How I Got Barred From Posting on Twitter

So, I can't post on Twitter right now.

Twitter is mad about this tweet, and wants me to delete it:

You can't see the referenced threat attached to that tweet. Here it is:

The backstory to the bizarre threat by Jason Van Dyke is here and here. In short, I wrote about a Texas lawyer making threats of violence against people who wrote about him, and he — true to form — made threats of violence against me. I kept writing, and he sent that bizarre email.

Twitter acted — eventually — by suspending my tweeting privileges for publishing his email — which while not an explicit threat of violence is a threat of something. Sad obsession? Whatever. It's clearly an attempt to intimidate me into not writing about him.

I've written an appeal to Twitter. We'll see what they say.

I'm not deleting the tweet. It's just not right to do so.

Twitter is a private company. It has every right to suspend me or kick me off, however foolish its reason. It's got the right to free speech and free association. My rights have not been violated. I am not a victim. When you use a "free" service like Twitter and Facebook, you're buying into the policies and attitudes they pursue, for better or worse. Want a platform with no dumb policies? Create one or pay for one.

For the moment, I doubt this reflects an evaluation by anyone at Twitter that "it's okay for a deranged bigot to threaten people on Twitter but not okay to publish his threats." Rather, this is part of the inevitable result of automating responses to abuse complaints. Now, if Twitter reviews this, and thinks that's the right result — well, that would be something else again.

Updated to add:

From that link:

Sure it does.

Copyright 2017 by the named Popehat author.