Lindsay Shepherd banned from Twitter
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.27026
Summary
Free speech advocate Lindsay Shepard has been permanently banned from the social media platform. She doesn t know what caused it, but she suspects it was an exchange she had with a transgender activist who goes by Jessica Yaniv. But Yaniv also believes that no debate should be allowed.
Transcript
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Free speech activist Lindsay Shepard has been permanently banned from Twitter.
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She won't be the first person associated with the right to get kicked off the social media platform,
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and she certainly won't be the last, but her vaporization at the hands of a big tech company
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does send a particularly nasty chill through the free speech community,
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mainly because she's one of its most vocal and fervent activists,
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and I have a feeling she'll continue to be even without having the Twitter platform,
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though as she noted, she will no longer have the opportunity to correct falsehoods and slander
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She doesn't yet know which tweets caused them to pull the trigger,
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but she has a suspicion it was an exchange she had with a transgender activist who goes by Jessica Yaniv.
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Now this got a very tense reaction on both sides.
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Yaniv was tweeting about Lindsay Shepard's uterus and a reproductive abnormality about which Lindsay has been quite open,
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well, at least I have a uterus, and referred to Yaniv as a male.
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But Yaniv also believes that no debate should be allowed, no discussion should be allowed,
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actually was cheerleading when Lindsay Shepard's account was suspended by Twitter.
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Now, as a private company, Twitter has the right to decide who's on the platform and who's not.
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The issue that I want to expose is that Twitter claims it stands up for an open forum and a free platform,
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but in actuality exposes its own double standards routinely.
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Now, presumably Twitter was enforcing the section of its policy that prohibits dead naming or misgendering.
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It's actually in Twitter's policy that you are not allowed to, on Twitter, refer to a transgender person by a name or pronoun different than the one they prefer to use.
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But those same rules also prohibit talking about someone's body in a sexual way.
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Here's a tweet from Yaniv referring to Lindsay and her fiancé.
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This is expressly prohibited by Twitter, but that tweet is still up.
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Or this tweet, which is taking aim at Lindsay Shepard's body,
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something that as well would go under the sexist targeted harassment that Twitter bans.
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Big tech is not actually facilitating any open forum.
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It is simply imposing its own worldview on digital communication.
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Why that's so dangerous is because governments right now around the world, including Canada, including the UK,
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are getting into bed with big tech, imposing the government definition of free speech and hate speech on private companies,
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who seem all too willing to drop the hammer down on anyone that speaks in a manner that they say is out of line.
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Now, people on the right are going to say, let's boycott the platforms.
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But in reality, Facebook, Twitter are still the market leaders when it comes to social media communication.
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Ideally, these companies need to be held accountable by their users and hopefully change things a little bit.
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They have GDPs that exceed those of many nations.
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They are probably not going to heed the call here.
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But when people like Lindsey Shepard, who's a very measured, eloquent advocate on free speech,
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is deemed too controversial for Twitter, what is there for anyone else?
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Censorship is never going to solve any of the problems.
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What this exchange between Lindsey Shepard and Yaniv shows is that the other side is not interested in a debate.
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They are interested in shutting down anyone that does not 100% in lockstep go along with what they say.
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You don't win the debate when your opponents are silenced.
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All you do is delude and muddle and obscure the debate.
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True North is always standing up for free speech, but we can't do it alone.
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If you can join my Heritage Club for just a few dollars a month, you'll get access to some great goodies exclusively at True North.
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You can do that by heading on over to TNC.news.