It’s not you, it’s us
Conservatives with Twitter accounts were outraged this week when they lost hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of followers during a purge of bots by the social media company.
The move comes after special counsel Robert S. Mueller issued indictments for several Russian nationals for meddling in the U.S. election by fomenting angst on social media sites.
Right-wing users instantly claimed Twitter was trying to silence conservative voices. Voices like “Hillary could’ve prevented Parkland, Sandy Hook shootings… possibly 9/11,” and “Alexander Hamilton and Jesus gave me the right to carry AR-15s, SNOWFLAKE!”
When told that they only lost followers with Russian IP addresses and a history of bot-like posts, one conservative Twitter user was quoted as saying, “What, next yer gonna tell me my friends only like me because I won the lottery? And that there’s other food besides beef to eat for dinner even though that’s EXACTLY what the commercial from 15 years ago said? And that by widening pre-existing schisms in the political beliefs of Americans through the use of inflammatory social media postings, a foreign power that is a decades-old enemy was able to subvert our collective trust in democracy and the free press? SNOWFLAKE!”
When reached for comment, the ghost of Thomas Jefferson said, “You know that thing about ‘all men are created equal’ that I wrote? Yeah, I, uh, take that back. Y’all are on your own now.”
OK… Well so what if they’re fake?
Alright, so we all knew that a bunch of the accounts on Twitter weren’t actually real people. In fact, some researchers estimate that up to 15 percent of Twitter accounts are bots. So you would think that when Twitter — in its way-the-hell-too-late effort to protect our democracy from Russia — decided to block and otherwise get rid of these fake, non-human accounts, that everybody would have been grateful.
But Conservatives and Trump supporters have gone nuts claiming that Twitter should leave the bots in place. And you always wondered who bought all those blow-up dolls instead of getting a real girlfriend. But that’s another Trump-follower subject we’ll explore another day.
What is truly disturbing about this reaction among “conservatives” (quotes because we can’t help but think George Will is not in this group) is that even though they know these blocked bots are controlled by Russians who want to undermine our democracy, they still don’t care.
When we said Trump’s supporters were completely unshakable in their allegiance to the man, we never considered that they would stick by him even if he’s proven to be a Russian controlled puppet put in place by Moscow with the intent of destroying our country. Who are these people?
