Many people are reporting the loss of multiple followers on Twitter.

Following the permanent suspension of US President Trump’s twitter account, it now appears that Twitter is suspending or removing many other Twitter accounts. This manifests itself in people losing followers. Twitter had earlier permanently suspended Steve Bannon for inciting violence, but people report having their account terminated without explanation. This is trial without jury, but this is not as bad as the loss of habeus corpus and the detention of Julian Assange in a top security jail in Britain, which has abandoned habeus corpus without public discussion. Britain is moving in a sinister direction.

[2 Feb 2020 update: Shiva’s Twitter account has been ‘suspended’. He was a candidate for the Republican Party in the US election in November 2020. One person’s comment. 3 Oct 2024 update: it has been restored since Elon Musk purchased Twitter and renamed it as X.com]

Whoops, just lost another 60 followers in five minutes. Is the Hidden Hand back from its lunch break?

— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) January 9, 2021

I began a random list when I came across this phenomenon. I do not know the following people but I am simply linking to their tweets about loss of followers:

@Cromwellstuff a Brexiteer; @MarianneSansum a supporter of Israel; @DavidHadley1973 a UKIPper; @Christi75367510 non-political Northern Lass; @therotweiler a Brexiteer; @davidkurten a Brexiteer London Assembly Member; and already I am weary. The message is clear.

Twitternacht

I think this list could be very long. The above were gathered inside ten minutes. Others are reporting the same issue. This is Twitternacht.

Questions:

Social media is raising many questions. Some are already receiving public attention.

1. what responsibility do the hosters of a platform have for the content posted on them?
   1. The answer at present is, None. Section 230 means that hosters are mere platforms and, unlike publishers, are not responsible for the views expressed on their platform. However, pressure has been brought to bear upon them to begin censoring free speech, which is contrary to the purpose of the internet and follows the no platform attitude in our ‘politically correct’ secular society.
   2. a better course would be to expose the true identity of those judged to be offenders and, if need be, report them to the relevant authority in the jurisdiction of their domicile.
   3. to do so they need to stop anonymous accounts. The social media platforms should be able to identify to the law-enforcement agencies those who are guilty of criminal behaviour.
2. what right has Google, Apple and Amazon to treat Parler as if it is a publisher responsible for the content its users, denying it the Section 230 provisions which they themselves utilise? It looks like 1. hypocrisy or double standards, 2. an anti-competition measure by a cartel, 3. a monopolistic exercise of power, 4. denying free speech and 5. denying the right of due and fair process as well as competition.
3. what is the nature of the contract and terms and conditions between the platform and the account holder?
4. who owns the copyright of the material posted?
5. how can private and criminal conversations be policed and how does this differ from what is known as the dark web?
6. why can an account be terminated without fair warning and notice of termination?
7. when an account is terminated, what happens to the material?
8. as for the offensive content:
   1. this is the price paid for abandoning Christianity in public life.
   2. many people have lost any sense of accountability to God.
      1. “they that work wickedness are built up, and they that tempt God even get off with it” Malachi 3:15. 
      2. “truth has fallen in the public square” Isa 59:14.
   3. our educational standards are so poor that people can no longer debate meaningfully.

Update:

11 Jan 2021: Peter Hitchens discusses the falling numbers of Twitter followers.

22 Jan 2021: Hitchens reports more ‘fishy’ business – ‘a hidden hand’.

2 Feb 2021: Hitchens noting more fishy business – “some of their accounts were entered and altered by unknown persons without their permission or knowledge”.

2 Feb 2021: Polly Toynbee on BBC Politics Live today said “a third” of COVID-19 patients have no symptoms but the subtitles to the programme said “many” – how did the subtitles ‘correct’ this so quickly? This shows the speed with which electronics is changing public debate. Individuals cannot defeat electronics.

10 Feb 2021: internet censorship is discussed here, about there being no right of appeal against faceless bureaucrats citing a violation of ‘community standards’ or ‘stuff’ containing ‘harmful content’. Feelings rule rather than reason, similar to subjectivism trumping objectivism. Even the social media platforms are being manipulated by those who feel offended, which leads to ‘reporting’, which leads to deplatforming – of similar genre to the Stasi. Terms of service are replacing freedom of speech, to which I drew attention three years ago under unnegotiable and unreadable ‘terms and conditions’.

26 May 2021: retiring First Minister of Northern Ireland Arlene Foster was on BBC Newscast tonight and agreed with my sentiment, saying “someone needs to know who owns the account”, which should be included in the proposed Online Safety Bill.

26 Apr 2022: “Nigel Farage’s experience” and shadow banning from Twitter.

11 Jun 2022: shadow banning on Twitter prevents popular speakers from going above a certain number of followers.

26 Sep 2024: there are further moves towards reining in Elon Musk [at 20:36 hrs] ever since he bought Twitter and freed it from cancel culture. It is in the context of UK PM Sir Keir Starmer “disinviting” him to an international business event in Britain, but Nigel Nelson admits [at 20:39 hrs] that “we’ve been trying very hard to regulate platforms like Twitter, or X, and the difficulty is that we can’t do it because they are all off-shore”. The attempt to apply publishing rules and standards to social media platforms, and X.com in particular, is stymied by commentators not agreeing how to resolve the lies on public platforms, some wanting to upregulate libel laws to social media platforms and others wanting to downregulate the protections under libel of print media and to give more freedom to the Press. However, the anonymity issue is still not being addressed and the best answer to lies is their exposure with the uncensored truth.

2 Oct 2024: further attempts at censorship are targeting the wrong people. The BBC has reported on a 20-year-old neo-Nazi in Finland stoking the flames of arson and riot in Southport in England. While this is good investigative journalism, must we now rely upon the BBC to be the new police force? The solution? The BBC suggests making social media platforms responsible for their content. This is impossible and social media platforms need rather to make the users available to the law-enforcement officers. Each country should be able to prosecute offenders in their country of domicile (not extradition treaties, which are contrary to natural justice) along the lines that Scotland did in Holland concerning the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial. There is a vested interest by mainstream media to close down social media which is drawing away its audience.