Twitter, in many ways, is the superior platform for social media because it's full of people shitposting, making and sharing memes, telling bad jokes, and keeping each other updated on politics in the best ways.

Twitter encourages or allows behaviors that many other platforms have banned, such as nudity or sex work, and they are constantly adding features people want as opposed to ones that people despise. However, Twitter also has many major downfalls, namely in its content policies.

For some context, I myself, and several of my friends have all been suspended from Twitter for days or even weeks at a time now for the same exact thing: calling out transphobia.

Namely, speaking out against TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) who, for those that aren't in the know, are people who subscribe to a certain “feminist" construct that believes trans women are not real women and are instead just cis men trying to invade women's spaces.

This rhetoric is toxic and hurtful, and very frequently TERFs have incited copious amounts of violence against trans women.

So, my friends and I decided to do something with our voices and our platforms and we spoke out against them. Rather than making the logical move and banning the people who were actually using hate speech, Twitter instead banned us for “inciting violence" and for “promoting hate speech" through our own words.

The reason for this is that Twitter's community guidelines allow protections for many groups that don't deserve said protections.

Of course, we all returned from our suspensions with renewed vigor and spread the word not only about TERFs but also about Twitter's guidelines being wonky. We were again crashed down upon, this time throughout many of our tweets, by people who claimed that “TERF is a lesbophobic slur" and were reporting us for hate speech yet again for us simply explaining to our followers that the people who invented the term were, in fact, those it applies to and that TERFiness and being lesbian is not equated by anyone besides someone TERFs, rendering both points invalid.

The fallout from this second bout, instead of resulting in Twitter re-evaluating things and banning the transphobic people screaming at us, was for Twitter to ban all of us instead for a second time. It goes deeper than just this one scuffle though.

Twitter is also infamous for giving a massive platform to actual Nazis, and to pedophiles. I have seen people get banned from the website, not for white supremacy or for talking about molesting children, but instead for saying things like “kill a Nazi" or “assault your local rapist", neither of which should Ben a controversial or bannable offense, because you would assume everyone hates both Nazis and rapists and yet... those people continue to have a platform.

Twitter is a wonderful place for many people but in creating that wonderful place, Jack Dorsey has made many a poor decision that has led to where we are now. With people spreading hate speech and perpetuating violence being protected, but those who are speaking out haunts that hate speech being kicked off of the website.

I want to enjoy Twitter deeply, but I fear that if something isn't changed soon, we may see a version of Twitter that is much scarier than it is enjoyable.

So I'm begging you, as an avid user of your app, to please change some things and make Twitter a safer and healthier place for people fighting the good fight, and a place Nazis, racists, homophobes, TERFs, and rapists fear to tread. Otherwise, I, and much of your user base will move on.