Thursday 25 February 2016

(SATIRE) Twitter Trust and Safety Council to relocate to the summit of Mount Olympus


The recently convened Twitter Trust and Safety Council will relocate to a multi-million dollar bespoke headquarters on the summit of Mount Olympus, where its members will dine upon naught but ambrosia, and govern the social media platform like a pantheon of old world gods.

News of the inscrutable regulatory body, with the power to 'recalibrate the poor language choices' of the website's 'problematically opinionated' user base, caused flagging Twitter stock to briefly rally on the markets. Potential advertisers were reportedly buoyed by the prospect that their inane hashtags would no longer be co-opted and used to openly ridicule the products and services that they were intended to promote.

A spokesperson for the council said:

While at ground level Twitter may be a conversation, the Trust and Safety Inquisitors will communicate exclusively in arbitrary edicts and Old Testament plagues and smitings.

The time has come for the rank and file site users to know their place, so tiny and insignificant are the minutiae of their lives to us. Those who we banish from the realm that their labours have helped to build, and which we have now lazily usurped, will not be made party to the reasons for their exile. It is not our job to explain ourselves to you. Know only that we are all powerful, that you have angered us, and that you are helpless in the face of our passive-aggressive disapproval.”

The spokesperson added:

Occasionally members of our council will walk among you in disguise. The exception to this rule will be Anita Sarkeesian, who doesn't come down from the mountain for anything less than $20,000, and only then to stiltedly read banal prepared statements, etched into stone tablets by somebody of marginally greater intelligence.”

Rumours suggest that the council plans to reconfigure the standard chronological Twitter feed according to the tenets of the progressive stack, where tweets will be displayed in reverse order of user privilege and white males will be denied posting rights and given 'reader only' access. Under new site terms and conditions, criticism of, and disagreement with, members of the Trust and Safety Council and their friends will be redefined as harassment.

Early casualties of the incipient regime include the blogger Robert Stacy McCain, who was cast into the purgatorial wilderness of Google Circles, where it is reported he has been sentenced to wander for 40 years as penance. Although the reasons for McCain's banishment have not been made public, Twitter scholars surmise that his failure to listen and believe in Sarkeesian, and to nod his head vigorously enough in response to her tweets may have contributed to his fate.

Earlier this year, the digital media dandy and Donald trump groupie, Milo Yiannopoulos was divested of the checkmark that identifies him to other users of Twitter.

As with McCain no reason was given for this removal of privileges. Sources close to Yiannopoulos describe the effect this loss of status has had upon the reporter's mental wellbeing as 'catastrophic':

Since losing his checkmark, Milo no longer recognises his own reflection and will spend hours stranding before a full length mirror transfixed in admiration of the toned, blonde-haired young man before-him. This level of self-absorption is completely out of character.”

An insider at Twitter told MODE 5 that Yiannopoulos's Twitter privileges could be restored if he is willing to perform 12 labours on behalf of the website's fickle and indolent moderation team. These would include slaying the sock-puppet hydra known as GamerGate, and mucking out the soiled web-browser history of the notorious internet edgelord, Sarah Butts, in a single day.

Commenting on the recent changes at Twitter, Dimitris Veggos – a goatherd whose family have raised livestock on the southern slopes of Mount Olympus for centuries - said: “There used to be other gods who lived on the summit of the mountain. They too believed themselves to be immortal and used their powers to torment and toy with the lives of mortal men. You can find what remains of these gods in museums now.”


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