Twelve Days of Poetic Freedom: A Letter from the Twitter (X) Jail
How I got permanently banned from Twitter (X) for posting poetry about truth, peace, and love
Censored! Alarmed by many truths untold, I took my pen, addressed the world. Truth, peace, and love my guiding star, Frontier Man, my avatar. Among my lines, the readers found A kinship crossing party’s bound. From left to right, the love did flow, 'Till X stepped in to deal the blow. "Manipulation!" was their claim, They cast me out from whence I came. Fourteen long years of tweets erased, As if I'd never graced the place. No warning shot across the bow, No reasons why, explaining how. I vanished like a morning mist, My voice was gone; I was dismissed. Yet Elon, you, who holds the throne, Who vowed to keep free speech our own Did you forget your solemn vow? Or were you jesting with us now? I ask you, Elon, what's your stand? Are freedoms safe in X's hand? Or must the poets halt their verse, defeated by the censor's curse?
Video version of my poem Censored! is available here:
Becoming a Poet
I loved poetry as a child, I still have vivid memories of myself reciting a poem in front of all the students of my elementary school. Decades later,
I rediscovered poetry as an adult and wrote a few poems. Although I did not initially intend to publish them, I showed them to my friends who enjoyed my writing and encouraged me to publish my poetry. Finally, on August 17, 2023,
I finally decided that I am ready to reveal my creative work to the world. I set up my Substack account for my new poetry blog, Verses and Visions, published the first six poems and started posting them on X/Twitter at the @thefrontierman, the account I had since 2009. My X account was followed by many influential X users with 100k+ followers and some accounts with 1m+ followers.
The Frontier Man
I published six of my poems on Substack and X, under the pseudonym
The Frontier Man. There is a long history of poets using pseudonyms or pen names for a variety of reasons, including artistic expression, desire for anonymity to protect themselves and their families due to the sensitive or controversial nature of their creative work, to avoid the biases that readers or publishers might have based on a writer's gender, ethnicity, or nationality. Mark Twain, Charles Bukowski, and Maya Angelou are among the many poets and writers who published poetry and prose under pseudonyms or pen names.
The Founding Fathers of the United States also often used pseudonyms or published anonymously when discussing topics like war or foreign policy to protect their identities, allow for more candid debate, or maintain the focus on the argument and the ideas rather than the author. Most notable examples include Federalist Papers in which Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote under the pseudonym "Publius." Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense“, an influential pamphlet calling for independence of thirteen US colonies from Great Britain, was also initially published anonymously.
I do not want to be a public person. I do, however, feel that I have ideas and poetry to contribute for the benefit of society. Who I am is not important. This is not about me, it’s about truth and censorship of free speech. It’s about the ideas and ideals of truth, peace, and love that I am writing about. Writing under a pseudonym allows for the focus to be on the ideas and poetry, not my identity. I also chose to use a pen name to protect the privacy of my family and protect my children from attacks motivated by racism or ideology of those who may disagree with me. I hope my privacy and the privacy of my family will be respected.
Poems about Truth, Peace, and Love
I first published The Algorithm, a satirical critique of censorship and manipulation of news by social media giants, widely documented in the TwitterFiles and other recent investigative reporting. Secrets and Freedom further explored censorship, government secrets and the wars they facilitate. Humor is dead! is about the pernicious impact of propaganda and censorship on humor and comedy in society. Sickcare is an expose of the injustice, exorbitant cost and cruelty of the healthcare system. Finally, The Empire is dedicated to giving voice to the victims of the endless wars and is a call for love for all humanity.
Among the many inspirations for my poetry was what Albert Einstein wrote in a condolence letter toward the end of his life, “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”
Outpouring of Love
Reader response to my poetry was beautiful and overwhelmingly full of love. My poetry posts have gone “viral” and thousands of X users have read the poems, liked and reposted them and wrote beautiful reviews. I include some of the reviews here:
Love and support for my poetry transcended political lines, getting glowing reviews from both the left and the right. One Japanese reader was inspired by my poem Sickcare to write his own poem in Japanese on the same subject. Some readers even compared my poetry to the work of Nobel Prize in Literature Rudyard Kipling and Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandburg. Several readers draw parallels to the recent hit song Rich Men North of Richmond. They were perhaps too kind to a new poet. Almost all reviews and comments were full of love and encouragement. Hundreds of new users followed my X account.
Sudden and Permanent Ban
Sadly, my last poem The Empire must have been too much for the X censors to allow so on August 29, 2023, twelve days after I started publishing my poetry on X, my honeymoon with X came to a screeching halt. I received this unexpected email:
Even though my X account was created in 2009 and was never previously censored, banned or even received a warning, the account had been permanently banned, resulting in the loss of all my followers and all tweets.
I am now unable to post anything or even view my previous posts. X has completely obliterated fourteen years of my tweets from the Internet. It is like I never existed at all. All my poems, articles, thoughts permanently deleted, my voice banned and completely canceled. X also does not even allow me to download the history of my account, in direct violation of California Consumer Privacy Act.
I requested an explanation from X asking which specific tweets violated Twitter policies, which specific policies were violated and why my account was permanently banned without a warning. To date, I have not received any response from X.
One possible reason for this permanent ban is that my primary publishing platform is Substack and it is also well known that X has been suppressing Substack posts since the change of ownership. As a result, many authors using Substack have decided to stop using X as a platform, for example here a popular publisher abandoning Twitter explains their decision.
I am very grateful for the love and support of my poetry by my readers. I also feel very sorry that X has deprived you of the poetry you subscribed to enjoy. Sadly, it is indeed a sign of our times that poetry about truth, peace and love is so controversial that it must be censored and permanently banned.
Considering the political nature of the speech involved, lack of any legitimate reasons for the ban and X’s deafening silence in response to my questions, it is hard to consider this permanent ban anything but a brazen act of censorship. Unfortunately, it fits into a broader pattern of re-introduction of totalitarian censorship at X under the leadership of its new CEO Linda Yaccarino.
X’s history of censorship, Elon Musk’s stated commitment to free speech, and reintroduction of censorship under the new X CEO Linda Yaccarino
I chose to use X to publish my poetry because I truly believed that under Elon Musk ownership, X was committed to free speech and would be free of censorship. Obviously, I was very naive.
From TwitterFiles publications and other investigative reporting by independent journalists, it became widely known that prior to Twitter’s acquisition by Elon Musk on October 22, 2022, Twitter and other social networking giants engaged in large scale censorship at the request of government and intelligence agencies, banning, removing and shadow-banning US and non-US accounts that published content which was lawful but inconvenient to the government.
To Elon Musk's credit, he allowed independent journalists access to X internal communications to investigate the government censorship and publish their findings as TwitterFiles, a series of tweet storms documenting government censorship at Twitter prior to Musk's takeover.
In July 2023, a U.S. District Judge issued an injunction prohibiting US government from engaging in these censorship actions in violation of the First Amendment rights under the US Constitution. In his injunction, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty cited “substantial evidence” of a far-reaching censorship campaign. He wrote that the “evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’ ”
Before and after the Twitter acquisition on October 22, 2022, Elon Musk called himself a "free speech absolutist" and stated publicly his goal of ensuring free speech on Twitter:
Unfortunately, instead of stopping censorship and allowing free speech as Elon promised the public, X doubled up on censorship, set up a new “trust and safety” team and invented a new "lawful but awful" standard to make their renewed and more extreme censorship more socially acceptable (Video. Twitter new CEO Linda Yaccarino. CNBC. Aug. 10, 2023):
Linda Yaccarino: And today, I can confidently sit in front of you and say that 99.9% of all posted impressions are healthy.
Host: How do you define healthy, though? Is porn healthy? Are conspiracy theories healthy?
Linda Yaccarino: You know, it goes back to my point about our success with freedom of speech, not reach. And if it is lawful, but it's awful, it's extraordinarily difficult for you to see it.
Source: Glenn Greenwald, locals.com
Obviously, making content "extraordinarily difficult to see" has the same effect as overt censorship - X users are unable to see the censored content. In the context of adults, terms like “health”, “trust” and "safety" are simply euphemisms for censorship of lawful speech. As you might remember, Yoel Roth, pre-Musk Twitter's Chief Censor, had the title of the company’s head of "trust and safety".
It is now clear that X failed to live up to Elon's stated goal of allowing free speech on the platform. To the contrary, available evidence suggests X censorship has become worse, not better. According to Forbes (April 27, 2023):
"Twitter has fully complied with more than 80% of government and courts’ requests to remove or alter content since Elon Musk bought the company, up from around 50% before he took over, according to a report from the technology publication Rest of World, reflecting a discordance with the billionaire’s promises to limit political censorship."
I want to make it clear that I am not an Elon Musk hater. I have tremendous respect for Elon's massive contributions to society through his businesses.
I also believe that usability and speed of X have improved under Elon’s ownership.
However, this increasingly more totalitarian censorship by X is what really matters. It appears that X is no longer committed to free speech and is now actively undermining it.
History of totalitarian censorship of free speech
History is full of examples of totalitarian regimes censoring poetic and artistic expression. For example, the Soviet Union censored many poets, including Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and many others.
Under Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany, censorship and persecution were widespread, targeting not just Jews, but also Communists, Socialists, Romani people, and others, as well as poets, writers, intellectuals and artists who were seen as threats to the Nazi ideology. The censored poets included well known authors such as Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Heine, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Paul Celan.
One of the most iconic examples of Nazi censorship is the book burnings that took place in 1933. These were public events where books by Jewish authors, as well as those by other "un-German" or "decadent" writers, were burned. These events were symbolic acts meant to purify German culture of "un-German" influences. This idea was encapsulated in the phrase "Gegen die undeutsche Geist" (Against the Un-German Spirit).
The works of many great German poets, such as Heinrich Heine, a Jew who had long been dead by the time the Nazis came to power, were banned and burned. Writers who were living at the time, like Erich Maria Remarque, author of "All Quiet on the Western Front," had their citizenship revoked and their works banned. Many of the leading German and European poets including Gertrud Kolmar, Miklós Radnóti, Itzhak Katzenelson, and Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, were sent to concentration camps and murdered by the Nazis.
It was a dark chapter in the history of intellectual freedom, and the loss to German culture was immense. Many of the intellectuals and artists who fled or were killed were among the most brilliant minds of their generation, and the works that were banned or destroyed represented some of the greatest achievements of German culture.
History serves as a stark reminder of the devastating consequences of losing free speech. It was the censorship and propaganda that enabled the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. It is my hope that we can still veer away from the precipice of totalitarian censorship and reclaim the fundamental right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
I believe that it is my civic duty to expose these acts of censorship, in order to prevent the further deterioration of public discourse into a state of oppressive government censorship and control.
Questions on censorship for Elon Musk and X
Therefore, I publicly challenge Elon Musk and X explain their censorship actions and to answer these important questions:
Are Elon Musk and X still committed to preserving free speech? How do they define limits of free speech now?
Is a permanent ban without any warning of an X account publishing poetry about truth, peace, and love consistent with Elon Musk's stated goal of preserving free speech?
Who was adversely affected by my poetry, and what is the nature of this adverse impact?
Who at X is authorized to take these extreme censorship measures, who actually made the decision to permanently censor my account and why?
Were any government agencies, officials or politicians involved in this censorship decision or in discussion of my account? Who were they and what was their role in these censorship actions?
How often does X permanently ban accounts without warning, and what are the criteria used for this extreme punishment?
Why did X violate California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) by not allowing me to download my data? How many other users' legal rights under CCPA were violated and why? Has X disclosed these violations to regulators, Securities and Exchange Commission, and investors?
What other violations of consumer rights does X engage in and are they disclosed these violations to users, regulators, Securities and Exchange Commission, and investors?
Why should users and advertisers invest in building their audiences on X if their financial investment in the audience, integration and content can be completely wiped out at any time without warning, explanation or ability to reinstate the account?
Will X refund all the amounts spent on advertising the X accounts by myself and all other censored users and businesses? Since they completely lost all their investments in building audiences on X, shouldn't they be compensated financially for their loss?
Would other services in the "Everything App" also be censored arbitrarily for political reasons? It would serve all X users and the public to understand X's censorship policies before they use or pay for any of the services.
If Elon Musk and X are truly committed to transparency and free speech, they should answer these questions. In the interest of transparency, I also call on X to release all communications with all outside parties related to my account.
These and many other X censorship actions raise larger legal and policy questions that must be addressed: should big tech monopolies that effectively became "public utilities" or platforms with strong network effects with monopoly power, be allowed to restrict lawful speech, including artful expression in poetry? How should these natural monopolies be regulated to stop totalitarian censorship of free speech guaranteed by the US Constitution?
Artwork
Censored!
The Frontier Man
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