Elon's Christmas Present
- Kevan James
- Dec 24, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 7
Kevan James
December 24, 2024.
Statement of opinion regarding suspension or more accurately,
the termination of my account on X.
Seven years ago, I joined Twitter, now known as X following its purchase by Elon Musk, one of the world's richest individuals.
Like many, it took me a while to get used to it, but eventually I became an active user. I enjoyed it too. X remains one of, if not the, most used social media platforms anywhere, but it also has a dark side.
It is ridden with bad language, insults and sometimes shocking displays of aggression from some users to others, most notably because the offender disagrees with something written. With these instances (and there are a lot of them) there is no inclination towards reasoned, rational discussion or agreeing to disagree.
Just indecently nasty words. Not for nothing has X been described as a cesspit and many of these people have been on the platform for years and remain on it, free to hurl their nastiness around with impunity.
Fortunately I have not had much of it. Maybe its because I behaved reasonably well - yes, I have my moments, we all do, but it was very rare for me to use profanity and never did I use gratuitous insulting commentary. I never, not once, hurled a pointless insult.
I had many passionate discussions, sometimes ending with agreement, sometimes not. But always proper conversations. Some of those with whom I disagreed followed me and I them. That's as it should be.
Some of the worst offenders did have their accounts ended, and deservedly so. No doubt they started new accounts, using a different user name - these people never used their real name.
I did use my real name.
I've never used a fake name. My photograph was me. Not a picture of somebody else.
One would have thought that over those seven years I would have built a decent sized following. Except that I had only some 3,340 followers to show for my activity. And this is where my biggest complaint lay, at least until two days ago. I'll come back to this shortly.
X, and Twitter before it, is also doused with pornography and scantily dressed young ladies apparently offering sex. Frankly I got tired of constantly being bombarded with 'likes,' and within seconds of my posting something, from these fakes, all of whom offered a hot time if I responded.
I never replied to a single one and earlier this year (2024), as well as blocking them, started reporting them to X for sexual harassment. Because that's just what it is.
Known as bots since most of them are automated accounts that trawl through X looking for people gullible enough to respond, there are countless numbers of these things.
X occasionally, and allegedly, does a clear-out and removes them, if of course, it can identify them, in addition to those reported.
Identifying them isn't too hard - just look at the bio, the wording used. The photo of, at best a sexually provocative pose, at worst an almost naked woman; handles like 'sexygirl' and 'myhotphoto,' they have no followers and themselves follow very few.
It isn't difficult.
But that is not what X does.
Now we come back to follower numbers.
While some bots do get removed, X uses this as an excuse to sweep away legitimate followers from legitimate users - innocent victims of a machine, a computer somewhere in the USA.
Like so many, many others, I saw my follower numbers drop, no matter how many followed me. I calculated that by now, December 2024, I should have had something like 10-15,000 followers. That's how many had been artificially removed using the bot clear-out as the excuse. I posted frequently about it. So did many others.
One can only conclude that X is fraudulent. It uses automated systems to pick up on a number of trigger words, phrases and so on, and then, equally automatically, manipulates follower numbers and always, always, always, down.
How people managed to get multiple thousands following them is beyond me.
And on top of that...?
There is what's known as 'shadow banning,' a practice that - again fraudulently - prevents certain user's posts from being seen and others from seeing posts, even if following each other. Even though the victims of this practice have done nothing wrong. And this includes me.
Two days ago (December 22nd, 2024), I posted a couple of my usual replies to regular posters, nothing terribly dramatic, the same kind of reply as I have done so many times now throughout most of the seven years I have been using X and Twitter before it.
I also posted a Christmas greeting. The illustration came from another X user and I asked if I could use it. Yes was the reply - so I did.
The same image was also on KJM Today's home page, with the name of the creator, over the period.
This is it -
The other post I made contained the links to KJM Today's News Commentary page and my own here on KJMT, along with the link to my cartoon strip, 'Tel,' something I have done countless times before.
Here they are:
Having done so, I went to the bathroom, returned and found that, within seconds it seems, X had terminated my account, or suspended as they call it, apparently for being 'inauthentic.'
What does that mean? According to the definitions provided by X, it means impersonating somebody; providing fake news and similar.
How many accounts are there named Elon Musk? How many Donald Trumps?
If impersonating somebody is against the rules why are they all still there?
I've done none of these things and neither has KJM Today.
We haven't changed or done anything differently in those seven years.
There is an appeal form and procedure so I duly filled that in and submitted it.
No acknowledgement, no response, nothing.
Just over a week later, I submitted a second appeal.
Still, at the time of updating this, nothing.
And there is nobody with whom one can actually talk to at X.
It is all automated, completely robotic and utterly anonymous. There is no proper, real, 'contact us' method. No email address, nothing.
The only thing that was different from me on December 22 was the Christmas greeting.
I have to ask - X is a US firm, with an American owner, Elon Musk. Has the USA become so infantile, so woke, so corrupt, that we are not allowed to call it Christmas anymore? The same question has been asked (many times now) about the same kind of perversion here in the UK.
It seems so.
And yet I have posted similar greetings before. And so - this year - have many others.
So...do I start another account with a fake name?
I don't think I will. Frankly I can't be bothered with it.
I don't see me writing anything different but I do see the cheating and abuse of its users continuing.
And this has got noticeably worse since Elon Musk bought the platform.
I have criticised him publicly for his stewardship of it in my posts on X.
His frequent boasting about free speech, his bragging of how X is the new media.
It is nothing of the sort.
It never will be whilst people can be arbitrarily banned with little or no comeback and for the most spurious of reasons.
It never will be whilst users have their posts restricted by some underhand and subtle method.
Free speech also includes the wish, if one so desires, to post a Christmas greeting.
So what, now, is my honestly-held opinion?
Given the frequency of his banging on about free speech, yet how he allows X to be run so brutally and, in my opinion, so anonymously and so dishonestly in the way it treats its users, my opinion is that Elon Musk is behaving in the manner of a bully, a cheat and a fraud.
As is X, his platform.
Musk owns it, he is the one with the sign on his desk saying the buck stops here. Elon Musk is responsible.
And by the way - the law here in the UK regarding fraud changed not too long ago.
UK law redefined fraud in two notable ways - there is:
Fraud by Misrepresentation
and
Fraud By Abuse of Position
Both should be fairly easy to understand, particularly the second.
X and its owner, are without any doubt and in my opinion, guilty of both and most certainly the second, more especially so since X takes money from people, yet restricts or denies the service paid for.
If he doesn't like my airing my opinion of him and his platform, Musk has a choice:
He can ignore it, which proves me right.
He can sue me in a UK court. Such action will not present a good look for him - the big guy, with all his wealth and power, against a small-time journalist.
Or -
He can talk to me. In Public, and on X.
So I challenge him to do just that.
What's your pleasure Mr. Musk?
© Kevan James, 2024.
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