Some readers may remember that I was mysteriously booted off Twitter some months ago. Twitter was never my preferred medium, but I had around 14,000 followers. One day Twitter sent me an email saying that my account had been accessed by someone in Australia who had changed my email address. If you didn’t do that, Twitter’s email to my user name said, click here. I clicked there.
The first thing I had to do was enter a user name. I entered the same user name to which Twitter had sent an email a half hour earlier. But I got a message saying that Twitter had never heard of such a user, and they stuck to that position doggedly despite numerous emails from me and others pointing out their error. My Twitter feed went permanently dark.
I thought, that is probably just as well. Twitter sucks. On the other hand, some really good people do excellent stuff, often very funny stuff, on that platform. And not infrequently I want to embed tweets on this site. Since I was kicked off the platform, that has been iffy.
So I decided to set up a new Twitter account. I think it is the same as my old account, but Twitter doesn’t seem to mind, which I suppose is consistent with the claim that they never heard of my old account in the first place. My new account is @HinderakerJohn. Sadly, I have only one follower so far, so I have a long way to go to become relevant. A cynic might say that this is how the Left kneecaps popular conservative spokesmen.
The main reason I want to get back on Twitter is that the platform can direct traffic to Power Line. We are getting significantly fewer social media referrals than we did a year or two ago.
Also, as to Facebook: For quite a few years, I had a personal Facebook account that had around 4,000 “friends,” most of whom I had never heard of. No complaint about that, but a year or so ago I decided to set up a new account to push out political messages, while my old personal account would just be used for wedding photos and the like.
I am not sure how many of my old “friends”–I don’t mean to be cynical, I am sure that if we met we would be friends–have made the transition. The new, public Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/johnhhinderaker. I suggest you make the switch, if you haven’t already, especially if you aren’t interested in photos of my garden.
We all know that the major social media platforms are left-wing tools. Yet as long as, for example, IowaHawk, Comfortably Smug and Ted Cruz are on Twitter, that platform has value for conservatives, too.
That said, I am trying to do my part to support alternative platforms. Thus, I have joined Parler. You can find me there at @JHinderaker. My friend George Farmer has recently become the CEO of Parler, and I hope it will have a bright future. The problem, of course, comes down to network effects: the value of a social network comes mostly from the fact that lots of people are on it. That makes it very hard for newcomers to get traction. If you would like to see the conservative movement break free from left-wing curators, I encourage you to sign up for Parler and other more-conservative alternatives to the dominant left-wing platforms. And, of course, follow me when you do.
So:
Twitter: @HinderakerJohn
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnhhinderaker Note the second “h”!
Parler: @JHinderaker
The power of social networks is an objective fact that can be used for good or ill. The fact that the dominant networks are left-wing should not blind conservatives to the potential of such media. Especially because we are, after all, the majority.
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