Call to action: Twitter needs to use its power to stop graphically abusive accounts

 

  Warning: Some of the images in this post are not safe for work. 

Twitter is an open forum for anyone who wants to tweet their mind. That's great. I partake in a big way. But when I get tweets-- daily, hourly, sometimes piling on one after the other-- that are abusive, insulting, viciously demeaning, hostile, and sometimes violent, then it's time to take action.

Twitter sure doesn't. I know that for a fact, because I've tried over and over again to convince them that in some cases, it stops being free speech and starts feeling like assault.

 [NOTE: This post is not about cyber bullies, although they, too, are abusive; I've been harassed and smeared for years by one "progressive" who many of you became aware of and have since avoided. This is about extremist trolls, who also happen to bully.]

I regularly hear from right wing extremists, tea partiers, and total nutcases (that's not hyperbole, there are some very sick people out there). When they're civil, I simply ignore or block them, and even debate them once in awhile. And yes, I admit to succumbing to occasional lapses of playing Whack a Troll just to share their ignorance with my followers, using as much snarky mockitude as I can muster up.

But then there are those who pop in repeatedly to suggest various activities that they want me to engage in-- with my own body or theirs-- and apply colorful words like c**t and suck my c**k, simply because they've read my tweets and don't agree with me. I don't know these people nor am I familiar with their accounts, but they get some kind of perverse pleasure out of following my threads and entering my stream with slurs, attacks, and irrational tirades.

Almost without exception, these trolls oppose me politically, and that's fine. But the intense hatred spewed by many of them is disruptive, highly offensive, and completely out of line.

There is a particularly rabid one who should be in jail or in a padded cell-- again, no hyperbole. If I were to post screen grabs of his avatars, messages, and profile photos, you'd literally want to gag. My own husband couldn't get through them. Unfortunately, catching sight of them is unavoidable when they're in my stream or when I go to block and report.

Imagine the most frantically vile, graphic images depicting blatant racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, bigotry, and self-loathing. They include explicit close-up photos of defecation and the most hard-core XXX porn you can imagine, abominable references, every kind of debasement of women and young men, degrading photos of celebrities and our president and first lady, you name it.

And the crude, twisted tweets he sends me match the vulgar visuals. He has also opened accounts using my likeness (taken from my Twitter account), as well as those of other high-profile liberals like Rachel Maddow, Lizz Winstead, John Fugelsang, Bill Maher, and Rosie O'Donnell, among others.

In short, he is an obsessed, deranged, seething, hostile, psychologically impotent (and likely, physically) conservative coward who consistently targets progressives, mostly women. Here are semi-cleaned up, edited grabs of two of his tamer suspended accounts. Trust me when I say, they get much worse than these:

Here is one of his defunct profile pages

A tweet he sent out under my name and avi

This is one reason I stay anonymous. It started when a stalker came to close, sending me a Google map of my neighborhood, so that was that.

This person has been suspended well over 500 times. I've reported him to Twitter well over 100 times, and finally contacted my local authorities as well as the FBI more than once. But because he didn't threaten my life, they did nothing. As I type this, he's added at least three more Twitter accounts that I'm aware of.

I've endured this for years, literally. Because of this, I felt it was time to put out a call to action. Perhaps if enough of us demand more oversight from Twitter, especially those of us who are sick to death of being barraged with disgustingly offensive messages and photos, then maybe Twitter will take notice and do something.

It's unimaginable that they can't devise a better system to rid Twitter of such filth.

By the way, when I tried to fill out one of their complaint forms, I didn't have a link to the offending tweet, so the form wouldn't go through. I didn't have a link because I blocked him, and the account was immediately suspended so the tweet was no longer accessible. So I'm snail mailing them, and I'm including about two dozen graphic screen shots of 93 of the suspended profiles I've captured.

Here is the tweet:

"I'd like to take a 12 in figurine of a smiling G W. Bush and ram it up your stinking communist ass."

Please share this post and contact Twitter. It's worth a shot to at least try to turn things around for once. I'm fed up with having to so much as glance at the malignancies that come my way.

Thank you.

Twitter contact information:

Twitter, Inc. 1355 Market St, Suite 900 San Francisco, CA 94103

And to Twitter users, some general contact info, not that it will do much good:

@Support

@Twitter

@Spam

To file a ticket, go here.

To report an abusive or offensive user, go here.

UPDATE: Here is a sample letter sent by one of my favorite commenters:

Twitter, Inc 1355 Market St., Suite 900 San Francisco CA 94103

Attn: Dick Costolo, CEO

Dear Sir:

I’ve become more and more alarmed by the threatening, harassing tweets bombarding people like GottaLaff and urge you to take them seriously. One man who sends one tweet after another threatening her, even sending her a map of her neighborhood, forced her to resort to using a pseudonym on Twitter and he still doesn’t stop.

Spam is bad enough but when one is verbally bashed and/or threatened it is not to Twitter’s benefit and such tweets should not be ignored. Just reporting or blocking them isn’t sufficient to stop their abuse; they simply open a new account under a different name - as you know.

Surely Twitter can trace an account back to an IP address and demand that they cease such dangerous behavior. I understand that tweets can be sent from IP addresses that are used by many people (at cafes, for instance) but there is such a thing as product liability. I’m urging you to hold the owners of such IP addresses responsible for the damage their users do. Even bar owners who serve people after they are drunk are held responsible for the damage their customers do.

I’ve enjoyed Twitter for a few years and want to continue to do so but such threatening behavior makes a pleasant experience completely abhorrent and there’s a limit to the amount of such behavior I, and others, will accept.

Please develop a policy to identify & ban such people from the Twitter feed.

Another Twitter threat to Obama, Secret Service takes note

By GottaLaff

My Twitter pal IanDavidB called the Secret Service on this guy and they listened. The Boston office forwarded it to "The Internet Threat Desk", taking a particular interest in this tweet:


I took a screen grab of his page, just in case (click on image to enlarge, but first take a swig of something strong):


As you know, I continue to air this horrific stuff out, because I feel that ignoring it is allowing the miscreants way too much wiggle room. By exposing them, it allows the Secret Service to nail a few of them, and it calls them out for what they are: Racists, bigots, terrorists.

The level of hatred is unacceptable. The boldness with which some of these animals bear their fangs is downright scary. Whether they do it solely for attention, or because they are committed to their brand of toxic prejudicial sludge, it's out there and needs to stop.

And I repeat my demand for those in positions of leadership to stand up to them and condemn them publicly, on a daily basis, until we see this violently ugly trend ebb.

As President Clinton acknowledges:

“[L]egitimate” comparisons can be drawn between today's grassroots anger and resentment toward the government and the right-wing extremism that bubbled up prior to the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City 15 years ago.

Tea Baggers, take note. You wouldn't want another Oklahoma City on your resumes.

Video- Awkward! Fox & Friends Confronts Wallace Over His "Hope" That Palin Would "Sit On [His] Lap"

Via Media Matters. Love to see people like him squirm. Backstory and original video of what he said here.

"Don't Kid Yourself; the Murder of Dr. George Tiller is Part of the War Against Women"

By GottaLaff

And now your daily dose of BuzzFlash. Go read:

Don't Kid Yourself; the Murder of Dr. George Tiller is Part of the War Against Women

The "honorable" Gramm-pa McCain: "He cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge."

By GottaLaff

More excerpts from Make-Believe Maverick, re: his time at Episcopal High School, an all-white, all-boys boarding school across the Potomac in Virginia:

There, McCain behaved with all the petulance his privilege allowed, earning the nicknames "Punk" and "McNasty." Even his friends seemed to dislike him, with one recalling him as "a mean little fucker."
McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father's taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge. [...]

Before meeting a girlfriend's parents for the first time, McCain got so shitfaced that he literally crashed through the screen door when he showed up in his white midshipman's uniform.

And then there was Annapolis:

When McCain was not shown the pampering to which he was accustomed, he grew petulant — even abusive. He repeatedly blew up in the face of his commanding officer. It was the kind of insubordination that would have gotten any other midshipman kicked out of Annapolis. But his classmates soon realized that McCain was untouchable. [...] McCain dodged expulsion a second time by convincing another midshipman to take the fall after McCain was caught with contraband.

"He was a huge screw-off," recalls Butler. "He was always on probation. The only reason he graduated was because of his father and his grandfather — they couldn't exactly get rid of him."

McCain's self-described "four-year course of insubordination" ended with him graduating fifth from the bottom — 894th out of a class of 899. It was a record of mediocrity he would continue as a pilot.

Some hero, huh?

John Sidney McCain doesn't like women, and here's proof

By GottaLaff

Paddy sent me an e-mail, which is also posted here. Plus, I'm re-posting my "Grow Up, J Sid" video since it makes similar points. :

Don’t Like Women? That’s OK, Neither Does He

You ever get the feeling that some guys just really don’t like women at all, or care what they think, or respect them?

Seems John McCain is one of them.

He’s decided that a woman shouldn’t be able to end a pregnancy EVEN IF IT’S GOING TO KILL HER. The story is here:

(http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4824779&page=1)

Yes, he’s going to let the right-wing radicals who run the Republican Party push for outlawing abortion even if a woman has been brutally raped.

Even if she’s a 14 year old violated by her own father.

Even if she might die if the pregnancy is brought to term.

And speaking of rape, McCain thinks a joke about a woman being beaten and raped is just hilarious:

(http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2008/07/infamous-mcjoke-about-rape.html)

And it’s not just McCain’s determination to overturn Roe v. Wade. On a whole host of issues, he’s against women’s rights:

(http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/07/mccain-and-womens-issues-its-more-than-just-roe/)

He voted against requiring health care plans to cover birth control (3/22/03).

He voted against comprehensive, medically accurate sex education (7/25/06).

He voted against international family planning funding (3/14/96).

He voted against funding to prevent teen and unintended pregnancies (3/17/05).

He voted against public education for emergency contraception (3/17/05).

And he voted against restoring Medicaid funding that could be used for family planning for low-income women (3/17/05)

Of course, McCain cheated on his loyal, devoted first wife and dumped her for someone with a lot more money. His first wife wasn’t attractive to him any more. But I guess being in a car wreck does cut down on your sex appeal.

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html)

And this whole “equal pay for women” thing? McCain says he’s for it—but when the chips are down he votes against it:

(http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/04/24/by_juliet_eilperin_washington.html)

Yes, McCain thinks that women are basically 2nd rate people who can’t be allowed to make their own decisions. But there’s one way McCain puts his wife out front and center:

He said she should enter a topless beauty pageant.
(http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2008/08/pour-some-sugar-on-cindy-mccain.html)

Wow. What a guy. Just what we need.

To go back to the 19th century.

Oh, and let's not forget that old chestnut, calling his wife the C-Word. He'd make some role model for our kids, huh?

New Video: Grow Up, John Sidney McCain

By GottaLaff

I'm getting more and more inspired by J Sid's disgusting tactics. My newest video chronicles a few examples of what this slime passes off as "humor". Real presidential, J Sid. Keep it up.

Let me know what you think. In fact, if you like it, please follow the directions in Comments, to recommend it to the Blogosphere.