Twitter Suspends Those Naming Probable Whistleblower, Highlighting Platform’s Potential for Abuse

No, you’re not going to find the name of the UkraineGate whistleblower here in this article.  That’s not because we’re afraid of our social media overlords, but because leaving them anonymous is the right thing to do.

We, as a nation built on self-governance, need to maintain a healthy environment for whistleblowers – even when we aren’t sure of their intentions.  That’s because this insider oversight is absolutely crucial to our freedom.  Without the ability to call governmental overreaches to the carpet, autocrats and authoritarians gain ground on the people of a nation, and can ever more simply turn totalitarian.

And no, this is not some muted play against the President either.  Trump has suggested that the truth will set him free, and who are we to believe otherwise.

No, the concern is that those who are speculating about the identity of the whistleblower are being suspended on Twitter, demonstrating the platform’s power to target individual thoughts and ideas.

According to a Twitter spokeswoman, “per the private information policy, any Tweets that include personally identifiable information about any individual, including the alleged whistleblower, would be in violation of the Twitter Rules.”

A Twitter spokeswoman contacted Breitbart News after this article’s publication to clarify that posting the alleged whistleblower’s name is not a violation of its policies against personally identifiable information. However, screenshots from conservative Twitter users show that accounts posting [the potential whistleblower’s] name — and nothing else — have been suspended under the PII policy.

Twitter said it is looking into the cause of these suspensions.

If Twitter does indeed consider naming [the potential whistleblower] to be a violation of its rules, it appears to be having trouble enforcing them — numerous accounts, both verified and unverified, are still tweeting [the potential whistleblower’s] name.

Facebook also is blanket-banning references to the alleged whistleblower, including articles from Breitbart News and other publishers that have named him.

So what happens when a scandal erupts on the left side of the aisle, and Twitter uses their power to subvert this news?  At what point can Twitter justify their targeting of specific political ideas and ideologies?

Worse still, what if Wikileaks were to provide proof of serious corruption within our political system, but that corruption involved elected officials who are on Twitter’s “good side”?  Would this information simply be scrubbed from the internet at the behest of Jack Dorsey?