and responded with exactly what was required by the evidence.

"I would have linked to some of his posts, but unfortunately Nick Monroe was recently banned from Twitter"

Then surely he, as a journalist, has somewhere he actually wrote the article for and didn’t just post random crap on Twitter? Or is principled enough to have since republished his evidence on one of the thousands of other platforms available to him, rather than depending on publishing on the very platform he was criticising?

Your story smells rotten.

"always seem to get themselves banned for one reason or another"

…and despite their whining always have other places to go. Where is the actual evidence they have posted on a non-Twitter platform? if it’s not anywhere, is it because they know that examination of the evidence shows it doesn’t prove what they clai?

R,og S/ says:

Re: Re: Re: Laura Loomer

Yeah, sure, let me spend an hour finding the perfect Tweet from some hasbara troll, or ine of the many Multi Kultural Klubs and Kovens (K4) on social media, just to prove a point to another AC.

Or, anything ever written by the racist crybullies at the ADL, JFeds, etc.

But you dont come here for that, do you?

R,og S/ says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Laura Loomer

Nice leap/lapse in your logic there.

No, you are wrong, because the hasbara/ shcismogenic dialogue is not designed for refutation, it is designed to steal time with false dichotomy.

I mean, read a book once in awhile, you hasbarat.

Start with Robert Cialdini, maybe.

R,og S/ says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Laura Loomer

Hasbara bots, troll farmers, CIA/JTTRIG/etc, deplatforming agents arent always people, or, if they are people, they are petty stupid people; and I am not sure you are human either.

The case has been made repeatedly, and in other places, and, as one poster mentions, those who make that case get deplatformed.

Schismogenesis, lol. Read a book once in awhile, your hasbarat comeuppance is showing.

JasonC (profile) says:

"They may not have been the first to respond, but they were some of the accounts that did the most business, racking up retweets and likes with each amateurish counter to Trump’s latest announcement, assertion, or declaration of fake news."

Aw, pobre cita. Are you sure it wasn’t Trump’s tweets that were amateurish?

Oh right, he’s the greatest President the country or world has ever known according to his followers. How could I forget?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Are you deluded enough to think this site’s authors are pro-Trump? Or even anti-Trump? They may well be either of those but they generally do a very good job of keeping their bias out of their reporting. Each article is an opinion piece though so you’re going to see stupid called out for what it is. When Trump’s stupid dominates the news the orangutan apologists crawl out of the woodwork convinced that this site is extreme-left, totally forgetting all the similar articles about idiots on the other side of the aisle.

You don’t have to be "right" or "left" to recognize our vaunted leader is a gibbering moron. And the democrat that replaces him will be just as bad, hopefully in new ways we can make fun of.

nasch (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Aw, pobre cita. Are you sure it wasn’t Trump’s tweets that were amateurish?

When a TechDirt writer criticizes someone, it’s not because they’re in favor of that person’s political opponents. It’s because that person did something stupid or harmful. Believe it or not, it’s possible for Trump to be awful, and for some of his critics to also be awful, or childish, or stupid, or what-have-you. It’s a complicated world.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Logic is awesome

It’s simply a counter to the ‘Twitter banned some ‘conservatives’, therefore they simply must have an anti-‘conservative’ bias’ argument.

If ‘they booted someone from group X = they have an anti-x bias(rather than an anti-TOS violation bias)’ then by that logic they have a bias against both liberals and ‘conservatives’ as this article demonstrates.

zugmeister (profile) says:

Re: Re: Logic is awesome

The article appears to be claiming Twitter is not biased against conservatives because they banned some liberals. It’s right there in the title.

If I were to claim that all dogs are nice, and to prove my claim show you my dog which is in fact quite pleasant, would that validate my claim? Of course not!

In the same way showing that Twitter banned some liberals for TOS violations does not in any way refute the claim Twitter has a bias against conservatives.

nasch (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Logic is awesome

The article appears to be claiming Twitter is not biased against conservatives because they banned some liberals.

No, it’s pointing out that the claim that Twitter never bans liberals and is therefore anti-conservative is false. Based on Techdirt’s writing on the topic I would sum up their position as there is no convincing evidence that Twitter or Facebook have an anti-conservative bias. Which is subtly but importantly distinct from saying that they do not. Perhaps they do, but if so the proof is lacking.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Logic is awesome

Yes, you miss the fact that when, say, groups of white supremacists get banned, "conservative" always whine that they never ban liberal groups. This is a counterpoint to that claim.

Why some people do that rather than, say, examine why they identify so strongly politically with white supremacists is left to be pondered.

R,og S/ says:

God, you are a box of rocks.

Bateson was a CIA anthropologist, affiliated with MKUltra, the guy who described schismogenesis, and how cultural anthropology and black propaganda can be used to do exactly what you see described above.

He enabled/orchestrated the binary right/left conflict.

Maybe stop fapping, and read a book every now and again.

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