Looking at bad arguments is a hobby of mine. So when I discovered Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) had been suspended from Twitter last night, I had a look at what people were saying about it. Long story short, it was a combination of “Nero was suspended for no reason” and “Ooh, now you’ve messed with the wrong person”. (Irony much?)

Also, five attempts to teach gamergaters some vocabulary lessons.

1. Your burner account is extra vulnerable.

So you made a new Twitter account for gamergate because you didn’t want your behavior tied to your usual account. Then you made another after a handful of people you sealioned reported you for spam and your account was insta-suspended. Then you did it all again.

In addition to suggesting that you’re bad at being social, this experience is going to give you a skewed sense of how Twitter operates. The fact that you keep getting suspended after a group of reports doesn’t mean that everyone does. The Twitter spam algorithms marked your account as spam because the ratio of reports to people you interacted with was high enough to hit their threshold.

This doesn’t happen to accounts that have been established for a long time simply because they’ve interacted with more people. (Possibly also had more people interact with them. Twitter doesn’t publicize these rules, but they’ve been through a good bit of reverse engineering.) That means that when an established account is suspended, a human being made that call, not an algorithm. You might not like the decision, but no one gamed the system.

Also, learn what “false flag” means. It’s not a synonym for “false report”.

2. The timing of a suspension means nothing.

I’ve reported abusive behavior to Twitter. I’ve had responses in two days. I’ve had responses in five months. There’s some indication Twitter is generally responding to reports more quickly, but some recent suspensions are still the result of months-old reports. They may even pre-date gamergate.

The only thing you can tell from when an account was suspended is that this is when Twitter made a decision to act. The only thing you can say with any confidence is that specific statements about who is responsible for the report leading to any individual suspension are probably wrong, except when someone takes responsibility publicly.

Even then, you have no idea how old the behavior being reported is. When it gets easier to report or when people start seeing, as they have lately, that Twitter is following up on reports, people may decide to report things they thought were hopeless at the time. So knock off the wailing about how the Women, Action & the Media partnership has meant the immediate death of free speech.

Also, learn what “free speech” means. It is not “unfettered access to every platform”.

3. Women, Action, & the Media can’t suspend anyone.

This one is really simple. Read the press release.

WAM! will escalate validated reports to Twitter and track Twitter’s responses to different kinds of gendered harassment.

Read the Verge article on the topic.

“If it checks out, we’ll escalate it to Twitter right away (24 hours max, hopefully much less than that) and work to get you a speedy resolution,” says the group, which abbreviates itself as WAM. “But please note: we’re not Twitter, and we can’t make decisions for them.”

WAM! may agree that someone has engaged in gendered harassment, but all they do is endorse the complaint and report back from Twitter. Twitter’s support team makes the decisions and suspends the accounts. Or not. Their choice, not WAM!’s, even if the report went through WAM! before Twitter looked at it.

Anyone who tries to tell you Yiannopoulos’s suspension is something WAM! did is working to undermine that project, either out of ignorance or entirely knowingly. It’s not going anywhere because of Yiannopoulos had to use his other accounts for a few hours.

Also, learn the definition of “harassment”. It is not a synonym for “reporting”.

4. Twitter will tell you why you’re suspended.

Assuming your Twitter account has been around long enough with enough acceptable behavior that it can’t be shut down by a bot (and possibly under those circumstances too), Twitter doesn’t just shut you down and dust their hands off. If you appeal your suspension, you will be informed which of the provisions in their TOS you’ve been found to have violated.

The most common of these in my limited experience is “targeted abuse”. That means continuing to pester someone who has you blocked. Others include “threats”, “doxxing”, and “spreading false information”. None of them are things like “disagreeing” or “not liking SJWs”. None of them are pleasant.

People who have been suspended know in a general sense what Twitter says they’ve done. They choose not to tell you. Now you know why.

Also, please learn the definition of “persecution”. It does not mean “applying the consequences you were told would be applied”.

5. Coming back from suspension isn’t a triumph.

If your account has been around long enough with enough acceptable behavior before it’s suspended for (the first) TOS violation, you have the option to come back. However, this doesn’t happen because you appealed to Twitter or because your followers tweeted at @Support en masse. It happens because you promise to behave yourself.

When I was suspended accidentally instead of the person Twitter meant to suspend, I went through several channels to get the problem fixed. One of them was Twitter’s suspension-appeal process. When you send in an appeal, you’re automatically sent an email that directs you to another form where you tell Twitter you promise to abide by their TOS.

There’s nothing rebellious about it. It is, in fact, an act of submission to Twitter. There’s nothing in the process about Twitter changing their mind or saying the reports are unfounded. You just promise to be a good little Twitter user. Then you do that or get suspended again, sometimes permanently.

Keep that in mind the next time you see someone declaring their reinstatement a victory for free speech or proof “they” can’t keep “us” down. Remember it now when you see Yiannopoulos thanking Twitter for handling those “malicious reports”. It’s all paint and bravado.

Also, learn the definition of “victory”. It is not a synonyn for “probation”.