David Simon returned from his Twitter suspension with a fury on Friday, calling out CEO Jack Dorsey for what he sees as the platform’s hypocrisy in how it deals with trolls.
“Die of boils, @jack. Yup. There it is. The sum total of my crime against Twitter,” tweeted the creator of HBO series “The Wire,” “Treme” and “The Deuce,” in a lengthy thread (which you can read below). “I’ve told you to drop dead, as I told libelers and liars to drop dead. You can say that constitutes a threat, but that would be empty and embarrassing. I hold no dominion over life & death.”
Simon wrote on his personal website two weeks ago that he was suspended from the platform for telling Twitter trolls to drop dead, or as he put it: “Slander is cool, brutality is acceptable. But the hyperbolic and comic hope that a just god might smite the slanderer or brutalizer with a deadly skin disorder is somehow beyond the pale.”
Simon’s main issue was that he was not able to get a clear explanation as to why his tweets were deemed unacceptable but “a–holes who slander 14-year-old Holocaust survivors” are allowed to “repeat itself for months on end.”
“I’ve given you two patient weeks, @jack, to engage in any coherent, honorable and intellectually honest way with the substance of my appeal of a 01110011101-brained conceputalization of rhetoric that honors slander and falsehood but cannot somehow abide mere insult. Nothing,” he tweeted.
Simon began his expletive-filled tweet storm: “Still waiting for a cogent explanation of why the common rhetoric of telling assholes to drop dead is prohibited on your s—hole platform. But allowing said assholes to slander women who have had children kidnapped is fine by you…”
The suspension coincided with the death of Simon’s close friend, Anthony Bourdain. Simon was especially angry that he was not able to share his feelings for the former TV host on Twitter, instead penning a lengthy tribute on his website.
“Still waiting for you to either restore those posts or provide any response to your conduct, which includes barring me from commenting on the death of friend, while some s–t-troll remains on Twitter unmolested, declaring – unevidenced – that the death was a political murder,” Simon wrote.
You can read Simon’s full (profanity-laced) thread full below:
1) @jack, @twitter, @TwitterSupport: Still waiting for a cogent explanation of why the common rhetoric of telling assholes to drop dead is prohibited on your shithole platform. But allowing said assholes to slander women who have had children kidnapped is fine by you…
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
2) Still waiting, @jack, for an explanation of how telling assholes who slander 14-year-old Holocaust survivors they should drop dead is impermissible, but the slander is allowed to repeat itself for months on end on Twitter.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
3) Still waiting, you fuckmooks, for a human intellect to engage me directly and forthrightly about the fact that I was obliged to remove posts that I can in every way defend in order to even register a complaint or appeal of a suspension.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
4) Still waiting for you to either restore those posts or provide any response to your conduct, which includes barring me from commenting on the death of friend, while some shit-troll remains on Twitter unmolested, declaring – unevidenced – that the death was a political murder.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
5) I've given you two patient weeks, @jack, to engage in any coherent, honorable and intellectually honest way with the substance of my appeal of a 01110011101-brained conceputalization of rhetoric that honors slander and falsehood but cannot somehow abide mere insult. Nothing.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
6) The fact is, your algorithms and your ethos here is just fecal. And when the history of this awful American epoch is written, the tone-deaf abdication of fundamental ethics by social media platforms will be an overlay to the disaster. You are failing us all miserably…
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
7) And what is evident, @jack, is that while the giants of our digital revolution are masters of the universe when it comes to the technical challenges of the information age, they are — by and large — moral midgets when it comes to the ethics and responsibilities of speech.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
8) And, oh yeah, no need to hide behind your horseshit cowardice that privacy concerns prevent you from discussing or defending in detail Twitter's actions with regard to this extant overreach by your agolrithmic submoronity. I hereby relinquish any expectation of said privacy…
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
9) I'd be delighted to debate and discuss this abject failure by Twitter openly with any representative of this soulless platform provided an actual human can be engaged. But I have no expectations, @jack. The remote gutlessness of this one-sided dynamic is no bug, but a feature.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
https://twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1010331695156023301
11) Just as I lack possession of any biological agent that could cause a venereal rash to settle in the throat of a lying fuckmook who is saying that a woman who has had her child kidnapped is a criminal who deserves that fate. These are not threats, you gutless wonder…
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
…they are insults. As I am insulting you now for providing a continued platform for trolls and bots who peddle this shit, or the notion that teenaged Holocaust survivors can be libeled, or that my friend Tony Bourdain was murdered to advance the politics of the alt-right….
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
I have not encouraged anyone to violence, or doxxed anyone, or suggested any act of human intervention against anyone. Nor can you claim that I have harassed a single troll or bot; I fire one and block the motherfuckers. Hardly the stuff of harassment, @jack.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
Yet, this is where you draw the line? Really? @jack, @twitter, @twittersupport. Please reinstate my removed tweets. And if that is too much for you beshitted hypocrites, then shut down my account and run screaming into the night because, well, dead you mooks oughta drop.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018
But let the record show, I waited a full two weeks after my suspension, and a week after my reinstatement, to give you hollow fuckstumbles a chance to engage fairly with the appeal that I forwarded to you as directed. Nothing. Nada. Not a word back. Fuck all y'all.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) June 23, 2018