Twitter has a lot more power than they think they do. They could easily ban everyone that has white genocide, 14/88, etc in their bio and nobody worth mentioning would give a shit. Let Fox News and racist conservatives even try to bitch and talk about “fairness,” see how well that shit sells. Every asshole earnestly talking about the “day of the rope,” ban their ass. Got a swastika or SS lightning bolts in your bio, buh bye. Just set some interns to identifying problem accounts and don’t even bother reviewing appeals by people with multiple criteria hits. Just stop fucking around and clean house.

I bet the stock price climbs significantly when it becomes clear that shit won’t play. Let the rejects bitch and moan, cry about being silenced. Let them try to build their own alternative, it won’t go anywhere. People often like to think about free speech as an absolutism until they actually have to deal with it that way. That’s when they realize that in the real world, face to face reality imposes a set of tangible consequences on speech and conduct that for the most part severely moderate the average person’s behavior in public. There’s no reason to expect online private forums to operate with any less of an expectation of reasonable moderation.

The fact that we’ve come this far and still have idealistic techy libertarian children continually trying to resurrect the concept of the lawless digital frontier has become a pathetic joke. It’s time to make the consequences of online anti-social personality disorder absolutely real and long lasting.