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.

I see racist people...

By GottaLaff

Look who's running for governor of Florida:

CPR chief Rick Scott was ousted as a hospital exec amid a 1990s fraud probe, and the memo will alarm pro-reform forces, because it shows that the anti-reform camp is beginning to sense that victory is within reach on their top goal: Killing the public option.

Oh, you already knew that? Did you know all this?

R Lynn's Wiki:

Richard Lynn "Rick" Scott (born 1953 in Bloomington, Illinois) announced his candidacy for Florida governor on April 13, 2010.^[1]

Scott is a healthcare industry executive and founder of Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR) which advertises against expanding the U.S. government's role in regulating the healthcare system but failed in its efforts to block healthcare reform.

Scott founded the Columbia Hospital Corporation in 1987. With Columbia HCA Chairman Thomas J. Frist, the brother of Senator Bill Frist, the company merged Columbia with Hospital Corporation of America in 1989 to form Columbia/HCA. Ten years later, Scott was ousted by the company's board of directors in the midst of the nation's biggest health care fraud scandal in which the company ultimately plead guilty to the nation's then largest Medicaid and Medicare fraud and paid a record fine of $1.7 billion dollars.^[2][3][4] In 2001, Scott co-founded the Solantic Corporation, which operates walk-in medical care centers. He also owns Continental Structural Plastics, North America's largest industrial composites molder. [...]

CPR opposes the broad outlines of President Obama's health-care plans, and has hired Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm which previously worked with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Isn't he the bee's knees? The cat's pajamas?

The liver worst?

Now he can add "racial profiler" to his resume. Congratulations, Ricky Lynn, you've topped yourself:


H/t: LynCKos for the title and for alerting me to Scott's tweet.

Fear of a raid dampens Cinco de Mayo in Arizona

I don't blame them, it would be a perfect opportunity for the jackboots to ask for papers. Pretty easy to have "probable cause" when people are partying.

MESA - Rumors circulate of an immigration raid at Cinco de Mayo festivities. Markets normally bustling with customers preparing for the celebration are quiet. Family picnics are scaled back.

Many Hispanics in Arizona - both legal and illegal - are increasingly anxious about being targeted under the state's tough anti-illegal immigration law
. Some are afraid to leave their homes, even on the day when the nation celebrates Hispanic heritage.

Some have left the state, and some of those who remain wonder if they should follow.

"They don't want to go to the park or clubs to celebrate because they're scared," said George Cortez, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen from Mesa, as he took a break from sweeping hair clippings at Eagle's barbershop in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in Mesa.

The Best Anti-Arizona Protest Signs

Spot on. Via Buzz Feed, a lot more there.

Bonus Cartoons of the Day

Click to enlarge, via.

Video- Fox wants more Muslim tagging, ignores fact that a Muslim first noticed the bomb

They won't be happy until we're all running around like our hair is on fire screaming "MOOOSLIM". Via Think Progress-

Aliou Niasse, a street vendor selling framed photographs of New York, said that he was the first to spot the car containing the bomb, which pulled up right in front of his cart on the corner of 45th street and Broadway next to the Marriott hotel.

“I didn’t see the car pull up or notice the driver because I was busy with customers. But when I looked up I saw that smoke appeared to be coming from the car. This would have been around 6.30pm.”

“I thought I should call 911, but my English is not very good and I had no credit left on my phone, so I walked over to Lance, who has the T-shirt stall next to mine, and told him. He said we shouldn’t call 911. Immediately he alerted a police officer near by,” said Mr Niasse, who is originally from Senegal and who has been a vendor in Times Square for about eight years.

Video via Newshounds.

White People Masks For Nervous Brown People

You knew it would come to this. Via Wonkette.

Cartoons of the Day

Click to enlarge, via.

VIDEO- Tea Party organizer: We don't tolerate racist behavior

By GottaLaff




Tea Bagger Jenny Beth (the national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots) claims that the group she pals around with will not tolerate racism:

"In Tea Party Patriots, we have no place for that," Jenny Beth Martin said on CNN's American Morning. "If we see somebody who's doing something racist, we tell them to leave our events."

Nope, to the contrary, she swearstogod the Tea Baggers are intolerant of such prejudice, while clinging to the three core values that really matter: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.

And Martin said the movement is open to everyone, including racial and ethnic minorities, notwithstanding the fact that some national polls have indicated Tea Party activists and supporters of the movement are predominantly Caucasian.

And by predominantly, she means there were about 5 people of color that could be spotted at a recent event, per Keith Olbermann, if I recall. Oh let's be generous, let's call it ten. That way nobody can say it's an exaggeration.

Jenny Beth would have a whole lot more credibility if it weren't for blatant examples of Tea Bagger racism like these:

The Tea Baggers have a long way to go before they can replace those images with inclusive, big tenty ones showing their diverse membership kicking racists out of their rallies.

Minnesota GOP plans to introduce Arizona-style immigration bill

Et tu Minnesota? How can a state that produced Paul Wellstone and Al Franken also be home to Looney Bachmann and these people? Guess he's just proving his Tea Bagger credentials.

Local Republican lawmakers want to enact immigration legislation similar to a controversial bill recently passed in Arizona, even as thousands of people across the country attended rallies Saturday against the bill.

Critics say the bill amounts to racial profiling because it requires police to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally. But Minnesota Reps. Steve Drazkowski and Greg Davids applaud the Arizona bill, saying it addresses a failure in federal enforcement. Drazkowski is drafting a similar state bill he hopes to introduce before the session ends this month.

(snip)

State legislation could stem the growing number of illegal immigrants in Minnesota, especially in the Twin Cities-area, Davids said.

"They cost the state a lot of money," Davids said. "The bill just says we're going to follow the U.S. Constitution, Homeland Security and the laws of the land."

But Arizona's provision has generated backlash from President Barack Obama to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to about 2,500 people at a rally Saturday in Minneapolis. And Republicans concede they'd need more seats in the Legislature before an Arizona-style bill could pass here - Drazkowski said there was virtually no chance his bill would pass this session.

Frank Rich: If Only Arizona Were the Real Problem

By GottaLaff

(via Barry Blitt)

Reminder:

Please note that posting could be light today. Paddy is gone for a few hours, I'm on no sleep and have a huge video project ahead of me that got a bigger response than I ever expected, and that's a good thing. Between editing and Paddy's absence, things will be a little slower today.

That said, today's Frank Rich excerpts:

[T]o label this development “Arizona’s folly” trivializes its import and reach. The more you examine the law’s provisions and proponents, the more you realize that it’s the latest and (so far) most vicious battle in a far broader movement that is not just about illegal immigrants — and that is steadily increasing its annexation of one of America’s two major political parties. [...]

To be angry about illegal immigration is hardly tantamount to being a bigot. But the Arizona law expressing that anger is bigoted, and in a very particular way. The law dovetails seamlessly with the national “Take Back America” crusade that has attended the rise of Barack Obama and the accelerating demographic shift our first African-American president represents. [...]

[This] is often the same crowd still demanding that the president produce a document proving his own citizenship. [...]

With the whole country now watching Arizona, that “birther” bill was abruptly yanked Thursday.

The legislators who voted for both it and the immigration law were exclusively Republicans, but what happened in the Arizona G.O.P. is not staying in Arizona. Officials in at least 10 other states are now teeing up their own new immigration legislation. They are doing so even in un-Arizonan places like Ohio, Missouri, Maryland and Nebraska, none of them on the Department of Homeland Security’s 2009 list of the 10 states that contain three-quarters of America’s illegal immigrant population. [...]

What a difference the Tea Party makes. [...] McCain, like other mainstream conservative Republicans facing primaries this year, is now fighting for his political life against a Tea Party-supported radical. [...]

McCain, like Arizona, shouldn’t be singled out for censure: He is far from alone in cowering before his party’s extremists. [...] There are few profiles in courage among the leaders in this G.O.P. — only a lot of guys hiding under their desks.

McKinnon and Rove know well that Latino-bashing will ultimately prove political suicide in a century when Hispanic Americans are well on their way to becoming the largest minority in the country and are already the swing voters in many critical states. [...]

It’s also hard to maintain that the Tea Party’s nuttier elements are merely a fringe of a fringe. [...]

The angry right and its apologists also keep insisting that race has nothing to do with their political passions. [...] So how does that profiling work without race or ethnicity, exactly? [...]

In this Alice in Wonderland inversion of reality, it’s politically incorrect to entertain a reasonable suspicion that race may be at least a factor in what drives an action like the Arizona immigration law. Any racism in America, it turns out, is directed at whites. [...]

The rage of 2010 is far more incendiary than anything that went down in 1988, and it will soon leap from illegal immigration to other issues in other states. Boycott the Diamondbacks and Phoenix’s convention hotels if you want to punish Arizona, but don’t for a second believe that it will stop the fire next time.

Please read the whole thing here.

VIDEO: Rachel Maddow "Steins" Dan Stein... again

By GottaLaff

I posted the video of Dan Stein's little visit with Rachel Maddow here. It's gotten quite a response, including over at the Southern Poverty Law Center's site (Thank you SPLC, for acknowledging my new word "Steined").

For all those naysayers, for all those who blasted Rachel, and especially to Danny Boy himself, I dedicate this post. You've been Steined:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"Freshly Ground Black People" error boosts book sales

By GottaLaff

This is disgusting. Book sales have actually increased (although the number of books sold is tiny, but still...) since this happened:

Penguin Group Australia accidentally published copies of the Pasta Bible containing an unfortunate spell check error. A recipe calling for "salt and freshly ground black pepper" actually read "salt and freshly ground black people." The company is destroying and reprinting 7,000 copies of the book, but not recalling ones that have already hit bookstores. According to the company's head of publishing, Bob Sessions, it was an honest mistake.

That was then. This is now:

Since news of the misprint broke, sales have increased nearly four-fold, according to TheBookseller.com.

Sales increased, not just curiosity. People spent their hard-earned money on a book with that title.

Who is buying those books? And why? That was rhetorical.

Why we can be glad about Arizona's terrible law

By GottaLaff


In the old Hayley Mills movie Pollyanna, the title character was the eternal optimist and loved to play what she called "The Glad Game". There was only one rule: No matter how hopeless or frustrated you felt, there had to be at least one thing you could find to be glad about.

Time to play.

Arizona passed their new, terrible, jaw-dropping racial profiling legislation, aka the Show Your Papers law. That pretty much sucks as badly as anything could suck. Silver lining anyone?

I know! I'm glad that it's uniting opposition and attracting attention to the need for sweeping immigration reform as well as exposing racists who try to hide behind patriotism:

The Los Angeles Police are preparing for as many as 100,000 marchers to rally for immigration rights in downtown Los Angeles during the annual May Day event Saturday.

LAPD officials are preparing for a surge in the number of participants in the wake of an outcry over a controversial new Arizona law that requires police to check the legal status of people they suspect of being illegal immigrants.

I'm glad there will be a surge. I'm glad people are getting angry. I'm glad the law is being contested in court. I'm glad this has become a major topic of discussion. I'm glad we have a president who feels the outrage.

I'll be glad when racism becomes a thing of the past.

I'm glad I'm a dreamer.

PhotOh! Arizona's new Crayola color: Suspiciously Brown

By GottaLaff

My Twitter pal ZenShadow made this just for TPC (click to enlarge):


Suspiciously snarky.

Hawaii lawmakers pass bill to ignore 'birthers'

By GottaLaff

Can Congress pass the same bill, please? Maybe just an "Ignore Orly Taitz" bill:

Hawaii legislators have passed a measure allowing a state agency to ignore repeated requests from a person or organization for President Barack Obama's birth certificate.

The measure approved Tuesday by the state Legislature would carve an exemption in the state's public records law and allow officials to ignore all kinds of duplicative requests, including those for Obama's birth certificate.

They get between ten and twenty e-mails a week demanding verification of this:

Yes, that would be his birth certificate that has been displayed for all to see for some time now, but apparently it wasn't enough.

Neither was this:

This photo provided by the Honolulu Advertiser shows Obama's birth announcement, center, in the Aug. 13, 1961 edition of the paper. (AP Photo/The Honolulu Advertiser)

But all that was wasted on the birthers. They go on believing what they want to believe, because Barack Obama has a funny name and a darker skin color. And that's what this is all about.

H/t: I forgot, sorry!

Chart: Which GOP lawmakers are for/against AZ racial profiling law

By GottaLaff

Think Progress has put together a chart showing which GOP lawmakers have publicly come out for or against the Arizona racial profiling law :

FOR THE LAW	NON-COMMITTAL	AGAINST THE LAW
Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA): “They will look at the kind of dress you wear. There’s different type of attire. … There’s behavior things that professionals are trained in across the board. And this group shouldn’t be exempt from those observations as much as anybody else.”	Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ): “And my own view is until the federal government does our part back here by providing the resources that are necessary, and that could include, by the way, the financial resources to support National Guard troops on the border, then you are going to see more of this. It won’t just be the state of Arizona that passes laws like this.”	Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL): “I strongly disagree with the Arizona immigration law.”
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): “[I]f that’s what the people of Arizona want to do, then certainly they have that right.”	Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): “I haven’t had a chance to look at all the aspects, but I do understand why the Legislature would act.”
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK): “I don’t see anything wrong with that [the Arizona law].”	Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “I haven’t studied it.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA): “I think that Arizona has a point, which is the federal government has not done a good enough job. … And if it’s a message to the administration they need to do a better job, then a state has to right to send that message.”
Rep. Steve King (R-IA): “I commend Arizona for standing up for the Rule of Law and protecting American workers.”

"I haven't studied it." Neither have I, but I sure get the gist and I have no problem opining about what a terrible law it is. Not exactly a tough call. Study that, senators.

It’s noteworthy to point out that in addition to Diaz-Balart and Graham, one of the only other high-profile Republican to criticize the law is GOP Republican candidate Marco Rubio, who is Cuban-American like Diaz-Balart.

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Arizona Immigration Law: A GOP Game to Swipe the November Election

By GottaLaff

In my previous post, I made the point that the recent outbursts of racism were all about voter intimidation.

Greg Palast agrees, but he says it way better than I did:

What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote -- and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.

This is not unlike the Republican attitude toward unions.

Hey Greg Palast, tell us something we do not know about Jan Brewer:

Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelming Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected. [...]

Did she turn over even one name to the feds for prosecution?

No, not one.

After over 100 complaints, and a 2 year investigation, the prosecutor, David Iglesias, couldn't find one voter fraud case. Of course, Karl Rove saw to it that he was fired.

But what’s wrong with requiring folks to prove they’re American if the want to vote and live in America? The answer: because the vast majority of perfectly legal voters and residents who lack ID sufficient for Ms. Brewer and Mr. Pearce are citizens of color, citizens of poverty.

According to a study by prof. Matt Barreto, of Washington State University, minority citizens are half as likely as whites to have the government ID. The numbers are dreadfully worse when income is factored in.

Leave it to Palast.

Please go read his entire piece here.

Drudge: Obama encouraging voters to exercise their rights is racist

By GottaLaff

Noted scumbag Matt Drudge adds his fuel to the racist fire. I can see it now: Coming in November 2010 to polls near you: voter intimidation, courtesy of right wing nut jobs everywhere. It's becoming clear that this is what it's coming to.

It's coming down to voter suppression.

Via Greg Sargent:

Drudge’s lead headline right now:

OBAMA PLAYS RACE CARD: RALLIES BLACKS, LATINOS FOR ‘10 UPSET

[...] Here’s the sum total of what Obama said about blacks and Latinos:

“In 2010, it will be up to each of you to make sure that the young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again.”

Paddy posted the video here. It runs two minutes 41 seconds. That sentence was 8 seconds long.

So remember, according to Drudge, if you are in the least bit active in getting the vote out, but address your comments to anybody who isn't lily white, you are a racist.