Social Media — The Red ‘X’ aka the ‘Crosstika’

Anyone on Social Media — especially Twitter — will not have failed to notice the big, red X appear in some account names.

It’s the new ‘Kek’ ;

It’s the new ‘Deplorables’ ;

It’s the new ‘You may as well just block me right now and get it over with.’

Amid rumors on Twitter ‘meddling in politics’ and being ‘biased against US Republicans’, the X push started in late June, when two German Twitter users — supporters of the neo-Nazi AfD Party — created a website they claimed (since debunked) could tell whether individual Twitter handles had been subjected to ‘quality filter discrimination’ which Twitter claims makes it harder to find or engage with a user’s tweets.

Conservatives immediately called it … the ‘shadow-ban’ — because that sounds kinda ‘Deep State’-ish.

X is said to signify …

… a protest at Twitter’s latest policies of shadow banning specific users due to their political views.

Of course, in actuality, the X simply signifies that a user has had their account suspended at some point because they broke the Twitter Rules and someone reported them.

But it’s really good for us regular people, as it provides a quick and handy guide as to the level of unhinged moonhowling you’re likely to see on any account that displays it.

Social Media — The Red ‘X’ aka the ‘Crosstika’

Reviewed by Far-Right Watch on September 14, 2018 Rating: 5

Originally published at www.farrightwatch.net.