By Ashley Wang | National News |
Twitter recently altered its Rules & Policies to adjust to what it calls “a new reality.” This involves expanding the definition of spam, which now includes fancams which only depict walking and no dancing, tweets that are more than 50% emoji in content, and keyboard smashes (many Dutch tweets have been taken down as a result of the last criterion). Given that President Biden and Vice President Harris have tweeted out several slow-motion videos of themselves walking - with no background music, mind you - both of their accounts are now at risk of being taken down.
It appears Twitter is attempting to make up for its past missteps during Trump’s term. During these years, the Twitter team frequently failed to deplatform violent threats, disinformation, and hatred. However, it's now clearly over-correcting its mistakes, as experts estimate that in about one week, Biden and Harris will be far from the only people affected; approximately ¾ of all Twitter accounts will be removed by then.
The lesson learned? Never underestimate the ubiquity of emojis or walking fancams. The only people left on Twitter in a week will be the elderly, and the only trending phrases will probably be “pension” and “where to buy lard.”