Turn to Tara: Allegations of ‘shadow banning’ spark censorship … – News 12 Long Island

My, my, my. The latest in a string of intriguing files released by Twitter CEO Elon Musk through a couple of select journalists shows that shadow banning was real, it was targeted and it was frequent, and that conservatives were the ones normally caught in the crossfire.

Well, well, well. Sunshine shines at last.

Maybe this should be subtitled, More Questions Congress Must Demand Vijaya Gadde Answer, Twitters former legal eagle and leading denier of shadow-banning that is to say, of censoring.

And it is censoring thats occurred at the company.

Twitter long ago shed its status as a private company, with a right to stifle or amplify whatever voices its executives wanted. Its clear politicians particularly Democrats held massive influence over the content of posts on the platform. That moots the companys Section 230 protections. That puts the company under the umbrella of the First Amendment.

As Fox News wrote, Twitter suppressed stories based on requests from both Dems and GOP in 2020, but it favored liberals.

Thats cause most of Twitters employees leaned left and liked Democrats more than Republicans. The bubble brought the echo chamber.

From journalist Bari Weiss, one of Musks go-to for Twitter Files investigation: Twitter once had a mission to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.

Like what?

Like how?

Take, for example, Stanfords Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children, Weiss tweeted. Twitter secretly placed him on a Trends Blacklist, which prevented his tweets from trending.

Thats not all.

Conservative talk radio host Dan Bongino was slapped with a Search Blacklist, Weiss tweeted.

Thats not all.

Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to Do Not Amplify, Weiss tweeted.

But oh contraire, Twitter told us for so many years, both during congressional hearings and on its own company website.

Setting the record straight on shadow banning, Gadde, along with Twitters product lead executive, Kayvon Beykpour, wrote in a July 2018 blog post. People are asking us if we shadow ban. We do not. But lets start with, what is shadow banning?

Then came the definition the purposeful, deliberate making of someones content undiscoverable, yada yada, we know the definition already, thank you. Then came the additional denial.

We do not shadow ban, Gadde and Beykpour wrote.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said similarly during testimony before Congress in September of 2018.

From Rep. Mike Doyle, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, to Dorsey:, as Fox News reported: Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?

Dorsey, in answer to Doyle: No.

Doyle to Dorsey: Are you censoring people?

Dorsey to Doyle: No.

Doyle to Dorsey: Twitters shadow banning prominent Republicans is that true?

Dorsey to Doyle: No.

Now fast-forward to today.

Turns out, its not called shadow banning. Its called visibility filtering.

Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. Its a very powerful tool, one senior Twitter employee told us, Weiss tweeted.

Another revelation: VF refers to Twitters control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweets discoverability; to block select users posts from ever appearing on the trending page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches, Weiss tweeted.

And this: All without users knowledge.

Musk, once again, is on the move.

As he quickly exited top influencers of Twitter policy like Hunter Biden laptop cover-upper James Baker; like Gadde so, too, hes quickly taking action to restore free speech to his social media platform.

Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if youve been shadow banned, the reason why and how to appeal, Musk tweeted.

Republicans are getting in the game, as well. Now that the GOP is slated to control the House, several in the party say theyre going to haul in former Twitter executives namely, Gadde, Baker and Yoel Roth, former site integrity chief to account for their roles in suppressing information regarding President Biden and his family prior to an American election, CNN reported.

All good.

All warranted.

Truth brings reconciliation, Musk tweeted.

It does.

But for many on the left, unfortunately, reconciliation is not the end game. For far too long, Democrats have enjoyed the favor of their water carriers in media and social media favor that has allowed them to shut out voices of opposition and criticism and pretend as if their leftist views are shared by vast majorities. Thats coming to an end. Twitter is falling to freedom.

Just dont expect the left to let it fall without a fight.

As the White House said, when Musk first started opening Twitter doors to sunshine, Democrats are keeping a close eye on Twitter. Thats a clear indication that leftists are already plotting their next path of subterfuge. Maybe its a new committee to root out hate; maybe its a new commission to stop the anti-Semitism, or stifle the violence, or put a cease and desist to so-deemed dangerous rhetoric; maybe its a new policy or piece of legislation or proposal with some tame-sounding, sane-sounding name. Whatever its called, what it will be is censorship.

Todays Democrats, more like Marxists than pro-American patriots, will stop at nothing to stop free speech.

Cheryl Chumley can be reached atcchumley@washingtontimes.comor on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast Bold and Blunt byclicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast byclicking HERE. Her latest book, Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom, is available byclicking HEREorclicking HEREorCLICKING HERE.

Original post:

Twitter shadow banning wink, wink a real thing after all

What is ‘shadow banning’, and why did Trump tweet about it?

Posted on December 28, 2022 by admin

Why are conservatives talking about shadow bans?

Twitter SHADOW BANNING prominent Republicans, Donald Trump tweeted Thursday morning. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints.

On Wednesday a Vice News story reported that some senior Republican officials were not visible in automatic search results. Vice framed this as shadow banning without providing any evidence that it was deliberate.

Conservative outlets such as Infowars and Breitbart soon picked up the story, which they saw as validation of their longstanding suspicions.

Then, on Thursday morning, Project Veritas the rightwing muckraker James OKeefes entrapment-based media enterprise released a video claiming to show a Twitter engineer admitting to the practice. By early Thursday, conservative media outlets had published dozens of articles on the controversy.

From there, the issue made a familiar journey through Fox News into Trumps brain, and then onto his Twitter account.

The idea that conservatives are being shadow banned is the latest iteration of an idea, bubbling away since the last election, that conservatives are being silenced by social media companies. Recently, conservatives have seized on changes that Twitter, in particular, has made to the way it filters users and tweets as evidence of subtle censorship.

Twitter did in fact make changes to the way it algorithmically ranks users, based on their behavior. Among other effects, this will de-prioritise abusive users in shared spaces like hashtags, search, and conversations. This means that badly behaved users will be less visible on the site. In launching the changes, Twitter explained that they were content-neutral.

But rightwing users have folded this into their contention that Twitter is shadow banning them. That term is internet lingo for a situation in which a social media user believes they have full access to the platform, but other users are prevented from seeing their accounts or messages.

Social media companies (and before them, forum moderators) have been frequently accused of using this technique to shut down users they see as problematic without risking the blowback that a fully-fledged ban might bring.

No at least not based on what Vice purported to show.

Twitters recent changes are, according to the company, an effort to crack down on bots and bad behavior and to encourage what the companys product lead Kayvon Beykpour calls healthy public conversation. Twitter says this process is mostly automated employing behavioral signals and machine learning and the company also says it is based on users actions, not ideologies.

We do not shadow ban, a Twitter spokesperson flatly told the Guardian. Our behavioural ranking doesnt make judgments based on political views or the substance of tweets.

Beykpour said the problems that Vice wrote about were the result of a glitch in predictive search results that has since been corrected. He reaffirmed his intention to create a healthier Twitter.

OKeefes video, meanwhile, offers no context for a former Twitter engineers quite general discussion of the concept of shadow banning. OKeefe is well known for misleading stunt journalism, and this morning Twitter told Fox News that OKeefes video was deceptive and underhanded.

Conservatives have often complained about the alleged liberal bias of tech companies, but its not clear whether, or how, social media users of other ideological stripes have been affected by Twitters changes. Conservatives claims of anti-conservative bias may simply be a case of a false positive. In addition, that stance doesnt account for the possibility that some conservative accounts may have been legitimately downranked for engaging in abusive, uncivil or trolling behaviour.

The shadow banning controversy is just the latest in a long line of accusations of bias conservatives have levelled at tech companies. Some on the right have gone so far as to launch legal action against companies for allegedly unfair treatment, and Republican members of Congress have grilled social media executives over their supposed efforts to shut down rightwing social media stars such as Diamond and Silk and Gateway Pundit.

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in particular, has made accusations that YouTube and Facebook are censoring Infowars a staple of his broadcasts. (Somehow, his predictions of a shutdown has never come to pass.)

Progressives, as well as many journalists, make the opposite case that social media companies are overly permissive in allowing abusive and extremist voices to remain on their platforms.

A recent undercover investigation by Channel 4 in the UK revealed that Facebook not only allows extremist content to stay on its site, but appears to value that content for the traffic it brings. Twitter has faced persistent criticism for allowing far-right accounts to persist on its site, and effectively facilitating the campaigns of rightwing activists.

Originally posted here:

What is 'shadow banning', and why did Trump tweet about it?