Battle waged between female media giants this morning on Twitter as Julia Hartley-Brewer called out Kay Burley’s hypocrisy when Lisa Nandy pulled out of an interview on her show. Julia was surprised Nandy didn’t get the same treatment subjected to James Cleverly during the election.
And yet she didn’t “empty chair” her. https://t.co/Qm1sfixZxY
— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) January 14, 2020
Kay fired back with “‘she?’ Bless you” which exploded the whole conversation
As per usual, we’ll leave it up to Guido readers to decide who won this one…
UPDATE: Julia has clapped back…
The last DM I sent you was *coughs* 8 months ago. It’s nothing personal.
— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) January 14, 2020
The cheeky move by CCHQ to rebrand themselves as a fact-checking account during last night’s debate may have got everyone talking, but could backfire as Twitter have said “Any further attempts to mislead people by editing verified profile information – in a manner seen during the UK Election Debate – will result in decisive corrective action”. Judging by the backlash this wasn’t so much a dead cat as a dead elephant…
Even right-wingers like Julia Hartley-Brewer and Susanne Evans called on CCHQ to reverse the rebrand, calling it “plain wrong” and “very stupid”. As Emily Maitlis then later pointed out, Boris was, in fact, answering questions in the debate on integrity at the same time as CCHQ was pretending to be something it wasn’t…
.@maitlis: “You were misleading the public. You were trying to coat your propaganda as hardened fact.. You dressed up party lines as a fact check service: that is dystopian.. You know that people do not trust you, so you have to put something out and call it a fact check instead” pic.twitter.com/UOyLgCx7hi
— Damon Evans (@damocrat) November 19, 2019
Still, not the worst interview performance Emily’s sat through this week…
Guido’s still waiting for the commentariat’s reciprocal outrage towards Labour’s own ‘fact-checking’ account, which, even worse than CCHQ’s stunt, doesn’t mention its Labour origins in either its name or its handle.
CCHQ’s Twitter backlash wasn’t the biggest faux pas on the social media site last night, however, as Alastair Campbell rebranded his account as ‘Boris Johnson’ and posted a number of misogynistic tweets, with one particularly distasteful one directed at Carrie.
When he changed his name back it kind of backfired:
He really didn’t think that through did he?
Two Brexit Party MEPs are embroiled in a spectacular Twitter bitch fight following yesterday’s announcement that the party will stand down in 317 sets next election. It led South East MEP Alexandra Phillips to declare she will abstain from voting. London MEP Lance Forman was not impressed…
Alex. You are not 16.
What’s the point in spending your life fighting for democracy and then not voting.
Vote.— Lance Forman MEP (@LanceForman) November 12, 2019
Would you like to hold the biro for me? Parties must earn support. I expect people to vote on the virtues of the party they choose as a personal private choice. It’s not for you to coerce me to vote for a party I was NOT elected to represent. Perhaps YOU should think about that https://t.co/5WF52fzllZ
— Alexandra Phillips MEP (@BrexitAlex) November 12, 2019
Guido has got out the popcorn…
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announces worldwide ban on political advertising:
We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…🧵
— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) October 30, 2019
“A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money. While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions. Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale…”
A cynic might add that Twitter made little money out of political advertising compared to Facebook…
Data from the FT, who have analysed abuse MPs receive on Twitter this morning, has concluded, “The most toxic tweets came from users who mentioned the Brexit party or other hard Brexit-related terms in their user description”. Fits the mainstream narrative…
However further down the article, the FT notes that abuse towards MPs is also overwhelmingly directed at… Boris Johnson. In the two-day period after the Supreme Court’s prorogation ruling, Boris Johnson received 6,507 abusive tweets – the same as Jeremy Corbyn (3,144), Ian Blackford (2,006) and Jo Swinson (1,423) combined.
The main takeaway from the article, however, is that despite all the hysteria, only 1.8% of Tweets sent to MPs are ‘toxic’. Either MPs need to learn how to use the mute button or stop whinging…
Appearing on Sky News, Guido’s Tom-off-the-Telly left the studio with a spring in his step after another successful TV appearance. However the smile soon slipped from his face after discovering Twitter has suspended him for 12 hours. The crime? Calling on the police to tackle Extinction Rebellion protestors…
Tom got suspended for calling on the police to be authorised to taser the Lambeth Bridge blocking rebels, just days after Priti Patel pledged £10 million to equip 60% of the boys in blue with tasers. Guido expects Twitter to be going after Priti’s account imminently… Unfortunately, Tom Couldn’t be DM’d for comment…
