Sarah Phillimore suspended from twitter

[anothermimsyborogove]

Barrister, women's right campaigner, mumsnetter @spero, and hero, Sarah Phillimore has been suspended from Twitter. Actor David Paisley and others are gloating about it.

If a random twitter poster of no account is accused by other random accounts on twitter of it is certainly annoying, irritating and even possibly hurtful if untrue. But nothing can be done about it apart from report to twitter.

However, when you have a reputation to protect because of your profession and/or position on the public sphere, then these spurious allegations could cause you harm. You might lose work and/or your reputation because people believe you hold the hateworthy opinion. ..

Now imagine this opinion is being spread not by anonymous amounts but by someone who has a certain standing in their community. Say.... an MP? Their opinions carry some weight, don't they.

I'm sure people can see where I'm going with this so I won't go on.

Thanks Flippinada - people who want to argue that I am a hypocrite or should just shrug this off are essentially unreachable. They are either motivated by dislike of me or they have some difficulties with processing information.

I wonder if alleging that I have been suspended by Twitter for hateful conduct (I have not) is going to be covered by a 'fair comment' defence given that it is asserting a fact which is demonstrably untrue.

Anyway. Looks like the Better Business Bureau are still accepting complaints from UK residents so I have given it a go.

Complaint Summary
Complaint Type: Consumer to Business Complaint
Nature of complaint: Customer Service Issues
Problem description:
On January 25th 2021 Twitter permanently suspended my Twitter account @SVPhillimore. I appealed because the tweet cited in support of this decision revealed no breach of Twitter's terms of service. Twitter support replied on 28th January that having reviewed my appeal they agreed the suspension was in error and my account would be restored. My account was not restored. On 31st January 2021 this suspended account was suspended again for 'evading the rules against permanent suspension.'. I have appealed and contacted Twitter support as i do not understand what this means. My account had been wrongly suspended and therefore could not have been used to evade a wrongful suspension. I am now instructing solicitors to issue action in defamation against a number of UK residents who are asserting my account was suspended for hateful conduct. I have sent numerous emails to Twitter support and via the appeals process and received no response to my queries. The process seems entirely automated and there is no way to speak to anyone. I urgently need to know why my account remains suspended.
Desired Resolution: Contact by the business
Desired Outcome
I would like someone at Twitter to explain why my account remains suspended, despite having emailed me to say they suspended me in error. My solicitors will need this information and Twitter are not responding to my messages where I request clarification. I accept Twitter has a right to impose its Terms of Service on users, but on its own admission I have not breached them so I would be grateful for an explanation as to what is going on. The continued suspension of my account is causing me actual reputational harm as many people online are claiming I was suspended for hateful conduct. I would just like to understand what the actual position is and for Twitter to respond to queries from its users.

Yes, some people can't or won't see what's going on, and of course they are entitled to their opinion.

I'd be very interested to see what kind of outcome you get from the Better Business Bureau - I hope it's positive.

I agree Flippinada.

I find people who think you should just accept, ignore is an extreme version that I often see on here in AIBU - something like "my next door neighbour has told everyone in my street my that I'm a cruel to my cats. It's not true but everyone has repeated it and someone has put a nasty note through my door"

Often the advice will be "just be the bigger person and ignore it"

No! Don't ignore. How bloody dare they!

Sorry that's a bit of a crap analogy but it tues annoy me the type of stuff people expect people to ignore.

Yes, this is why it's absolutely invidious!
Most people don't have the resources and wherewithal to fight back against malevolent rumours, and the people responsible for them know this.

And this is why I'm so bloody thankful for the handful of women like Sarah who are standing up to it. It takes a rare and admirable combination of courage, resilience, focused rage and determination, all backed by financial resources. The rest of us can help with the last thing, but it must feel like a lonely and terrifying battle to embark upon.

Honourable mention to Glinner and Harry. Not women but standing up for us.

Yes Glinner especially is being mercilessly attacked in his pocket right now by TRA's. Not happy with trashing his reputation and leaving him without support amoungst blue tick celebrities, they're trying to cut off every single avenue of income for him by targeting his substack etc.

This is the only way the TRA's know how to fight - through Twitter bans and targeted harassment.

Great, angry piece by Glenn Greenwald touching on the subject:

The overarching rule of liberal media circles and liberal politics is that you are free to accuse anyone who deviates from liberal orthodoxy of any kind of bigotry that casually crosses your mind — just smear them as a racist, misogynist, homophobe, transphobe, etc. without the slightest need for evidence — and it will be regarded as completely acceptable.

[..]

That’s the purpose, the function, of these lowly accusatory tactics: to control, to coerce, to dominate, to repress. The people who engage in these character-assassinating, censorship-fostering games — especially those who call themselves “journalists” — deserve nothing but intense scorn. And those who are free from their influence and power have a particular obligation to heap it on them. Aside from being what it deserves, that scorn is the only way to neutralize this tactic.

And one step better than scorn, is to actually use the legal tools we have available to fight back, as Sarah is doing, and I for one am happy to fund that.

Abigail Shrier is apparently also maybe considering it:

How about it @ ACLU?

Do you endorse this libel of me and of @ jk_rowling by your star lawyer?

Let's do this.

Brilliant piece! I hope AS sues. She has been treated abominably.

Ironic update.

Just received an email from Crowdfunder saying that they have received complaints and want me to remove 'defamatory content' from the overview. They have also disabled comments as they contained defamation!

I have removed what they identify as the problematic content, safe in the knowledge that it has now been widely reported upon in the media and is well and truly in the public domain.

I can't help however but feel the irony keenly that I am supposed to suck it up when I am called a Holocaust Denier as 'fair comment' - but my 'fair comment' about the disgraceful behaviour of a number of prominent people must be removed as potentially defamatory.

But welcome to 2021.

It's enough to send to insane Spero.

However yes it's been widely reported and you'd have to living in a box to nog know who your case refers to. The mediocre Scottish actor hasn't protected his tweets for nothing. I'd say he's rattled.

It's all fair comment apparently! So I aim to enjoy my goose sauce.

I wonder if JKR would be more likely to take action if it's in combination with AS? She's got the financial clout to do it, unlike most.

As one of the comments on the twitter link says, these people deserve to be punished for such lies - why should they be untouchable?

Do you endorse this libel of me and of @ jk_rowling by your star lawyer?

If you are concerned about your reputation being damaged due to being libelled then re-broadcasting that libel to 70,000 people is unlikely to impress the courts.

That's a ridiculous comment jj1968. 🙄

So people are really in an impossible situation. Deny the libel and stand up for yourself - courts then penalise you? Just what are people supposed to do? Allow it to go by unchallenged?

Good to know jj1968 is as reliable when offering legal opinions as all their other opinions.

I did like them setting up that train joke perfection though. More of those, please.

@Spero

So people are really in an impossible situation. Deny the libel and stand up for yourself - courts then penalise you? Just what are people supposed to do? Allow it to go by unchallenged?

No, the first stage usually is you write to them and ask them to remove the libel. Whether they do this or not you then also have the right to take legal action and the courts will judge its seriousness on the number of people who were likely to see it. So if someone with four followers tweets something and someone with 20,000 followers retweets it the second would be deemed the more serious libel in terms of both whether the courts would agree to hear it and any possible award for damages. That's because the courts generally assume that if someone is libelled they want as few people as possible to see it to minimise the damage to their reputation.

I'd have thought the first thing the court will need to establish is whether the comment is libellous or not.

@Impatiens

I'd have thought the first thing the court will need to establish is whether the comment is libellous or not.

Well yes of course. But libel awards are based on the amount of financial loss that someone may have suffered due to damage to their repuation. If someone with half a dozen twitters follows libels you and then removes it when asked the courts are not likely to take it very seriously unless one of them is your boss or something. If someone has 70,000 followers that is a different matter.

The best thing to do would be to say something like I deny the claims made about me by x and have sought legal advice. Retweeting the libel and getting all your followers to pile onto them looks more like a personal spat than any sincere concern about the libel being propagated. Usually when people are libelled they want to shut it down, not amplify it.

I think libel law needs to catch up with the internet age. When I discovered what was going on, it was already in 4 newspapers and thousand of twitter accounts. If the court criticise me for attempting to promote my version of events - so be it. But remaining silent was not an option in the face of such wide spread dissemination of such a grotesque twisting of what I had said.

Sorry to see some people are even trying to shut down your fund raising page Spero.

Thanks for the update @Spero.

I wonder who requested the names to be removed? I can hazard a guess although I won't name them.

One of the individuals concerned has unlocked their twitter amount, I notice. Interesting.

@PatsArrow

That's how folk like that operate., they are desperate to shut down any dissenting voices.

They shouldn't need to, if their case stands on its own merits.