Twitter's Former Head of the "Trust and Safety Council:" Babylon Bee, Libs of TikTok Are Both "Unsafe" and Cause Violence Through Their Arguments Against Leftwing Claims About Transgenderism

Don't worry, Mitch McConnell will bring Twitter back under leftwing censors' control within the year.

Woke former head of Trust and Safety at Twitter, Yoel Roth, left the company, then Twitter, and now is pontificating about how satire is a danger to democracy. Roth made the remarks at the Knight Foundation's "Informed: Conversations on Democracy in the Digital Age" at the end of November, after his time with Twitter had come to an end.

"Okay, Babylon Bee," moderator Kara Swisher posed to Roth, "which is what got him to buy the thing, I think. That's the one which is, which was not particularly funny. 'The Babylon Bee's Man of the Year is Rachel Levine.' Not funny. I didn't agree that they should have taken that down. But go ahead."

In the spring, the Babylon Bee had been declared by Twitter to be in violation of their "hateful conduct" policies for sharing a satirical article awarding Biden's transgender diversity hire, assistant Secretary to the Department of Health and Human Services Dr. Rachel Levine, a "man of the year" award. This was in response to Time Magazine naming Levine "woman of the year."

The satire account was locked out of Twitter pending their voluntary deletion of the tweet. Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dylan refused to comply. The violation was to the terms of Twitter's hateful conduct policy, which reads that users "may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease."

...

"You know, it's interesting," Roth replied to Swisher. "It's interesting to think about what the competing tensions around that are. And I want to start by acknowledging that the targeting and the victimization of the trans community on Twitter is very real, very life threatening and extraordinarily serious."

This concept from Roth that words are violence is one traveling like wildfire through liberal circles. The idea is that if anyone says anything offensive, that could encourage others to do mean things. This has been called "stochastic terrorism," and the goal of this kind of accusation is to suppress free speech.

"We have seen from a number of Twitter accounts, including Libs of TikTok, notably, that there are orchestrated campaigns that particularly are singling out a group that is already particularly vulnerable within society," Roth said.

"And so yeah, not only is it not funny, but it is dangerous, and it does contribute to an environment that makes people unsafe in the world. So let's start from the premise that it's f*cked up," he continued.

So his position is that simply disputing the left is effecting "calling for violence" against targeted communities.

Note that this is an evolution from Vijayye Giadde's (or whatever) old justification, which is that "misgendering" a transperson (which is really correctly "gendering" them) increases their chances of suicide. So... the idea is that you're encouraging them to commit self-violence? But I guess that argument doesn't work because the claims about transgenders and suicide are very disputed so now they're just going with "It's like stochastic terrorism or something You Guys."

Stochastic terrorism against political officials, stochastic terrorism against journalists... it's "stochastic terrorism" against anyone on the left the right has a dispute with. They are openly arguing that you're simply not permitted to disagree with them at all -- the risks are just too high.

They can target you for deplatforming and hate, of course. And if someone attacks you physically -- shrug. You deserved it anyway. They have already established that it's always justified to "punch a Nazi."

"Not all punches are created equal." Thus did the legal scholar than Chris "Fredo" Cuomo explain to us that antifa attacks on anti-antifa protesters were excusable and not quite crimes.

By the way, Yoel Roth also promoted all of Twitter's censors into "front-line" censors, thereby imbuing them with an unwarranted aura of heroism and self-sacrifice:

He also, of course, argued that the risks are too high to ever argue against, and name, anyone on the left or acting as an agent of the left.

I just wanted to say: I really am honored at the courage and devotion all of you Front-Line Readers, Front-Line Commenters, and Front-Line Cobloggers show every day, coming here and "manning the trenches" on the site.

You're all Front-Line Good Eggs are far as I'm concerned.

posted by Ace at 03:41 PM

| Access Comments