Following in the footsteps of former US president Donald Trump, Crikey found itself suspended from Twitter this morning. Like Trump’s ban, this is a devastating blow to free speech. Unlike Trump’s ban, ours is only temporary — we’ll be back on the platform from 7pm today.
Twitter says Crikey violated its rules against posting private information without “authorization [sic] and permission”. The tweets in question were, of course, tweets where we shared renegade MP Craig Kelly’s mobile number and politely suggested readers give him a dose of his own spammy medicine.
Look, we don’t disagree with the Twitter rule in general: of course you can’t go around doxing random members of the public. But Kelly isn’t a random member of the public. He’s an MP who exploited a loophole in the Spam Act 2003 to send mass spam texts harassing Australians with pleas to join his mate Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and then, more ominously, to link to “vaccine adverse events” information from the Therapeutic Goods Administration in order to undermine public confidence in vaccines.
Crikey felt it was fair game.
Unfortunately Twitter disagreed. And while it did give us an option to “submit an appeal”, it came with the warning that our account would remain suspended while it reviewed the appeal. Given it took Twitter over a month after the publication of the tweet to suspend us in the first place, we didn’t want to take our chances.
Not to mention, imagine explaining Kelly to a Twitter bot based in Silicone Valley, or anywhere outside Australia really. As Crikey’s associate editor Cam Wilson has written on a different topic, “control over what kind of information is allowed rests in the hands of unelected Silicon Valley tech types. And needless to say, they’re not motivated by concern for the health of Australia’s media ecosystem”.
Can you help us?
It’s a sad time to be locked out of Twitter. The NSW Liberal resignations! ICAC! The Pandora Papers! So much news to share. You can help us out by sharing our work as far and wide as you can. We’d very much appreciate the assistance from our loyal readers.
In the meantime, head to our Facebook, Instagram or, of course, the Crikey home page. We’ll be back on Twitter calling on people to spam Kelly in no time.
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