Thank you, Twitter, for keeping us “safe”

Letting social media make your decisions for you!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Twitter account tweeted the above subterfuge on April 3, 2022. Forty minutes later, healthcare activist Laura Marston tweeted at Pelosi to add some MUCH-needed context:

Within an hour, Marston returned to Pelosi’s amount to find this:

The message, blocking Marston from viewing tweets from Pelosi’s account reads: “Autoblocked by Twitter. You're temporarily autoblocked from viewing and interacting with @TeamPelosi's tweets. This happened when they were in Safety Mode, and we flagged your interactions as potentially abusive or spammy.”

The censorship is justified by Twitter as such: “Twitter is currently testing an autoblock feature called Safety Mode in select regions. Twitter detects and blocks potentially abusive or spammy accounts from joining your conversations on Twitter. Now, when you send a Tweet that generates unwelcome interactions, you may not need to manually block those accounts to stop the unwelcome interactions because Twitter will do it for you. Autoblocks last for 7 days, and they won’t impact people you follow or interact with regularly.”

Safety Mode “highlights” include:

• Twitter does the work, autoblocks come from us.

• Autoblocks are temporary (unlike manual account blocks which you manage).

• If we get it wrong, you can remove the autoblock from the account.

• Autoblocked accounts can’t interact with you, and won’t see your Tweets, follow you, or send you Direct Messages

• Autoblocked accounts will only see that “Twitter has autoblocked” them, rather than you.  

• Existing replies from autoblocked accounts move to the bottom of the conversation. 

Are you feeling safe yet? 

Mickey Z. is the founder of Helping Homeless Women - NYC, offering direct relief to women on New York City streets. To help him grow this project, CLICK HERE and donate right now. And please spread the word!