Some prominent Twitter users are ?? ??? ?? ??giving the company's CEO Jack Dorsey an ultimatum: it's either us or Alex Jones.
There is a growing movement in various circles on Twitter to make this Friday, August 17th “D-Day” or “#DeactiDay” on the service.
The movement launched when designer Mike Monteiro, who’s been a longtime critic of the way Jack has run the platform, shared an image with the rallying cry urging users to “show Twitter you won’t be part of a place that tolerates bigotry and abusive information, specifically from Alex Jones.”
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The movement to deactivate your Twitter account in response to Jack’s handling of the Alex Jones situation is starting to take off. Actors and online personalities like Wil Wheaton have joined with Monteiro to launch #DeactiDay.
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In an interview with Mashable, Monteiro, who has consistently criticized the Twitter CEO for providing white supremacists and nazis a platform, explained how #DeactiDay came to be. “You’ve got the perfect platform for spreading hate and there’s no checks on it whatsoever,” Monteiro told Mashable. “Alex Jones was just the final straw.”
Earlier this month, a number of tech platforms such as Apple iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and even Pinterest, banned Alex Jones and his conspiracy theorist website InfoWars. This response came after months of swelling public pressure on these tech companies to take action over hateful violent rhetoric from Jones that was against each company’s very terms of service. Alex Jones and InfoWars had previously received warnings and even temporary suspensions from these platforms yet always seemed to just skirt by getting outright banned.
After this fallout, Twitter was the lone major internet platform that did not ban Alex Jones. CEO Jack Dorsey defended the decision claiming Jones had not violated Twitter’s rules and that if he did, the company would enforce them.
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It sounds like a pretty fair reason as to why a company like Twitter would keep Jones on its platform. That is until CNN’s Oliver Darcy found content Jones had posted on Twitter which the company did concede broke their rules.
Even then, Twitter still declined to take any action on Alex Jones’ account. (Note: A day after speaking with Monteiro, Twitter put Alex Jones' account in a 7-day "timeout" over a video posted on the site urging his supporters to get their "battle rifles" ready. This timeout puts some limitations on his account and required the tweet containing the video be deleted. Jones has still not been suspended, let alone banned from the site.)
But this time around, after years of criticizing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Monteiro feels like there’s finally been a shift with Alex Jones.
As Alex Jones' prominence has risen, he has come under increased scrutiny for his promotion of the conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. Parents of the children killed in the shooting have stated that they have had to move because of the harassment over these conspiracies and can't visit their child's grave out of fear of being found.
Earlier this week, Shannon Coulter, co-founder of #GrabYourWallet, a movement that puts consumer pressure on companies for carrying Trump-related products, launched #BlockParty500, a Twitter protest urging Twitter users to mass block all the Fortune 500 companies with a presence on the platform over the company’s handling of Alex Jones.
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Monteiro fully supports Coulter’s protest and has blocked the Fortune 500 companies on his own account. “The only thing they care about is money” says Monteiro, “as long as we’re yelling at them on the platform, we’re feeding them [...] It’s all engagement. It all feeds them. The only way to win this is to just stop coming.”
In the image promoting #DeactiDay that’s spreading on Twitter, the call to action lays out how after a user deactivate their accounts “Twitter has 30 days to make it right. After that, account deletions become permanent and Twitter has lost all of us for good.”
Monteiro hints that there doesn’t seem to be much hope for his account’s reactivation on Twitter, a platform that he actually used to have fun visiting. First off, Monteiro doesn’t envision things changing with Jack Dorsey as CEO. And, even if Jack was replaced, Monteiro concedes the new CEO would need a thick skin. “There might be a chance to save [Twitter]. It would have to be soon and it would have to be a pretty radical change.” Monteiro cites GamerGate and the way the company promotes President Donald Trump’s usage of the platform as reason why Twitter might be too far gone. “They made the decision they were OK with this on their platform as long as people come,” said Monteiro.
It seems that folks like Monteiro, who has been harassed and doxxed on the platform, have had enough. Along with Wil Wheaton, Monteiro credits about a half dozen other prominent names in design, tech, and web culture communities with organizing #DeactiDay such as Stuart Rutherford, Andrew Norcross, John Moltz, Margo Stern, John Hanawalt, and Erika Hall.
On the day I spoke to Monteiro, Alex Jones took to his livestream to discuss how the “attacks” on him, referencing the bans, have shown him who his allies are. Alex Jones listed conservative Fox News personalities like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who have both recently come under fire for show segments that espoused white supremacist rhetoric, as allies. And, right alongside them both, Jones also name-dropped Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
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As #DeactiDay fast approaches, its unclear how many people are planning to deactivate. However, for Monteiro and those who are joining him, the decision is easy. “We’re out. If this is who they want to be, we’ll stop going.”
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