Somewhere last month, I released an article expressing how tech giants like Facebook, Twitter etc. were coming together to put an end to extremist movement in their respective platforms. Just as we think, the tables are turning around, Twitter made a controversial move that relates to the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Before we get down to business, let me paint the picture of the events that happened 30 years ago in Tiananmen Square:
The Chinese government has just been taken over by Deng Xiao Ping, after the death of Mao Zedong. Communism rule was helping out the lower income population but did not take in consideration of the middle-income. In fear that the current government was not beneficial for them, students, intellectuals and labour activists, organised to protest on a change from communism to a more democratic government in Tiananmen Square. On June 4th 1989, the government used force to end the protest, which ended up killing, more than a 1000 people.
Ever since that unfortunate day, the Chinese government has been trying to cover this up, making sure the existence of this event is unknown in means of helping to avoid any similar situation occurring again. Thus many Chinese citizens are unaware of what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and if they did know, they are forbidden to talk about it.
So where did Twitter come in all this mess? Days before the 30th anniversary of the massacre, in their efforts on taking down bots and accounts that engaged in a mix of spamming, inauthentic behaviour, & ban evasion, Twitter took down thousands of Chinese accounts especially those that spoke about their government openly. Twitter’s response:
Maybe taking down a couple of twitter accounts in the process of cleaning up bots, would make more sense than losing 1000s of twitter accounts. Clearly, someone is involved in this controversy, and all the hands point towards the Chinese government. Who else would be the most likely of an instigator than a government that has a firewall up its internet so that it’s citizens won’t be exposed to the world?
Was this a coincidence? It really feels not.
As of now, there has not been any news on the suspended accounts and what has happened to them, even though Twitter mentioned they will take action on this situation. Even though Twitter has expressed to eradicate extremist behaviours, now it looks like they may be the enabler at the end.