tag: MediaCrooks: Shadow Ban

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Showing posts with label Shadow Ban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shadow Ban. Show all posts

Saturday, January 13, 2018

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 Once my suspension was revoked, the account got some attention and 3000 more followers and is now stuck at 135K.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.