Following in the footsteps of former US president Donald Trump, Crikey found itself suspended from Twitter this morning. Like Trump’s ban, this is a devastating blow to free speech. Unlike Trump’s ban, ours is only temporary — we’ll be back on the platform from 7pm today.
Twitter says Crikey violated its rules against posting private information without “authorization [sic] and permission”. The tweets in question were, of course, tweets where we shared renegade MP Craig Kelly’s mobile number and politely suggested readers give him a dose of his own spammy medicine.
Look, we don’t disagree with the Twitter rule in general: of course you can’t go around doxing random members of the public. But Kelly isn’t a random member of the public. He’s an MP who exploited a loophole in the Spam Act 2003 to send mass spam texts harassing Australians with pleas to join his mate Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and then, more ominously, to link to “vaccine adverse events” information from the Therapeutic Goods Administration in order to undermine public confidence in vaccines.
Crikey felt it was fair game.
Unfortunately Twitter disagreed. And while it did give us an option to “submit an appeal”, it came with the warning that our account would remain suspended while it reviewed the appeal. Given it took Twitter over a month after the publication of the tweet to suspend us in the first place, we didn’t want to take our chances.
Not to mention, imagine explaining Kelly to a Twitter bot based in Silicone Valley, or anywhere outside Australia really. As Crikey’s associate editor Cam Wilson has written on a different topic, “control over what kind of information is allowed rests in the hands of unelected Silicon Valley tech types. And needless to say, they’re not motivated by concern for the health of Australia’s media ecosystem”.
Can you help us?
It’s a sad time to be locked out of Twitter. The NSW Liberal resignations! ICAC! The Pandora Papers! So much news to share. You can help us out by sharing our work as far and wide as you can. We’d very much appreciate the assistance from our loyal readers.
In the meantime, head to our Facebook, Instagram or, of course, the Crikey home page. We’ll be back on Twitter calling on people to spam Kelly in no time.
Crikey and The Saturday Paper are to my mind the best independent news sources in this nation; unfortunately behind a paywall which is understandable; but still able to have their work featured in more MSM genres. And thus are targets for muzzling by the Sky/ Murdoch/ Coalition and their compliant acquiescent social media maates.
Give Twitter the flick.
Good idea.
Lord – Get on to The New Daily (two emails a day, including from Alan Kohler, Michael Pascoe and Paul Bongiorno) and Johnmenadue.com. and michaelwest.com.au
I already read every one of those sites and have for quite a while now , thank you, others may also like to take those sites up for regular reading material.
Michael West is a stalwart his website is a thorn in the side of politicians engaged in corruption
Independent Australia is another
I would also like to add the Guardian Australia and Kangaroo Court of Australia both of which are worth a read for sure, the poor old ABC really suffered under Howard as we know comma but once Abbott got in, it has become a wreck
And if you want fearless (if occasionally reckless) legal commentary, don’t forget Kangaroo Court of Australia. It’s really important we access different voices that are ignored or banned by the Murdoch-Stokes-Costello media – and also sources that aren’t pressured like the ABC and SBS not to be too hard on those poor snowflakes in the Federal Government in case they get their funding cut.
Twitter Media is a strange beast. At one end it is extreme left or extreme right wing, and at the other it is bipartisan and accomodating in its views to appeal to the great unwashed. So which way you go basically determines the outcome of whether you get banned. I had a good twitter account that got banned then suspended because I got too trollsy with the right wing nutcases. Learned from that to actually spread troll memes through other means instead. The RWNJ need a big lesson in understanding what it means to have freedom (which they already have) and do not understand that other people indeed have their own life experiences that are vastly different to their own selfish oriented conservative ones.
That in spades! Twitter and others of its evil type (social media) should be evicted from the Internet – full stop!!!
It’s a sad time to be locked out of Twitter. The NSW Liberal resignations! ICAC! The Pandora Papers! So much news to share.
Ah yes indeed, and maybe that’s why lockout occurred now instead of a month ago.
Ohh Lord, the Pharisees in control of the Christian Political Arm would not do that.
Did somebody in the political arena pay for the lockout ?
Way to go Crikey! I personally have never used that app and have no interest in it.
Is good to see that you ruffled someones feathers to be included in a list of being sent to sin bin ” according to twitter” keep up the good work and keep getting under there skin.
Personally I am proud to be a subscriber to Crikey.
Just do not ask me to go to FB or any other apps aka Instagram as I not interested in them either and i could see myself deleted within 1 day of going to twitter or Instagram
Oh dear, Crikey, you & Trump both suspended from Twitter. I regard it as a medium for those with short attention spans.
Soz Zut – tl;dr man…
So what. Twitter is heaven for information and ideas. It’s where they go to die, anyway.