Last night for the first time in the history of the account we have prematurely discontinued a @Netherlanders’ curation week (not counting the one other case where the curator did not show up). As expected, some people agree, some don’t. Therefore, a little elaboration on this action.
Ever since we started this account 8 years ago we have tried to select curators that would paint an as complete as possible picture of our cute little country. One of the aspects that color this picture of The Netherlands is politics. Although realizing how delicate this subject is we have therefore selected curators on both sides of the political spectrum during the last couple of years.
In all these years we have carefully monitored the tweets by our curators, especially when people would inform us via DM or email about content that might be ‘over the edge’. Although some tweets have previously been ‘on the edge’ this was the first time when a tweet was actually displaying content that was punishable by law. Examples of this punishable fact can be found on the internet (e.g. on this Dutch article https://www.gelderlander.nl/berkelland/boete-voor-achterhoeker-die-politie-uitscheldt-op-facebook~ac588463/) This was reason enough for us to discontinue this week’s curator’s week.
We would like to stress that this was not an easy decision. It was also not an easy decision to nót take action on earlier occasions during the weeks of other curators. You can believe us when we say that we have been close on doing this in the past. But because censoring on the account is the last thing we want, we have not done so until now.
We have always encouraged people to interact with the curator of that moment if you disagree with his/her/their opinion. When people have contacted us directly through DM or email we have always asked for examples of tweets that in their opinion were over the edge. Those examples either never came or were in our view within limits (I’m sure some of you will now start sending examples of tweets in the past, but you will understand that that is now too late).
Mentions on the account of yours truly at this moment are full of accusations concerning the idea that we do give a platform to tweeps with a more conservative perspective on life and shut down tweeps with more progressive points of view. I would like to stress that this is absolutely not the case. Everybody is welcome at the account as long as the few rules that we state are not being violated. These rules are clearly being stated in an instruction document each Netherlander receives prior to the start of their week and include (but are not limited to): no commercial activities, no berating people, groups or authorities or treating them unfairly in any other way, no (re)tweeting in Dutch.
On my personal account I have sincerely called upon you a couple of days ago to introduce us to potential candidates if you think they have something interesting to say about themselves or The Netherlands. This invitation still stands. You can do so via https://netherlanders.nl/candidate/