It’s less than a month to go until Ireland takes to the polls to decide whether or not we keep or repeal. The debates are heating up and you might notice that social media is becoming a hotbed of trolls and bots accounts. Thankfully, there’s a service that can clean up your Twitter feed. It’s called, Repeal Shield.
Making Your Time On Social Time Better Spent
Social media can have an incredible impact on your own mental well being. Earlier this year, Facebook implemented some dramatic changes to your newsfeed which aimed to bring you more content from friends and family. The ultimate goal here was to make your time spent on Facebook time better spent. Personally, I do spend quite a bit of time on social, but over the last year, I’ve seen Twitter as being my platform of choice.
I make no secret of my stance on the May Referendum. I’m supporting a Yes vote after weighing up everything and imagining any women I know having to endure travelling to the UK or ordering illegal pills. I also make no secret of my stance on Twitter, publically sharing my own opinion and retweeting other pro-choice content. This might draw the attention of the anti-choice side from time to time, which is fine – healthy debate is a good idea and actually, I welcome the opportunity to share my views. What’s much less enjoyable are the trolls, bots and fake accounts spewing lies and messages of hate to muddy the waters. Fortunately, there’s a team of volunteers who are creating a list to tidy up your Twitter feed and make the platform more enjoyable.
What Is Repeal Shield?
Repeal Shield is a service run by volunteers to improve the experience of Twitter for pro-choice users. Repeal Shield’s own bio on the platform describes them as “blocking blatant, harmful anti-choice misinformation so you don’t have to”. Simply put, Repeal Shield is a list of over 8000 Twitter users who troll pro-choice Twitter users along with bots and fake accounts. The list is built on a service called Block Together where the public can pool their efforts to build similar lists for any range of choices. When you activate Repeal Shield on Block Together, they will link up your Twitter accounts and block these users from appearing in your feeds and from being able to engage with you.
Is Repeal Shield A Good Idea?
A case could be made that Repeal Shield is simply removing people that disagree with you and that this dampens healthy debate. Some anti-choice Twitter users believe pro-choice supporters enabling this service highlights the “insecurity they have in their own viewpoint“. Personally, I decided to enable Repeal Shield after seeing that most of the referendum related replies that negatively affected my own mood on Twitter were coming from accounts that had just been opened or that didn’t even have profile pictures. To me, these are bots and fake accounts negatively impacting my real world mood for no good reason so removing them is a great choice.
If you find yourself in a similar boat, you can get Repeal Shield by heading over to their Twitter account or joining the movement on Block Together.
Repeal the 8th
Finally, I’ve become a little anxious about the men of Ireland not voting – as have Cillian Murphy and Blindboy from the Rubber Bandits. I know the slight majority of our readers are male so I want to take this chance to encourage everyone to make sure you are registered to vote and that you’ve made plans to vote on 25 May. You can visit Check the Register to see if you’re registered to vote. If that shows you’re not, like it did for me, give your local office a call to double check. Also if you want to move your vote, here are the forms you need.
