On October 31, 2019, Twitter blocked (permanently suspended) our account @Atexnos14. During the same period, in a global scale, it blocked various accounts of mass media and persons. An example of this is the block on Cuban media and people (Cubadebate and its journalists, etc).
Atexnos magazine maintained only one account (the one that was suspended), in which we were sharing ONLY the posts of atexnos.gr and nothing more. The account was active on daily basis and a source for information for a few hundred followers; not a huge number but also not a negligible one.
This account had never been involved in discussions, nor it was used for comments (since December 2014 there were just three explanatory comments). On October 31, the Atexnos account was suspended without any prior notification. A few days ago, the same thing happened with the account of a member of Atexnos’ editorial board – an account with 10,000 followers and international reach. Our collaborator’s account was finally restored after the submission of an appeal to Twitter.
From the very first moment, Atexnos used the capability given by Twitter and submitted its objection (appeal), clarifying that it is a journalistic/media site and never violated any of the terms and conditions set by Twitter. The response was a reference to the rules related to the “hate/violence/extremism, etc” speech and rhetoric.
We came up again with a new appeal, pointing out that, in no case the content of atexnos.gr violates any of these rules. We received an authoritarian and irreversible decision with a different explanation this time:
The justification, the timing and the authoritarian way of response (which was also delayed, as long as we received the last answer on 25/11/2019) show that it is not a random algorithmic decision but a result of the various ways of Twitter’s manipulation and “eradication” of annoying voices; voices which fight and challenge the imperialist order.
Atexnos is a medium with a strong anti-imperialist and anti-NATO character.
At the same time, it is a medium with a strong presence in defence of Cuba and supportive of the solidarity towards Cuban people. The number of the related posts alone is strong indication.
Recently and following the suspension of our account in Twitter, we received twice a notification from Facebook that our FB account violates the terms and conditions due to political posts titled (or including photos with the title) “Americans, murderers of the people”. This slogan, alongside other antiimperialist posts, was the reason behind Facebook’s blocking of the mass antiimperialist-anticapitalist page “Tria Kokkina Grammata” (with more than 22,000 followers), the administrator of which was Iraklis Kakavanis, the administrator of Atexnos. The new page of “Tria Kokkina Grammata”, which replaced the blocked one, was again blocked by Facebook on 3/1/2020.
It becomes obvious that the “rhetoric of violence, hate, extremism, etc” that Twitter accuses us of is related to political slogans and positions of peace movement in Greece and worldwide.
Another issue which was probably taken into account was our militant posts against the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn and its leading figures, as well as the fact that we were revealing the criminal nature of fascism.
The involvement of Twitter in the U.S. geopolitical games is not unknown. A recent example is the 4,500 fake twitter accounts that were created during the coup d’etat in Bolivia. They were accounts which were promoting the hashtag #BoliviaNoHayGolpe, which means “There is No Coup in Bolivia”, with multiple retweets in order to make the topic as popular as possible and influence international public opinion. Also, there is the example of Twitter’s role in the so-called “Arab Spring” as well as the explicit request of the then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton towards Twitter’s to postpone technical shutdown during the 2009 “Green revolution” in Iran, in order to support the so-called “activists”. Twitter finally fulfilled the State Department’s request. Later, it became known that most of the “iranian activists” who were tweeting were actually in U.S. territory.
We think that the suspension of our Twitter account lies within the framework of censorship and gradual dissappearance of “annoying” voices. Atexnos has proceed to all the necessary actions in order to publicize the issue and will seek the support of the Journalists’ Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers (ESIEA), taking into account that Atexnos is a journalistic/media site based on professional journalists-members of ESIEA and other similar Unions.
But above all, we want your support in our new Twitter account which was created a few days after the suspension. You can now find us HERE.
