Guess who just got unpersoned on the internet? No, not Smash Mouth™. Nope, not that short dude with no neck from that reality show. Definitely not Scott Bakula either. Give up? This guy:
The oligarchy of U.S. tech companies met up in their secret bunker and decided to give ole’ Trumpy the boot. Sorry big guy. No more beefing with celebrities and calling your political opponents dumb losers for the time being.
Some people are big mad at Trump being exiled, while some are ecstatic. Most seem to be a bit delusional as to the actual reason he was given the boot. Tech companies always give some bullshit explanation about “T.O.S. (Term of Service) violations”, but this isn’t the reality of the situation.
Here it is:
Yeah.. no. No, they didn’t ban Trump to “save democracy”, but it’s absolutely adorable that you actually think that. You probably believe in witchcraft too, so I’m not gonna hold you to too high of a standard here “moonmagic66”.
This isn’t about safety or Terms of Service violations. It’s not about saving anything other than the company itself. It’s about P.R. and corporate optics. It’s bad P.R. for these sites to not ban Trump. Not getting rid of him would lead to them getting hurt the only place it matters to them. Their wallets.
Peep this Jpeg:
Now how exactly are Pinterest™ and TikTok™ saving democracy by banning Trump? Was he going to upload a quiche recipe and film a K-Pop dance video? How about Spotify™? Are they preventing Trump from dropping a hot new mixtape? He doesn’t even use any of those platforms. None of them mattered. These are just empty gestures.
These companies don’t do things like banning high profile people out of some sort of virtuous gesture. They do so to stave off bad P.R. The middle-aged housewives who use Pinterest™ to post eleventy billion photos of their cats aren’t going to stage a mutiny against the company now. “Yay! My favorite social media platform banned someone who probably wasn’t even aware it existed! Democracy is saved!”.
The only two platforms the fella used on that list are Facebook™ and Twitter™. I’ve never seen his Facebook™ page, and it looks like I’ll never get to now, but I’m assured that it did in fact exist. I wonder if he used it to post any dank memes. His Twitter™ account is for sure gone though.
Ah, yes. Look there. It appears that Trump violated the “Twitter Rules™”, whatever those actually are. Unfortunately not even Twitter™ knows what their own damn rules are. Seriously. Twitter™ is an absolute shit-hole of a site, and I’m not being facetious either. I’m on it all the time to research these posts and I need to take a shower afterwards. Here’s a list of things you can find on Twitter™ at this very moment that somehow don’t violate their arbitrary and barely enforced “Twitter Rules™”:
– Child Porn
– Death Threats
– Virulent Homophobia
– Pro-Genocide Propaganda
– Blatant Racism
– And Many Other Hits!
Yes, child porn. When I first heard the rumblings that there was a bit of a child porn problem on Twitter™, I initially though it was hyperbole, or some conspiracy theory. But alas, there are so many accounts peddling the stuff that people have started accounts whose sole purpose is to highlight the offending accounts so their followers can mass report them. These illicit accounts continue to stay up until enough people complain and Twitter™ finally deletes them, only for more to immediately pop up. Great system you got there, Twitter™
Let’s also tackle the pro-genocide propaganda, shall we? That certainly sounds like something that should be in violation of the “Twitter Rules™”.
You read that right. A Chinese government account pushing propaganda that a “study” was done showing Uygur women were actually happier now that they’ve had their state-sanctioned sterilization. The “eradicating extremism” alludes to where the government rounded up all the Muslims and put them into re-education camps to make them less Muslim-y. Soon they’ll be way less Muslim-y, because they can’t reproduce. And Twitter™ apparently had no problem with this content.
That is, until enough people complained and the post was removed. The account is still there posting all kinds of delicious propaganda, but that single post was removed. This only happened because enough people reported it, not because Twitter™ saw a problem with it to begin with. Do you see how this whole “it’s a P.R. thing, not T.O.S. thing” works?
People have been complaining to Twitter™ to ban Trump for the better part of the last four years. There were petitions and all those other pointless trivialities people like to sign because they think that’s how the world works. Dude’s been violating their T.O.S. constantly for the last four years. Was the 67th time the one that finally did it?
If he had ended up winning a second term, you can bet your sweet cheeks there’s no chance he would have been banned. He was entirely too good for engagement on their platform. None of that really matters now, because he was down to his last 2 weeks in office. Twitter™ really has nothing to lose at this point.
I know it must come as a shock that corporations do things for personal benefit and not for the greater good. This next revelation will probably come as a shock too, so you might want to sit down. Ok… you know how all those companies change their logos for pride month? That’s just a P.R. move too. Can you believe it?
Same as when they black out their social media over a death. It’s purely performative. Do you honestly think Nike™ cares if a black dude gets shot by the police? Nike™ doesn’t even care enough about human life to not use kids as slave labor. If you do happen to have a reputation for using slave labor, it’s certainly good P.R. to hop on the latest social cause band wagons though. Unfortunately this tactic seems to actually work.
Hey there Black Community. Times got ya down? Don’t worry, *checks notes* Gushers™ brand fruity childhood diabetes fruit snacks has your back. What exactly they’ve done beyond virtue signalling to earn empty likes and grow their social media presence is anyone’s guess. But at least they’ve put in the minimal amount of effort possible to acknowledge a problem, and that’s what really counts.
it’s not just 3rd tier childhood fruit snacks getting in on the action. The Banks™ and Oil™ companies are all in on the action now too.
Good to see that you guys could take time off foreclosing on people’s houses and dumping oil on baby seal’s faces to make a statement about something that doesn’t affect you. Regardless of who ends up in the White House, you’re just going to bribe them to be allowed to continue doing shitty things anyway, but thank you for the sentiment. I’ll sleep safer tonight knowing that the Banks™ continue to be a voice of morality in our society.
This trend where corporations create twitter accounts to try to meme and get political is so embarrassing. Just sell me your cancer and stop trying to be relatable. We all know what you’re here for, and it isn’t to make a change, or join the discourse.
Ben and Jerry’s™ ice cream is consistently one of the worst cases of this. They type out 9-page political diatribes every time something in U.S. politics happens. At this point, they’re essentially just a political account that occasionally tweets out something about their actual products. They post these feel-good, boilerplate statements so that their pre-diabetic Northeastern housewife audience can pat themselves on the back for being “progressive” while gorging down another pint of I’m With Her Kale Quinoa Explosion.
The two guys who founded the company literally have nothing to do with it anymore. Unilever™ has owned it since 2000, and has actively gone out of their way to keep the whole “socially conscience” vibe going, despite Unilever being about as socially conscience as Exxon. The account is probably run by someone in a marketing department in Malaysia somewhere. The housewives don’t need to know this though. Just keep shoveling ice cream in their direction.
At least Steak-Umm™ is honest about it’s intentions:
So maybe stop attributing political benevolence to what corporations do. They literally don’t care until they are forced to for some reason, and that reason is usually monetary. Tech corporations shouldn’t be applauded for blatantly ignoring their own T.O.S., even if they occasionally make a good call in banning someone. They’re corporations, not people, and should be held accountable and held to some sort of standard in how they operate.
Most importantly, why is nobody concerned about this:
Twitter™ and Facebook™ just tanked an entire grifter industry. These people have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Now they’re going to have to go get real jobs, and that is an injustice. Won’t somebody think of these fine folks? The least Twitter™ could do is create a TrumpBot that procedurally generates Trump tweets so these people can continue tweeting hysterically in the mentions and selling #resist shirts to conspiratorial soccer moms. It’s the least they could do.