New Rochelle Schools: Let the Twitter Purge Begin

NEW ROCHELLE, NY (December 3, 2022) — If the New Rochelle Board of Education were serious they would deactivate then delete their primary Twitter account then undertake a general purge of all their Twitter accounts, plus all public-facing employee accounts and all affiliated accounts. We have culled a helpful list of these accounts below but first a few thoughts.

As many readers know, on Thursday, the City School District of New Rochelle announced it would no longer share information on Twitter. It did not deactivate nor delete the District Twitter profile @NewRochelleEd so 10 years worth of its tweets remain published on Twitter being monetized (horrors!) by Elon Musk.

Superintendent Jonathan Raymond deactivated (not yet deleted) his personal Twitter profile. It is not known by me when he did this, but certainly within the last 30 days. Twitter Help explains why it must have been less than 30 days: if it were more than 30 days, there would be no “This account doesn’t exist” message. There would nothing in the system at all for jraymO. Blank.

Deactivating vs deleting your Twitter account

Deactivating your Twitter account is the first step to deleting your account permanently. Deactivation lasts 30 days. If you do not access your account within the 30-day deactivation period, your account is deleted and your username will no longer be associated with your account.

Deactivating your Twitter account means your username (or “handle”) and public profile will not be viewable on Twitter.com, Twitter for iOS or Twitter for Android.

After your 30-day deactivation window, your Twitter account is permanently deleted. When you don’t log into your account during the 30-day window, it lets us know you want to permanently delete your Twitter account. Once your account is deleted, your account is no longer available in our systems. You won’t be able to reactivate your previous account, and you won’t have access to any old Tweets.

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After a reader provided a heads-up about the Raymond deactivation last weekend, I asked the District about it on Monday, but did not receive a reply, so I have no explanation to share of when this deactivation occurred or why.

It was 2 p.m. Thursday, when the District published what it says is its final post, suggesting why the Superintendent deactivated / deleted his personal account.

I wrote Thursday about the decision behind this “final” tweet: New Rochelle School District, Superintendent Cancel Twitter over Elon Musk Acquisition

It is simply false to say that Twitter has a policy “allowing disinformation”. It does not.

It is the height of ignorance to use the phrase “free speech protection regardless of accuracy”. It is plain stupid. Setting aside who the District imagines is the god-like arbiter of accuracy in the universe, Americans have First Amendment protections that exist whether what they say from their soapbox is accurate or not. There is no litmus test for free speech based on accuracy. Put simple, Americans have a right to be wrong.

This sort of litmus test has popped up with censorious school board members over the years. Many complain that residents addressing the board during public comment period were saying things a board member did not believe to be accurate, or were unfair, or mean-spirited. None of these complaints are a basis on which to limit speech.

These are people who want to run for public office to sit on a school board that controls over $300,000,000 in taxpayer funds, about two-thirds of all property taxes collected in the City, employs 2,000 people, owns more property in the City than any other property owner and shapes the destiny of many thousands of children but whine if anyone dare question or criticize their decisions.

Here is a proposed change to Board Policy 9340 Public Participation in Meetingsfrom 2014 (thankfully, successfully resisted, primarily by me).

Be prepared to offer supporting evidence for any factual assertions made in his/her remarks if requested to do so by a member of the Board of Education

Having gutted the length, frequency and permitted subject matter of the public comment period, the board proposed to grant itself the right to not only curtail or eliminate public comment at a given board meeting but the right to interrupt public speakers, interrogate and argue with public speakers, and refuse to allow the speaker to continue if the board member was not sufficiently satisfied with the answers, all while using up the three minutes a month allotted to a public speaker.

Last year, the board adopted additional changes to 9340 to limit public comment, including arbitrary limits on how many people can speak at a given meeting.

What is the Center for Countering Digital Hate?

The District had not issued any sort of explanation beyond their final tweet as to why they will no longer share information on Twitter, but it is safe to say they are buying into a far-left, anti-Musk fantasy that Twitter is suddenly, irredeemably deplorable.

Over the past few weeks, The New York Times has published breathless articles claiming there has been a rise in hate speech on Twitter since Elon Musk acquired the company on October 27. Their sole source for the “data” in these articles is an organization called Center for Countering Digital Hate. A quick Google search will show the CCDH is the source for many similar articles throughout the United States and Europe.

The CCDH is a far-left organization, really just a guy named Ahmed, based in London, funded by the Oak Foundation, an organization in Switzerland with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Ahmed self-published an article claiming he found increases in hate speech on Twitter in the first week after the Musk acquisition. Left-wing media outlets excitedly reported Ahmed’s “research” which is vaguely described by him as Ahmed entering keywords into a social media monitoring service called Brandwatch, and using a calculator.

Twitter publishes about 2,500 tweets per second and serves up 90 billion impressions per day. Ahmed reports he found “935 tweets and retweets mentioning the slur sp-c, up 67% on the 2022 average” over a one-week period. 935 out of 630,000,000,000. He reports similarly minuscule numbers for other keywords.

Seriously?

Musk, who unlike Ahmed, has access to all of Twitter’s data published charts from the safety team run by Yoel Roth showing an initial spike in hate speech which then trended down immediately as a result of Musk’s efforts and is now lower than when he took over — just as Yoel Roth explained in his Times Op-Ed on November 18 where he said Twitter is now, by various measures, safer under Musk.

Ahmed’s response to the Musk charts?

He writes, “The (his) data doesn’t directly contradict Musk’s claims.”

That is loon-speak for, Musk is not wrong. In other words, Musk, relying on Roth, the guy who banned Trump, is right. Hate speech has gone down, not up.

Ahmed cherry-picked a few days of keyword searches on a third-party service, then ignored the broader trend based on the actual Twitter data. Of course, he would do that because he is an ideologue, not an independent data analyst publishing peer-reviewed scientific studies. That is not the troubling part, the troubling part is media outlets like The New York Times peddling his disinformation as part of a campaign to accuse Musk of peddling misinformation with useful idiots like Jonathan Raymond and the New Rochelle Board of Education signing on to the woke culture war.

What any of this has to do with the mission of the New Rochelle Board of Education escapes me. Knowing these people, I cannot imagine any of them has the foggiest notion how any of this works. They are basically relying on a dude named Ahmed they do not know who has a website they never heard of because The New York Times told them so. No critical thought of their own, just a variation on “orange man bad/Trump Derangement Syndrome” tied to Musk’s decision to reinstate Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

The best part?

Now that Trump has been restored to Twitter, anyone can see who follows Trump. And guess who is among Trump’s 87.8 million followers?

You cannot make this stuff up.

If the District were really concerned about social media and misinformation they might want to consider they have thousands of students walking around their buildings every day, many of them using TikTok to transmit student and employee identities, names, social media handles, photos, videos, GPS coordinates and more from their phone to the Chinese Communist Party which uses the platform, owned by Bytedance, a Chinese company, to push Chinese propaganda aimed at creating division among Americans while gathering intelligence from within the United Stated including the New Rochelle schools.

Why TikTok is the Latest Security Threat

FBI chief Christopher Wray says TikTok is a ‘national security concern’

TikTok raises national security concerns in Congress as Schumer, Cotton ask for federal review

TikTok Is A National Security Risk According To The FCC

House of Representatives officer warns members of Congress not to use 'high-risk' TikTok

How seriously is the New Rochelle Board of Education and administration of the City School District of New Rochelle taking the Twitter “threat”? Apparently, not so much.

A day after their “final” tweet, they were still promoting Twitter in the weekly email blast.

Half the members of the school board, including the Board President, still retain their Twitter accounts, a classic Twitter for me but for thee scenario.

Both middle schools and one elementary school still retain their Twitter accounts.

Two Superintendent cabinet members, two building principals and the AD still retain their Twitter accounts.

Three Head Coaches still retain their Twitter accounts.

Two Clubs & Activities still retain their Twitter accounts.

Eight Sports teams still retain their Twitter accounts.

8 Affiliated Organizations still retain their Twitter accounts.

(NOTE: if you find more, please let me know)

If the District were actually serious about the supposed danger of Twitter, they would fully deactivate / delete their @NewRochelleEd account not just put in on pause (again, Elon Musk is still monetizing their decades worth of tweets) and then do the same with all the related district accounts under their control like the schools, sports teams, clubs and organizations, then move on to ordering administrators and coaches publicly associated with the district to do the same and likewise for affiliated organizations.

Let the purge begin!