Twitter Censorship

I had long suspected Twitter is up to a lot of mischief unknown to users. It particularly targets accounts that are RW, anti-Congress, anti-Fiberals, anti-Commies, anti-Islamic Terror and anyone that exposes the crimes of MSM. I fit the bill in all categories and have been aware of being a target. This is not just in India but across the world, more so in the US. In just my previous post a week ago, “Twitter Games” I explained how Twitter strangles accounts, boxes-in targeted users and stunts their follower count, tweets and retweets. In an unprovoked sting, unknown to current and former Twitter employees, all of this has been thoroughly exposed. Project Veritas (PV) in a report and a video exposed Twitter to be a “political” outfit and not a free-speech platform it bragged about being.

Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) is a journalist, author and a documentary film maker. Early last year he tweeted how his account was being strangled and followers were being “auto unfollowed”. His follower count currently stands at 393K but he estimates the count should have be 1 million. I am inclined to believe him considering his background and the content he generates. This kind of stunting of accounts has been going on for quite some time and although I was aware of it I didn’t bother much. Now that Twitter stands exposed, it becomes all the more evident:

Twitter is throttling accounts that are inconvenient to Fiberals and has been doing so for a long time. Let me narrate my own case. I touched 100K followers in October 2015. And then, every day followers were knocked off for no apparent reason. From October 2015 to May 2017, almost two years, my account crawled to 132K followers and was stuck there till my account was suspended on December 30, 2017. It is hard to explain how an aggressive, impactful account can reach 1 lakh followers and then for nearly two years get stuck around with another 32K more followers. And then from May 2017 it got stuck there. Once my suspension was revoked, the account got some attention and 3000 more followers and is now stuck at 135K. I am sure it will be stuck at 135K for a long time. Twitter will ensure that. Everyday, Twitter still knocks off followers. It’s like, if 20 people follow you, Twitter knocks off 30 and this “repeat, rinse” process continues. I got a confirmation from a follower who said he had to follow me 3 times in the past when he had never unfollowed me at any time:

It is not as if I don’t lose followers in the normal course. There are times when I have lost hundreds of followers in a short period because I harshly criticised Modi or tweeted something that didn’t go down well with the RW folks. But that is a pattern I very much understand. I have lost followers even when I have tweeted NOTHING for a few days when I was travelling. In November 2017, I was away for 3 days and mostly away from Twitter as well. When I returned, I had lost around 300 followers for no particular rhyme or reason. There are others too who have been losing followers in this fashion. I know of a friend who lost 2000 followers in one shot for no particular reason and that account is hardly as harsh and aggressive in content as I am.

Now the Project Veritas report exposes another aspect of Twitter’s crimes which is being called “Shadow Ban”. What this means is, although you exist on Twitter and tweet as you normally do, your tweets are “censored and blacked out”. In effect, you might think you have tweeted something but often your followers and others never get to see that tweet. Consequently, the engagements on that tweet or RTs are negligible or zero. This is perhaps an illegitimate (and perhaps even illegal) act that Twitter carries out without the knowledge of the user. A “Shadow Ban” means you practically don’t exist on Twitter even if you’re tweeting. This may not be a permanent operation on an account but an “on and off” operation so that no alarms are raised by the large number of people who are subjected to this fraud. The following statement is from a former employee of Twitter in the PV report I linked earlier:

Twitter DENIES it "Shadow Bans" accounts, although the above came from an employee and is not an opinion from an outsider. Twitter prefers to call it "Down Ranking". Another author, Charlie Kirk (@Charliekirk11), has also experienced the censorship by Twitter it seems. Anything that goes against the Fiberal Fart and anything that criticises Islam and Jihad is a “Red Rag” to Twitter. Charlie too confirms he had suspicions of covert censorship by Twitter as many of us have had:

Effectively, I don’t see any difference between the MSM and Twitter anymore. Both are clothed in the same Commie filth that suppresses any opposing view, censors independent voices and, worst of all, holds religious prejudices and biases and soaked in hypocrisy. Some say the excessive sympathy to Islam or Muslims and the censoring of harsh tweets against Islam are all due to a large chunk of Twitter ownership resting with an Arab Sheikh. This being so, Twitter will never be a platform for free speech and open exchanges. Their policies are now written to drive FEAR into users. Their covert actions are now exposed in this video (This is a 5-minute excerpt and you can watch the full 15-minute video of Project Veritas on Youtube):

Here’s part of the conversation the PV journalist (he asks a trick question) had with Olinda Hassan, Policy Manager at Twitter:

PV Journalist: I’ve tried to, like block people like Cernovich and stuff like that and mute and stuff like that, but they still show up, like all the time.

Olinda: Yeah. That’s something we’re working on. It’s something we’re working on. We’re trying to get the shitty people to not show up. It’s a product thing we’re working on.

Shitty people? The guy the PV journo is talking about (@Cernovich) hardly qualifies as “Shitty people” but then a “motivated” hater at Twitter gets to decide who are “Shitty people”. Extraordinary subjective monkey-spanner at the hands of a hater that can damage any account at will with her prejudice and hatred.

The De-verification FRAUD: This is one of the most absurd and arbitrary policies that Twitter has introduced without any notice whatsoever. They recently de-verified the account of anti-Islam and free-speech campaigner from England @TRobinsonNewEra. What does “Verified” mean? It only means that the handle genuinely represents the person or entity it represents. Just because you don’t like the content it tweets does it make the person a fake or an imposter or a fraud? There is no logic behind it. There are many “verified” accounts from Indian MSM, Bollywood and in general that tweet a lot of crap and abuses but those are of the “Sickular” clan, so that seems fine with Twitter. And even worse is what Twitter considers offensive. It is actually comic and real DUMB if you ask me. Look at the words they mask as offensive on the platform:

Words like idiot, retard, moron, dumb are routinely used words even in casual conversations. But words like “F”, “Chu….”, “Bhe...”, “Madar...” are frequently used on Twitter and those words pass muster. Twitter seriously has a character problem and a judgement problem. I can understand exceptions being made for PMs, Heads of States and other public figures, but Twitter DOES NOT HAVE A UNIFORM POLICY FOR ALL CITIZENS. And the administration of their arbitrary, prejudicial and bias-ridden policies is not left to very prudent and fair senior managers. These are routinely done by “Trigger happy” lower level “political animals” who are too keen to press the “Launch” button instead of the “Lunch” button. In the run up to 2019, more anti-Congress, anti-Commie voices will be suppressed, stunted, censored and perhaps banned on Twitter. It’s a clear warning. 

 www.EducatingForward.com

Stenographers & Stray Dogs

Whenever a political turn or event happens who do our reporters run to most? You guessed it – Digvijaya Singh. And what does he offer them? Nothing but filthy utterances against others and mindless statements that aren’t even fact-checked. His own party is on record stating that his statements are not “authorised”. Yet, DS with no political position or responsibility and clearly over-the-hill, is the Guru for most TV editors. The reporters seek his comments like Stenographers and faithfully relay it. By evening, on many occasions, based on his silly utterances, you will find DS doing a full-fledged interview with Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai or Rahul Kanwal. It’s a well-planned and organised routine. Did I just say ‘stenographers’? My apologies, someone else has a different take about stenographers. We will get to that.

Let’s call this paragraph Chapter- C for reference: Can you figure out who this guy is? “He was overjoyed… He did his mandatory piece to the camera and rushed to office. Once his script was done, he waited for a call from his Editor. No call came. For hours, video editors sat with the material. He was not allowed inside the editing bay. "I sat in a corner of the office like an outcast though I was the key person in the investigation," he recalls. And then, all hell broke loose. All he could hear was two words as an explanation for the volte-face: ‘inconclusive evidence’. The editor, who had not talked to him so far, asked if he needed police protection. For what, he asked? "I felt like a stray dog," he says and then resigned from the channel and took a bus home”. Sounds like an errand boy, doesn’t he? But he’s a reporter. His channel made him feel like a stray dog as he says. The man could well hold the key to one of the most infamous episodes in India’s political and media history but his story was shut out because his channel and his boss wanted to suppress the story.

Meet Amber Lyon, she has a similar story. She’s not a journalist covering India and the story may not have a direct relevance but her channel, CNN, does have a stake in India. Let me just quote the story (edited excerpts) from LibertyBlitzkrieg:

The Amber Lyon story is just the latest in a series of articles that expose the total Joseph Goebbels like censorship rampant in mainstream media today… This is precisely why alternative media sites are taking off.  They provide the only outlets left for genuine journalism… Back in March 2011, CNN sent a four person team to Bahrain to cover the Arab Spring.  Once there, the crew was the subject of extreme intimidation amongst other things, but they were able to record some fantastic footage.  As Glenn Greenwald of the UK’s Guardian writes in his blockbuster:

In the segment, Lyon interviewed activists as they explicitly described their torture at the hands of government forces, while family members recounted their relatives’ abrupt disappearances…She spoke with government officials justifying the imprisonment of activists. And the segment featured harrowing video footage of regime forces shooting unarmed demonstrators, along with the mass arrests of peaceful protesters.… Despite these accolades, and despite the dangers their own journalists and their sources endured to produce it, CNN International (CNNi) never broadcast the documentary. Even in the face of numerous inquiries and complaints from their own employees inside CNN, it continued to refuse to broadcast the program or even provide any explanation for the decision. To date, this documentary has never aired on CNNi…. In March 2012, Lyon was laid off from CNN as part of an unrelated move by the network to outsource its investigative documentaries. “At this point,” Lyon said, “I look at those payments as dirty money to stay silent. I got into journalism to expose, not help conceal, wrongdoing, and I’m not willing to keep quiet about this any longer, even if it means I’ll lose those payments.”

The ‘dirty money’ Lyon is referring to is the ‘severance package’ she got from CNN for getting rid of her. And just like the reporter in Chapter-C she too must have felt like a stray dog. Naturally, most editors have turned their ground reporters into stenographers who take a dictation and transmit the sound-bites. Reporting that is fine but there is no follow up from the studio staff or anchors to “verify the correctness and accuracy” of those sound-bites. Anything that is sympathetic to the ruling party passes without any challenge. But hey, that’s an insult to even stenographers as Glenn Greenwald brilliantly explains in his article "Inept Stenographers":

Journalists' excuses for their bad behavior -- it's necessary to get quotes -- are both fictitious and irrelevant…. A common criticism of establishment journalists entails comparing them to stenographers, on the ground that most of them do little more than mindlessly write down and uncritically repeat what government officials say. But stenography is a noble and important profession: they’re the court-licensed officers who, with astonishing speed and accuracy, transcribe the statements of all witnesses, lawyers and judges in judicial proceedings. If establishment journalists were to replicate actual stenography, it would be an improvement on most of the work they produce….  “And that explains why establishment journalists provide this service to these political officials: because they serve them as spokespeople, not report on them adversarially”.

Think of the journalists who are embedded with a political party. You can easily identify them on TV. They even interpret body language of ministers or even Sonia Gandhi for you. You can also easily replace any party spokesperson with these journalists. They have become the spokespeople. I agree with Greenwald, Stenographers are far nobler. Crony media bosses treat some of their own as stray dogs as the reporter in Chapter-C feels. Then there are stray dogs elsewhere too. You will suddenly find them spinning strange theories. Sometimes it will be in support of the ‘cronies’ who can’t tolerate any criticism. Sometimes they will suddenly unleash a campaign for Priyanka Vadra as PM candidate. Oh do remember, at times like these they will refer to her as ‘Priyanka Gandhi’ for effects.  NYTimes itself admitted that MSM news is nothing but censored propaganda. If that can happen in a true ‘free speech’ society, imagine what it would be in India.

Gallup, the respected research company, published a poll on reliability of TV and newspapers in July 2012. They carried out a survey to find out confidence of Americans in the media. Not surprisingly, the confidence in TV news has fallen from 46% in the early 1990s to a low of 21% in 2012. Newspapers didn’t fare any better. From a peak of 51% around 1978 the confidence has fallen to 25% in 2012. This kind of decline would be true for India too except that there is no one measuring it. There is no one acting as watchdog over our MSM either. This gives them the license to run their propaganda and lies unhindered. Now that’s where opportunity lies for people to open up alternatives. Nope, not for more news but for the Truth.

So what about the guy in Chapter-C? One has to wonder how much he was Censored. That "feel like a stray dog” is Sidhartha Gautam of CNN-IBN who quit immediately after the Cash4Votes sting that he was ordered to conduct. That Editor is none other than Rajdeep Sardesai. Why did Gautam quit? Was there a severance package like with Amber Lyon of CNN, IBN’s partner? Gautam, according to his new employers, gave a “rehearsed” testimony to the parliamentary committee on C4V. (IndiaToday August 5, 2011). The 2nd para that I called Chapter-C is also about Gautam from an India Today article of April 6, 2011. Stenographers are noble. Treating ground level reporters as stray dogs is the tactic for some editors to run their well-oiled propaganda machinery. With the ruling party in trouble again, another C4V is not too farfetched.

The Ghose In The Machine

Take a look at this furnace in the basement. “He wanted to make his family disappear… He murdered his whole family and half the people on the block... That’s where he keeps his victims”. 

It’s quite a frightening horror scenario. Every time you look at the furnace you cannot help being reminded of the victims who were burnt to hell. The soot and ashes from the burnt bodies are all over the basement floor. The stench of roasted humans fills the air in the stuffy basement. You can be forgiven if everytime you entered the basement you saw ghosts of those that were killed by some maniac. 

This story was captured in a horror movie and I suggest you watch this 2.0 minute trailer (Only if you’re over 18):

Imaginative geniuses can turn a comedy like ‘Home Alone’ into an absolute horror story. Youtube has an abundance of such recut trailers which turn comedies in to horrors and horrors into comedies. Kids are scared of a lot of things. Kevin, in Home Alone, has this terror about the basement furnace. In other words, it’s seeing ghosts in the machine. I know of someone else who sees terror and ghosts in comic situations. That’s none other than our very own Social Genius. In yet another idiotic loose cannon titled “Netiquette,Not Censorship” in Outlook magazine she sees ghosts, evil and terror in the social media and, unfailingly, in the Right-Wing. The only way kids overcome such fears is as they grow, see reason, logic and scientific explanations. Being an optimist I’m sure someday in the distant future Sagarika Ghose will grow up and embrace reason, logic and science.

One of Arthur Koestler’s book's central concepts is that as the human brain has grown, it has built upon earlier, more primitive brain structures, and that this is the "Ghost in the machine". The primitive minds in our mainstream media (MSM), so well exemplified by the Social Genius’ mindless utterances on TV, in print and even on Twitter, is the phenomenon of ‘The Ghose in the machine’. So let’s visit some classic ‘moron-speak’ from the primitive Social Genius.

“Social media is not the enemy. It is simply an amoral technology..” There! In the very opening part of the article the compass points clearly to the technology being “amoral”. If that line were to be rephrased, a bigot from the MSM would have rewritten it and it could read: “Hindus are not the enemy, Hinduism is amoral” Now you get the logic of the communist?

“A deluge of profane language, abuse of religious icons and vicious attacks on minorities are the hallmarks of Twitter and Facebook in India. Twitter in India, almost completely dominated by right-wing religious nationalism, has been called a “hate factory”. Well, it’s quite easy to forget who abused Lord Ram as an encroacher or manipulated a debate on TV to make SriSri Ravishankar appear in a negative shade. Never mind! Her boss, the so called editor of CNN-IBN, in deep anguish and anger uses the ‘F’ word. Oh yeah, you could say that is kindness compared to the profanity of others. What about ‘right-wing’? It’s true social media is dominated by Hindus. Educated, tech-savvy Hindus. So they’re all right-wing religious nationalists who collectively run a ‘hate-factory’. It’s a nice clever way of branding all Hindus into one category of hate-mongers. Ghose in the machine?

“As a television journalist, I get a daily dose of abuse on Twitter, an exercise in character-building endurance. Some examples: “Bitch, you deserve to be stripped and raped publicly.” ….. why u r not covering assam riots, mulloh ne ma ch..i hai kya behan..... Dalli saali Rahul ki.” In fact, I and other women journalists on Twitter regularly receive threats of sexual assault, showing that on Twitter, criminals do not fear the law”  Aha! So you see it’s really not about people in general getting abused but it’s about her and her “hammam”. A huge majority of those on Twitter don’t use such language. Most are skilled in either subtle or vicious humour, sarcasm or ridicule. They don’t need filthy language to do that. On the other hand, without condoning that kind of language, I would surely recommend the Social Genius take a look in the mirror. Of thousands of media persons and writers on Twitter if she and a few others get this then they would do well to remember it’s called ‘boomerang’. What you send out is what comes back to you in return. How often have you heard the line: “If you don’t like our programs, don’t watch our channel”. Same goes for these propagandists. If you can’t take something just leave and go someplace else.  

“In the mainstream media, we constantly debate the limits of regulation. The NBSA, the watchdog body for electronic news media of which I’m a member, advocates a firm “no” to censorship but “yes” to responsible content”. The NBSA is a watchdog? It’s just another coffee shop like the PCI. And if the NBSA is pathetically useless it is because its members are the same ones who abuse the privileges of TV media. I don’t think anyone needs to add even one line more to the stringent observations by the Supreme Court on the TV media in the Kasab death sentence. The SC has clearly stated that regulators cannot be from “within” the media itself. That’s the level our shamelessly corrupt media has fallen to. I dare say, it would be safer to allow security of Tihar Jail to its criminal inmates than let the media guys manage their own imaginary watchdog. The SC also damned them as potential “national security threat”. Journalist involved in the Israeli Embassy attack in Delhi, journalist involved in the murder of another journalist in Mumbai, on August 30 a journalist arrested in terror-plot in Bangalore. Shouldn’t the people demand that before journalists are given jobs or accreditation they should be cleared by National Security agencies? And yet, because some fools use filthy language on Twitter, the social media needs to be throttled.

It might have never even occurred to this Social Genius that hate can be incited even without filthy language. If I remember right, petitions have been filed against religious books, religious texts have been burnt for inciting hate and violence. The Bhagwad Gita was recommended for a ban in Russia. And these don’t contain filthy language. So the self-righteous sermonisers from the MSM typically don’t do any research before they criticise.The one journalist who was booed and chased away from India Gate was Barkha Dutt. I don’t think that would happen on Twitter, would it? But hey, just as the imaginative recut trailers on Youtube, there are some shows that best explain Bimbos. In a previous post I explained Sagarika’s “Miss India” type utterances with a video. The video below explains it even better: (A transcription of the exchange is provided below the video)

Anchor:  Say (your husband) is he basically more urban or rural Cathy?

Blond:    I don’t know what they mean..

Anchor:  Oh you know about that, you married him! What dya say?

Bimbo:   Ahhh.. heck, he’s urban

Anchor:  He’s urban? How long has he been that way?

Bimbo:   About two months..

Anchor:  And you think there’s anything he can do about it?

Bimbo:   He went to a doctor…

Anchor:  Did the doctor give him anything for his ‘urban’?

Bimbo:   He gave ME something...!

So that’s how the Social Genius sees ghosts and terror on Twitter and social media. Maybe next time she will look in the mirror and find it’s not social media, it’s Ghose in the machine. Nothing to worry really!