In case you missed it, over the weekend Todd Kincannon (@ToddKincannon) launched a follow-back hash tag #TGDN to help prevent voices from being silenced on Twitter by its auto suspension algorithms.

#TGDN stands for Twitter Gulag Defense Network and you can find out how it started and how it works by viewing the Twitchy post and @FoolishReporter wrote a great blog post describing how #TGDN can help thwart one of these Twitter algorithms.

#TGDN basically works by creating lists totaling 3,000 people and if each person follows everyone on that list then each person will have at least 3,000 Twitter followers (if you started from zero).  Having at least 3,000 twitter followers will supposedly make you immune to the Leftists tactic of blocking and reporting as spam those users who have low follower counts and causing the Twitter algorithms to automatically suspend those accounts – thus silencing their speech.  There are other ways to prevent this suspension trap like placing a period before any replies but having 3,000 followers seems to be more bullet proof.

That was a good enough reason for me to join Saturday afternoon but after I’ve had 48 hours of following back people on the lists (I’m only on list 4 and each list contains 500 people) I’ve realized there are other benefits to this program.

If we are to truly change the culture in the United States and return our government to its founding principles, we’ll need a grass roots movement to do it.  We can’t rely on the GOP to pick our candidates and run our campaigns when the Left has control of the media and in effect controls the message.  We have to think 21^st century here and use modern technology to mobilize the troops and bypass the Media.

So here are my reasons for joining #TGDN and encouraging others to do the same.

Expanding the Conversation

The main reason I jumped on Twitter and started this blog was to engage more people than I could meet in my normal life and have political conversations with them.  The culture in the US will never be truly changed by just publishing white papers at think tanks (although I love reading those) because only a small minority of the population reads those.  We also can’t rely on the popular Conservative pundits on TV and the Internet because again, the Left leaning media will drown out those voices.  We need real personal conversations to change people’s hearts and minds.

Blogging and Twitter are ways to have these conversations with people who are hundreds or thousands of miles away and this increases the collective knowledge of our country and in a sense, makes every keyboard, tablet or smart phone the equivalent of a coffee shop.

Adding thousands of followers to your twitter account and adding thousands of people you follow will increase your audience that you can converse with.  In just a few days I’ve found people on twitter that I didn’t know existed and have had meaningful conversations with on all topics.  In just 48 hours I’ve grown my followers from 1,100 to over 2,500 and the people I follow has grown by the same margin.   And I’m only half way through the process!

Think about this.  Three thousand people following back with the same three thousand people has created nine million communication paths that otherwise didn’t exist!

Amplifying the Grass Roots

I’ve already noticed really great ideas/tweets from people that I would not have normally come in contact with and this is another great part of #TGDN.  People who aren’t pundits and don’t have tens of thousands of followers rarely get their great ideas retweeted due to only a few people actually seeing their tweets.

It’s understandable that popular people on twitter who have so many followers and whose job is to be on TV or write for major blogs don’t have time to follow back everyone who follows them.  I’d rather they focus on their job of getting their message out via those large megaphone sources than spend time interacting with me.  But that doesn’t mean the grass roots Conservatives don’t have a voice in the political discussions and twitter/blogs are a great way to have them.  Now that thousands on twitter have increased their audience by thousands, we now have a better chance for grass roots ideas to become know to more of the Conservative populace after #TGDN.

Uniting Conservatives

If you are like me, sometimes I feel that the Conservative message is outdated and I’m in a very small minority that still advocates it.  But after following thousands on twitter and reading their profiles/tweets, I realize that there are many like us out there.  We just need to join forces and mobilize in our community to change the culture.

No, we aren’t all robots that have the same views on all issues but that’s the whole point of having conversations to either reinforce what you believe in or change your views after new data/viewpoints are expressed.

#TGDN is a great thing and was a genius move by Kincannon and I tip my hat to him.  We still have a long way to go and really decades before we disinfect US culture of Leftist beliefs but this is a great first step!

Follow Todd and the #TGDN hash tag to find out when the next lists will be generated and let’s keep this going!