{"id":17562,"date":"2017-06-14T16:25:43","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T20:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=17562"},"modified":"2017-06-14T16:25:43","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T20:25:43","slug":"politics-as-usual-happy-birthday-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-happy-birthday-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Happy birthday, Twitter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas
\n<\/strong>
\nTwitter had a birthday recently.
\nThis communication platform is now 11 years old \u2013 well, yippee. From what I can see, Twitter seems to encourage everyone who uses it to act like a bratty 11-year-old, quite frankly.
\nThere is just something about that particular medium that brings out the inner troll in folks.
\nMaybe because it\u2019s largely anonymous. Or maybe because it gives voice to folks with limited vocabularies, allowing them to \u201cexpress\u201d themselves in ways they would not otherwise be able.
\nNasty comments, shot off in rapid fire, are commonplace.
\nLet me rephrase that: vicious comments are commonplace. And users feel perfectly free to say whatever, to whomever they like secure in the knowledge that even if, in those rare occasions that twitter takes action and shuts them down, they can simply pop back up with another anonymous handle \u2013 or two or twenty \u2013 the same day and start all over again.
\nThere is much that is right about this media platform. It allows you to get out your message, quickly, succinctly and to many, many people. But that too is the problem with twitter \u2013 it allows any message to get out there, quickly, and from anyone to everyone, regardless of the content of that message.
\nTwitter will not police content as it states on its information page, \u201c(we) do not screen content or remove potentially offensive content.\u201d
\nTruer words have never been spoken!
\nLook at what happened to African-American comedic actress Leslie Jones.
\nShe had the audacity to star in a Ghostbusters reboot. How dare she! The racist \u201chaters\u201d had a field day saying all manner of truly horrible things about her \u2013 some which were pretty violent. It was so awful that she had to actually shut down her twitter account.
\nScore one for the bullies.
\nLeaving Trump aside \u2013 who is the epitome of the quick and nasty tweeter \u2013 trolls in the twittersphere are not limited to the rich and famous.
\nEven everyday people are subjected to savage comments made about them on Twitter every day. There are some very angry, little people out there, who embittered by their own circumstances \u2013 who knows, maybe they didn\u2019t get a pony for their birthday when they were five \u2013 who want to try to hurt people, usually out of jealousy and spite.
\nIt\u2019s not just the nasty stuff that people put out there, that\u2019s the problem: It\u2019s the lies.
\nPeople make statements on Twitter that are not just categorically false, they are flat out lies. Safe and secure in the knowledge that until tweets rise to the level of outright abuse, folks can say literally anything and get away with it. Gleefully making wild accusations that have no basis in fact for the purposes of character assassination.
\nLest I be accused of favouring censorship, let me be clear: In the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, \u201cI may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.\u201d
\nI believe in the right to state one\u2019s opinion, even if done in a pretty snarky way. What I don\u2019t believe in is lying with impunity.
\nIt may be titillating to read the latest outrageous tweet put out there but think about the target of that tweet. What if it was you? Still think it\u2019s funny?<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas Twitter had a birthday recently. This communication platform is now 11 years old \u2013 well, yippee. From what I can see, Twitter seems to encourage everyone who uses it to act like a bratty 11-year-old, quite frankly. There is just something about that particular medium that brings out the inner troll in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4zg","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 14:37:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}