So we were suspended from Twitter within a week of setting up the account. After ‘appealing’, we received the following message:
Hello,
Your account has been suspended due to multiple or repeat violations of the Twitter Rules: https://twitter.com/rules.
Please do not respond to this email as replies and new appeals for this account will not be monitored.
Thanks,
Twitter Support
The content of the @deptfordresists account consisted of tweets against the Tidemill development, support for Tidemill demo callouts, criticism of Lewisham Labour elite councillors Joe Dromey, Paul Maslin, Paul Bell and Mayor Damien Egan (no bad scary language or personal info used, though they were called a bunch of parasites), and criticism of the classist Public Space Protection Order in place across Lewisham. And of course our blog posts were shared. Apparently all this constitutes some kind of repeat violation of unspecified Twitter rules. A number of the tweets drew attention to these councillors’ role in the destruction of Deptford, one pointed out the hypocrisy of Dromey speaking about inequality as part of his cushy job for the Institute for Public Policy Research whilst vocally supporting the eviction of council tenants in his ward. Given his self-victimising response to the criticism the Tidemill campaign has levelled at him so far and the protests that have taken place, we can only assume that he or other councillors appealed to Twitter to cushion him from the harsh truth being voiced by his constituents.
All we can say is good riddance to Twitter and Facebook. The more they try to police even remotely subversive content on their platforms, the more people are gonna get pissed off and abandon them – which can only be a good thing for mental health and society as a whole!
Support activist tech collectives like Riseup & Autistici/Inventati!
Fuck Dromey & Egan!