Tweeting Bird or Cowardly Lion

It's pretty helpful to have the anniversaries of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and D-Day close to each other on the calendar, because each of them offers us examples of people risking their safety and even their lives in the cause of human freedom.

And the two events shine bright lights on those who, it would seem, would not have been among them. Such as the micro-blogging platform Twitter, which mysteriously suspended or closed down the accounts of Chinese dissidents a day or so before June 4, then reinstated them a few days later. "Oops," the company explained. As a part of routine monitoring of fake or scam accounts, they often suspend bunches of accounts in accordance with regular policies. After review, legitimate accounts go back up, but that review can take a day or so.

A couple of thoughts on The Federalist's story. One, writer Helen Raleigh should have gotten more than one source. It's certainly possible that the whole thing was a coincidence or an overreaction by dissidents who see the hand of their former government in every action. It's possible the man she's quoting was exaggerating, or the people he spoke with were exaggerating.

Two, someone at Twitter is very very dumb, or at best dismally unaware of history. It seems the company's trackers didn't connect an uptick in the number of Chinese-language accounts being flagged to the anniversary of a Chinese government crackdown. Did it accurately explain what happened? Were the accounts suspended because they were among the "false positives" their routine monitoring practice can generate, and not because of pressure from the Chinese government? Perhaps so. But being unaware of the impression generated by the suspension of a significant number of dissident accounts in the days leading up to the anniversary of Tiananmen is a show of more than moderate ignorance.

Given the way that tech and entertainment companies have a reputation for bowing to the whims of those who control one of the largest markets in the world, a little extra thought about the coincidences might have been a good idea. Because although the company's explanation may be the right one, the simplest one is that they did exactly what they are accused of, again, and that if D-Day had failed we'd be seeing a similar "Oops!" about mass suspension of the accounts of European refugees starting around June 4.