I miss Twitter.
Not the workload, but the opportunity to locate and send messages to other thinkers.
Today’s experiment was to see if by sending messages to people working at Twitter regarding my predicament of having been chewed up by their algorithm (to all appearances), I might obtain at least an explanation for what caused my account to be suspended. After sending a half-dozen private messages to different Twitter executives with LinkedIn accounts, I wrote this post on LinkedIn:
“Twitter: when does a social media account become an essential business tool?
This question arises after several temporary suspensions from a service that I had used to convey information and build a following of over thirty thousand people over the past two years.
I began using Twitter as an offshoot to posts on LinkedIn, when I noticed in late 2020 that some commentators regarding covid public health policies were getting censored and/or removed from LinkedIn. At that juncture, Twitter appeared to be a more open environment for discussion and debate.
Fast-forward to 2022, and Twitter has followed much the same path of censoring debate regarding covid public health policies. My particular area of concentration regarded covid vaccine safety, in keeping with my role as a physician.
Last week, my account on Twitter was suspended, and to date, all attempts to reach Twitter for an explanation have been met with silence.
I also write at Substack, however, it will take me months to rebuild the network that I had created via Twitter.
Although it is unsurprising, I do not find it to be professional. From my perspective, I am owed an explanation for why they have cut off service, after I had devoted much time and energy to contributing to the discussion there.
It is fitting that this situation has brought me back to LinkedIn, in the hopes of finding some way of addressing this breach of business ethics.”
We’ll see how this works out. It seems like a distraction from a focus on vaccine safety, however, I believe it is worthwhile to frame censorship on social media as a breach of business ethics. Perhaps in 2021, one could justify a “wartime mentality” approach, but in 2022, it no longer seems to make sense.
And smacks more of desperation than anything else.
I welcome your input on this. JMB MD