IMPORTANT! Chris Ashton "It seem twitter have shadow banned FreedomProgramm because women don’t have penises. Ensuring women cannot access the support they need in crisis."

[R0wantrees]

twitter.com/apurrpurr/status/1086568414913667072

This means that the twitter account of such an important charity has likely been report targetted by TRAs.

It means that women at risk searching for the account on Twitter will not find the Freedom Programme and also that their tweets will be hidden to many.

website:
freedomprogramme.co.uk/sample-online/bully1.php

twitter:
twitter.com/FreedomProgramm

#istandwithfreedomprogramme

I suppose when you're attempting coercive control on an entire society it is rather inconvenient to have an organization pointing out what that looks like on an up close and personal level.

THIS.

How much worse can things get? The Freedom programme has saved so many lives.

I guess on a serious note this is what happens when the majority of the internet lies in the hands of a few big corporations. They police our freedom of speech according to what is less likely to cost them money.

Twitter is being 'gamed' by some TRAs

The reporting policies are being manipulated to silence women.

Same for me.

Twitter is being 'gamed' by some TRAs
Which of course it is open to. The issue is that so much important discourse is on a commercial platform that can alter the discussion by removing or banning people.
We accept this as the platform is handy and user-friendly. But as more discussion moves to these platforms from smaller or freer ones, the more power we hand to those corporations to influence the discussion.

This is fucking outrageous.

It makes me wonder, at what point do we all just fuck off and leave their platform?

I'm pretty sure that even Weibo lets its users say that women don't have penises...

I'm surprised it took them this long, tbh. The Freedom Programme is unapologetically pro-women and children and can teach others how to identify and name abuse. It does not depend on other organisations for funding, so is completely independent. Can't be controlled through budget cuts so is silenced on Twitter.

They've done amazing work before Twitter, I'm sure they will continue to do so now.

It does rather prove the point that social media is dominated by men's interests however.

It also proves that point that TRAs are mostly just MRAs in lippy.

Well quite.

It also proves that point that TRAs are mostly just MRAs in lippy.

James Kirkup Spectator March 2018:
'Fear and loathing grips the gender debate'

(extract)
Second, the people responsible for the fear and abuse these women suffer are not representative of transgender people as a whole; the transgender population must be assumed to contain as wide a distribution of vice and virtue as any other group. Indeed, some of those involved in this debate suspect that at least some of the real authors of that fear and abuse are not transwomen but men intent on frightening and diminishing women. Certainly, some male supporters of transgender rights seem to take a certain pleasure in the anxieties of women who question that agenda.

How did we get here? How can it be that in modern, democratic and free Britain in the early 21st Century, women are frightened to meet or talk about law, politics and society? Don’t we have institutions and, more important, social norms that say this shouldn’t happen, can’t happen? Shouldn’t this stuff get the attention and interest of politicians who are supposed to listen to all the different strands of public opinion, and ensure that everyone gets a chance to speak and be heard?

Bluntly, why the hell is no one in politics shouting from the rooftops about this stuff? We’re talking about people trying to put the frighteners on Mumsnetters, for goodness sake. In any other area of public life, politicians usually fall over themselves in their rush to speak up for middle-class working mothers. Yet the politicians who were desperate to talk biscuits at Mumsnet Towers are curiously silent about the intimidation that some women now report there" (continues)

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/fear-and-loathing-grips-the-gender-debate/

How much worse can things get?

Over the next year they are going to get a lot worse. Everything that makes you a woman is going to be taken from you and you are going to be in the wrong for showing resistance.
Anything that isn't inline with the ideology is going to be censored or shut down and most aspects of education and entertainment will centre on trans.

Same thing happened in the 1930's.

Over the next year they are going to get a lot worse. Everything that makes you a woman is going to be taken from you and you are going to be in the wrong for showing resistance

Recent National article about Meghan Murphy's meeting at Vancouver Library, 'Why we have so much to learn from ‘old and irrelevant’ women'

By Shona Craven

concludes
"Amid this climate of legal threat, it’s easy to see why people might be nervous about attending such events. Many of those I spoke to had felt that fear and come along anyway; not one regretted the decision. “Poster woman” – whose crime, it transpired, was simply standing next to a woman wearing a “pussy hat” and holding a poster at last January’s Vancouver Women’s March that stated: “Transwomen are men: truth is not hate” – was surprised and mildly amused to learn that she had been singled out for comment. Was she intimidated? Was she hell.

It will take more than trumped-up claims of human rights violations to stop strong, passionate women like these from assembling, asserting their rights and naming biological sex as the source of their oppression. Lee Lakeman spoke not just for old and irrelevant women, but for unstoppable young activists too, when she issued a warning that raised the roof: “To those who imagine you can bully us into submission: you are clearly unfamiliar with us.”

www.thenational.scot/news/17366420.why-we-have-so-much-to-learn-from-old-and-irrelevant-women/

Lee Lakeman's speech:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a3479722-Lee-Lakeman-Vancouver-Jan-2019-Thread-title-edited-by-MNHQ

It makes me wonder, at what point do we all just fuck off and leave their platform?
I think that will happen when women and those who describe themselves as leftist drop the idea that someone or something has to be 100% perfect at all times.
And basically get onto free speech platforms like Gab. Which at the moment is very right wing, simply because the right place more emphasis on free speech.
There are other options out there, but as soon as they are set up, because they attract Nazis etc, the platforms themselves are tarnished.
Strangely although Twitter and Facebook etc have hosted ISIS content before, nobody writes them off as being supportive of Islamist extremists.
But yeah, at some point people will migrate to other platforms.

Also, this is definitely a business decision by Twitter. The US permits far freer speech than anywhere else on Earth so it would have been easy for Twitter to make that their policy and to not take responsibility for offensive content. The other problem is that the US is the most litigious country on Earth also, so in providing a platform they open themselves up to being sued for the content.
Porn and gambling sites have servers in countries with lax laws, perhaps that's the answer - but then if the content was really objectionable our ISPs would block it at this end on instruction from the government.
Policing public discussion is very labour intensive, the bots and hired help who do it for the major social media firms get it wrong quite often. And as anyone who moderates a board or a comments section knows, actually moderating all comments is massively time consuming and emotionally challenging.

I was banned for 12 hours on Twitter for a Buzz Lightyear gif, which said “you are a sad strange little man and you have my pity.”

It wasn’t deliberate misgendering but obviously counted as hateful conduct. I would have liked to have been banned for something more profound than a Buzz Lightyear gif provided by Twitter for use on their platform!

In the meantime, the woman who doxed one of my kids. Fine. The woman who made 4 public (needless to say unevidenced) accusations of my being a pedophile. Fine. Same women said the other day, all t*s need shooting. Fine. Millions of MAP accounts fine. But Buzz bloody Lightyear, hateful.

Here on MN for example, the policy is very straightforward. Twitter seems to take an arbitrary approach, which in itself is unfair.

Ironic crosspost

Does this also apply to women?

Apparently so.

Reuters 2014
'LOS ANGELES, Oct 7 (Reuters) - A senior Twitter engineer hailed as one of the most important gay or transgender people in the tech industry was sentenced on Tuesday to three years probation after pleading guilty to false imprisonment and domestic violence charges, San Francisco prosecutors said.

Dana Contreras, known professionally as Dana McCallum, was also ordered to attend 52 weeks of domestic violence classes and stay away from her wife, the victim in the case, as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

Under that agreement prosecutors agreed to drop more serious rape charges against Contreras, 33, who was arrested in January after the attack, said Max Szabo, a spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

Contreras’ defense attorney could not be reached for comment following the hearing.

In addition to her job as an engineer for Twitter, Contreras, who is transgendered, has advocated for gay, women’s and transgender rights.

In December of 2013, the tech website Business Insider ranked Contreras No. 5 on its list of the 31 most important LGBT people in tech, calling her “one of the geniuses behind Twitter.”

www.reuters.com/article/usa-rape-sanfrancisco/corrected-twitter-engineer-lgbt-activist-pleads-guilty-to-domestic-violence-idUSL2N0S300920141008

test result for Twitter sanctions against Freedom Programme account

I was going to post this on facebook to alert women to complain to twitter about banning a support service for women, but I can see their account (without having a twitter account myself).

Latest tweet seems to be 6 hours ago. Has the ban happened since then? twitter.com/FreedomProgramm/status/1086630097921159168

There was a message about "suspicious" activity and just asked if I wanted to continue. twitter.com/FreedomProgramm

Can someone who understands / uses twitter explain as I dont wont to pass on wrong information!

What has happened is that the account has been targeted with increasing levels of restriction throughout the day. There is nothing untowards about the account, the problem is with Twitter.

Freedom Program now seem to be unable to tweet at all.
I don't think its a coincidence that today is the 'Womens' March.