re: #237 Charmingly Persistent (EmmaAnne)

People protesting in the wrong way again. Or at the worng time. Or with the wrong hashtag. Shakes head. Please let us know when and how it is OK to protest because we certainly wouldn’t want to do it wrong.

I think the objection in the comment is that the protest of staying of Twitter for a day will accomplish zip. Just like the protest over Leslie Jones. Just like protests about “I’m not shopping on a particular day” but I’ll give you all my money the day after.

For comparison I would cite the Montgomery Bus Boycott over de facto Jim Crow. (Montgomery never had a de jure segregation law on the private bus system.) What worked was African-Americans saying they wouldn’t put up with that crap any more, and they stayed away from the bus system for a whole year until it changed.

A day’s protest on Twitter is not about “the right way to protest.” A day’s protest on Twitter accomplishes zip other than a platitude from Jack Dorsey saying his company will look into new ways of preventing harassment.

Harassment is already against Twitter’s terms of service. All Twitter has to do is enforce what it already has. (That would require hiring people to actually process the complaints though, and heaven forfend Twitter spend money on that.)

Yesterday’s protest over an actress being suspended for a telephone number in her tweet was what broke the straw of the camel’s back (for one whole day because imagine being inconvenienced for a whole year like Birmingham African-Americans were), not the rampant death threats, rape threats, outings, bullying, &c. A freakin’ phone number spat.