The district attorney's office in L.A. used to have an official Twitter account at @LADAOffice, but it shut it down after what it described as a barrage of vicious homophobic responses to what it posted. Twitter no longer moderates such things and the office no longer wishes to participate.
"Our decision to archive our Twitter account was not an easy one," the office said in a statement. "It came after a series of distressing comments over time, culminating in a shocking response to photographs we posted celebrating LADA's first known entry into a Pride parade."
It said its Pride parade post was met with "a barrage of vicious and offensive comments that left us deeply troubled."
The comments ranged from "homophobic and transphobic slurs to sexually explicit and graphic images," the office said, adding that they remained visible in replies to the account more than 24 hours after they were reported to Twitter.
Pride Month seems to be tipping the Twitter scales from the last vestiges of what it was–the social media site of record–to Elon Musk's "billionaire rag" in the old-timey sense of media moguls owning proprietary media to push their interests. Think of it this way: if recent stories about Twitter's evaporating value are even close to true, he's so far in the hole that things like "brand safety" can't be bothering him much anymore. As long as he's got his playground and it isn't costing too much money on an ongoing basis, he's fine.
The grimmest part is media, especially east coast newspapers, still pretending the politics involved are complex or enigmatic, and letting it all drag them to the right in pursuit of balance and favor.
