Cohen, 53, sued federal prison officials and Attorney General William Barr on Monday, saying he was ordered back to prison because he was writing a book to be released before the November presidential election.

He has been in isolation at an Otisville, New York, prison camp, quarantined while prison authorities ensure he does not have the coronavirus.

His attorney, Danya Perry, said in a statement that the order was "a victory for the First Amendment" and showed that the government cannot block a book critical of the president as a condition of release to home confinement. "This principle transcends politics and we are gratified that the rule of law prevails," she said.

The book will address "Trump's personality and proclivities, his private and professional affairs, and his personal and business ethics," according to the lawsuit. It further stated that the government's demand that Cohen agree not to speak to or through any media, including by publishing a book, violated his constitutional rights.

Cohen had been furloughed in May along with other prisoners as authorities tried to slow the spread of the COVID-19 in federal prisons.

He was one year into a three-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, among other crimes.

Campaign finance charges related to his efforts to arrange payouts during the 2016 presidential race to keep the porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from making public claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.

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Judge orders Michael Cohen released from prison, cites retaliation over book about Trump - STLtoday.com

The beat

NSW police continue strip searches despite complaints

NSW police will continue their strip-searching practices after the results of a watchdog investigation into the lawfulness of their conduct were published on Tuesday. The investigation was prompted by complaints filed by several women between 2016 and 2019. The report detailed five accounts of alleged police misconduct and concluded that issues were being addressed. The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission urged police to apologise but didnt recommend any further action against the responsible officers.

Italian police bust cash counterfeiting ring

Italys Carabinieri have taken down a euro counterfeiting syndicate linked to the Camorra organised crime group, arresting 44 suspects after a three-year investigation. The counterfeiters are believed to comprise the largest such network in the currencys history, and its thought theyre responsible for more than a quarter (or 233 million) of all fake euros in circulation across Europe. The operation to disrupt the ring was coordinated by Europol experts in Italy, France and Belgium.

CT scan

Debate over banning far-right extremist groups in Australia

Shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally has called on the government to proscribe far-right extremist organisations in Australia. The UK, the US and Canada have already banned a number of these groups. However, some experts contend that while right-wing extremism is an increasing threat, its not yet serious enough to warrant such far-reaching bans. The effectiveness of the proscription of extremist organisations has also been questioned, as it could send them underground.

Iran providing support for al-Shabaab in Somalia

According to government and military officials in Somalia, Iran has been exercising influence in the country and its neighbours by forming ties with extremist groups. Iran reportedly provides money, weapons and ammunition to groups such as the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab, resources which have gone on to target US and Somali forces. Its believed that Iran is taking a leaf out of the Russian handbook by using proxy groups to help push the US out of the region.

Checkpoint

Customs agents used in crackdown on US protesters

US federal agents who detained a protester in an unmarked car during protests in Portland have been identified as Customs and Border Protection personnel. The US Department of Homeland Security says CBP officers from three paramilitary-style units have been deployed against protesters in Portland. The department has not ruled out sending more officers to quell continuing protests in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.

Drones used in IndiaChina border dispute

India and China are using drones in a reconnaissance and logistical capacity as they continue their dispute over territorial claims in Ladakh. A skirmish last month that resulted in 20 Indian army deaths and an unknown number of Chinese casualties prompted international actors, including nine members of the US Congress, to call for an easing of tensions.

First responder

Countries race to develop Covid-19 vaccine

The World Health Organization says 166 Covid-19 candidate vaccines are being tested globally. A vaccine developed by the University of Oxford is the current frontrunner after trials showed it spurred a successful immune response with minimal side effects. While the UK has already ordered 100 million doses of this vaccine, distributor AstraZeneca has yet to confirm whether they will be produced at its Australian facilities.

Indigenous Americans face pandemic threat

Significant concerns have been raised about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on indigenous communities in the Americas. The western hemisphere remains the epicentre of the pandemic, with more than 70,000 confirmed cases and 2,000 deaths since 6 July among its indigenous people. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said indigenous communities, which often lack political representation, are at a much higher risk due to socioeconomic factors and limited access to healthcare.

View post:

National security wrap | The Strategist - The Strategist

During the recent Twitter hack where top influencers on the platform seemingly shilled a common digital currency scam, two Bitcoin SV applications demonstrated a powerful use case.

Source: Ark Twitter

Ark is an app that is still in closed beta, but has a feature where it will automatically archive tweets to the Bitcoin SV ledger if you summon their account via the syntax:

@arktobitcoin thread

The tweet replied to will display on Arks in-app Shared feed, as well as be timestamped on the ledger:

Source: WhatsonChain

This feature was originally intended to archive long tweet threads so that users could read them later but became quite useful in this catastrophic event for Twitter.

Archiving tweets on-chain was an initial feature of Twetch and was also heavily used during this incident. Users recorded links and screenshots of almost all the hacked tweets, demonstrating the accountability feature of the Bitcoin ledger.

Source: Twetch

Slowly but surely users are becoming aware of how the established technology platforms manipulate what their users see via algorithms and biased moderation. This event could be the final straw as the hack explicitly targeted Twitters verified accounts, colloquially known as Blue checkmarks.

The entire point of this feature was to communicate to users that these accounts have been vetted by Twitter to be authentic, yet hackers effortlessly promoted a scam from top followed accounts, leading to theft of ~$120,000 in BTC. Naturally, some users would fall for it, as they see power couple Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, top financial investors, athletes, musicians, and politicians claiming to give back to their communities because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: Twetch

This situation seemingly could not get worse for Twitter when screenshots of features that appear to allow shadow-banning of users were leaked online. The leak hammers home that Twitter possesses absolute control and bias over what their users view.

These social media platforms are holding too much valuable data in private serverswhich have led to the formation of honeypots for hackers and potential for abuse of power and corruption. Twitter has revealed itself to be playing God with their customers timelines, asserting they know what is best for the users as a former Twitter executive states in the timestamped link below:

These circumstances are enabled due to the flawed security model of the Internet, where the large tech companies have formed central hubs that have wide influence. Such influence, that once hackers compromise one of these points of failure, they obtain complete control.

Comparing the security of the Internet to Bitcoin where only the user has control of their keys and accounts, such a situation becomes near impossible. Each account must be compromised individuallycontrolling the back end of a company like Twetch or Ark would not yield control over all customers accounts.

The amount of disinformation, fake news and media manipulation during a tumultuous 2020 is quite overt. Dogpiling on to the situation are companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google who leverage their power to further sow confusion, hate and divisiveness throughout their platforms because not only do they believe what is morally superior, they profit from it all.

This situation seemingly is primed for alternative solutions that Bitcoin can provide, where now tools in the users control are demonstrating their effectiveness against abuses of power.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

Continued here:

Bitcoin applications used to archive hacked tweets - CoinGeek

July 27, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) Twitter has released an official response to the latest round of shadow-banning allegations, but the statement has failed to impress conservative, Christian, and pro-life voices affected by the practice.

On Thursday, LifeSiteNews covered a Vice News report accusing the social media company of hiding the accounts of several prominent Republicans from its drop-down menu thats supposed to simplify searching for specific people. The victims Democratic counterparts did not appear to be affected. Twitter denied any political intent, and fixed the issue within a day.

Twitter has since published a blog post by Trust & Safety lead Vijaya Gadde and product lead Kayvon Beykpour, flatly denying that they engage in shadow-banning (the unofficial term for limiting a profiles visibility without notifying the profile holder).

The post explained that Twitter simply rank[s] tweets and search results to ensure content is immediately relevant and addresses bad-faith actors who intend to manipulate or detract from healthy conversation. The first two criteria for this process are relatively straightforward: the interests of the searcher and the popularity of particular tweets.

The third criterion, however, is much more subjective: assigning lower rankings based on whether a Twitter user intend[s] to manipulate or divide the conversation. Such tweets are determined based on whether an account appears to be a real person (as determined via email addresses, profile pictures, etc.), whom it follows and retweets, and how other accounts mute, follow, block, or retweet it.

As for the wrongly-affected Republicans, Twitter claims their disappearance from the drop-down search was an unintentional result of communities that try to boost each others presence on the platform through coordinated engagement.

We do not shadow ban, Gadde and Beykpour declared. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly dont shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.

Their explanation did not convince many conservatives, with many highlighting the more work to find them line for ridicule.

Twitters latest explanation for their algorithm amounts to bury[ing] Republicans for something totally out of their control, the Daily Callers Peter Hasson noted. Twitters algorithm likely suppressed the Republican congressmen because the wrong accounts engaged with theirs, they said.

At Breitbart, John Nolte wrote that Twitters explanation effectively admitted that, although you have gone to the trouble of following someones Twitter account, and have done so specifically because you want to read their tweets, Twitter is interfering in this process.

How are you supposed to know to look at somebodys profile to check on their tweets when Twitter is shadow banning their tweets, banning from your feed the tweets you specifically requested to see? he asked. How are you supposed to know you are missing what you cant see, what you dont even know is out there? How are you supposed to find new people to follow, expose yourself to new ideas?

Both Hasson and Nolte faulted Twitter for essentially playing a semantics game, avoiding the shadow-banning charge by defining shadow-banning more narrowly than it is commonly understood. Many observers agreed [language warning]:

This is far from the first allegation of political censorship to hit the social media platform, and in fact Twitter insiders have previously been caught on video admitting that they shadow-banned conservative users. Twitter insiders have also admitted to Congress to censoring hashtags of interest to conservatives during the 2016 election.

In addition, the company has attempted to block a number of pro-life advertisements, allows left-wing groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and pro-homosexual GLAAD to advise it on trust and safety issues, and enlists the anti-Christian group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to help weed out hateful conduct and harassment.

On Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-FL, told the Daily Caller that hes currently mulling whether to file a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against Twitter for their actions.

I am contemplating a complaint with the FEC, because if my political opponents have better access to the Twitter platform than I do, thats no different than a private company giving my political opponents access to a billboard or television time or radio time, he explained. That wouldnt be equal. So I believe that Twitter may have illegally donated to the campaigns of my opponents by prejudicing against my content.

More here:

Conservatives skeptical of Twitters latest shadow-banning ...

Twitter said it doesn't shadow ban its users.

There's a shadow of a doubt.

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump called out Twitter, accusing the social network of shadow banning prominent Republicans. The reaction came after Vice News reported that Twitter wasn't autopopulating Republicans in its drop-down search box.

But that's not shadow banning -- it's a bug, according to Twitter.

"We do not shadow ban," Twitter said in a blog post Thursday. "You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile)."

"We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box, and [we're] shipping a change to address this," a Twitter spokesperson said earlier in the day. "The profiles, tweets and discussions about these accounts do appear when you search for them. To be clear, our behavioral ranking doesn't make judgments based on political views or the substance of tweets."

Thursday's presidential backlash against Twitter is the latest in a series of accusations lawmakers have made regarding social networks and censorship. The House Judiciary Committee has had two hearings on the subject, in July and April, with Republican lawmakers asking representatives from Twitter, Google and Facebook if the platforms were purposely silencing conservative voices.

The subject has come up before. In January during a Senate hearing Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, asked Twitter's policy director, Carlos Monje, if the social network practices shadow banning. Monje said no, and Twitter has said at multiple hearings on Capitol Hill that it doesn't shadow ban.

Most recently, during a hearing on July 18, Twitter's global lead for public policy strategy, Nick Pickles, told lawmakers, "Some critics have described the sum of all of this work as a banning of conservative voices. Let me make clear to the committee today that these claims are unfounded and false."

Now playing: Watch this: Trump slams 'shadow banning' on Twitter: What even is...

3:09

Shadow banning isn't a new concept; it's frequently used in forums and on other social networks as an alternative to banning someone outright.

Instead of kicking someone off, shadow bans make a person's post visible only to the user who created it. The idea is to protect others from harmful content while eventually prompting the shadow-banned user to voluntarily leave the forum due to a lack of engagement.

If you outright ban a user, the thinking goes, the person is aware of it and will likely just set up another account and continue the offending behavior.

Shadow banning was Reddit's only form of banning for years and was used by the site until November 2015.

The practice is similar to what Facebook does with misinformation. The social network told reporters on July 11 that instead of completely banning pages behind hoaxes and misinformation, it would rather demote their posts so fewer people see them.

Shadow banning is typically used to stop bots and trolls, said Zack Allen, director of threat operations at ZeroFox, a company that focuses on social media security.

"This can be effective in combating bots where 'bot herders' who maintain these accounts don't necessarily know whether or not their bots are actually being seen by other people," he said.

No.

You can still see posts from the Republicans named in the Vice News article, including Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.

The White House, McDaniel and Gaetz didn't respond to requests for comment.

Your Twitter account may not autopopulate in searches, but that doesn't mean you've been shadow banned.

Kevin Lee, a trust and safety architect at Sift Science, an online fraud and abuse detection company, said Thursday's misunderstanding highlights how lawmakers need to do a better job at understanding technology.

"Our leaders need to identify how technology works to make informed decisions (or public-facing commentary), especially when their work can have such an impact on how such technologies are used and regulated," Lee said.

Twitter's moderators aren't actively taking measures against accounts and blocking them so that only these users can see their own tweets, the company says.

The search results bug involves an error with Twitter's algorithm, the social network's head of product, Kayvon Beykpour, said in a series of tweets Wednesday.

Twitter's behavior signals caused the mistakes with autosuggestions, Beykpour explained.

"Our usage of the behavior signals within search was causing this to happen & making search results seem inaccurate," he said in a tweet Wednesday. "We're making a change today that will improve this."

Twitter's product manager for health, David Gasca, talked to CNET about these signals earlier in July. They could include how often an account is muted, blocked, reported, retweeted, liked and replied to. Twitter's algorithm takes interactions into consideration, and its artificial intelligence classifies them as either positive or negative experiences.

As part of Twitter's push to create healthy conversations, its AI will favor accounts that have had more positive experiences.

First published July 26, 9:07 a.m. PTUpdate, 9:42 a.m.: Adds remarks from a security specialist,12:57 p.m.: Adds remark from social media expert. Update, 8:20 p.m. PT: Adds information from company blog post.

Cambridge Analytica: Everything you need to know about Facebook's data mining scandal.

CNET Magazine: Check out a sample of the stories in CNET's newsstand edition.

Excerpt from:

Shadow banning: What it is -- and what it isn't - CNET

Provided by Refinery29

If you spend enough time on any of TikToks subkingdoms (except for Straight TikTok) youll likely come across a users desperate plea to have a post boosted to remedy the devastating effects of a recent shadow ban. Users as big as fake cult-leader Melissa Ong (@chunkysdead) have pleaded their case to their followers, at least the ones that find their videos.

There are almost 300 million videos hashtagged #shadowbanned on TikTok. Most recently, shadow banning made headlines when Black TikTokers organized Blackout Tuesday on May 19, to protest what they claimed was TikToks suppression of pro-Black political content. As Refinery29 previously reported, TikTok has denied claims of shadow banning, but still apologized to Black creators for the hashtag glitch, and has since taken measures to make Black creators feel more supported and able to work with the platform to enact change.

The shadow banning claims, both collected by Refinery29 and shared on TikTok, tend to describe similar patterns. Users views, likes, and comments arent reflective of the size of their following. Or people will suddenly experience a steep drop in engagement that will persist until the video that triggered it is removed or edited. Sometimes videos get taken down without any explanation. Its also known as ghosting or stealth-banning.

Dill (@dillyonce) is a 25-year-old TikToker based out of Boston. She says shes never sworn in her videos or been cited for any violations, yet her videos get taken down regularly. For example, I was in Bali on vacation at this beautiful villa and I was recording a TikTok pretending to be the first Black LGBT+ contestant for the Bachelorette in Paradise, she told Refinery29 over email. The video lacked profanity, vulgarity, and music plagiarism yet upon multiple uploads they were all removed for reasons I still dont understand; its been very frustrating to be the victim of shadowbanning.

The simplest definition for shadow ban is the removal or suppression of content without the platform notifying the user that their content is in violation of any community guidelines or usage rules. In other words, its when a platform takes down or suppresses your content without giving you formal notice. Platform users tend to regularly suspect shadow banning, but it is rarely proven.

In mid-March, an investigation by The Intercept unearthed an internal document that confirmed TikTok once, instructed moderators to suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform. This is certainly the most damning example of TikToks shadow banning practices. But the platform told The Intercept that many of the guidelines outlined in the article are, are either no longer in use, or in some cases appear to never have been in place, and that they were a misguided effort to prevent bullying. Since then, TikTok has been sharing insights into how content is circulated, like this blog post on how the For You page works.

However, it would be unfair to pin a decades-old pattern that is common in platform moderation on the app du jour, which just so happens to be based out of the country Trump has labeled public enemy number one. Every major platform, including Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and Craigslist have all been accused of shadow banning. Most recently, YouTuber Gaby Hana made headlines with her claims of being shadow banned on YouTube. Its a practice almost as old as the internet itself, originally intended to drive undesirable users, like spammers, off a given platform. Its also known as ghosting or stealth-banning. In theory, shadow bannings only productive application is when it comes to dealing with spam, to convince spammers to abandon a platform and leave its users alone.

In 2018, Republicans and conservatives cried shadow banarguingsocial media platforms were out to get them, using aVice News storythat said thatTwitter limited the visibility of Republicans. (Shortly after, Twitterreleased a statementexplaining that abughad affected not just Republicans, but many users for a short period of time before it was fixed.) But that didnt keep Donald Trump from hopping on the bandwagon.

The fires of suspicion were stoked once again after a Twitter hack that affected the likes of Elon Musk and Bill Gates. In reporting the hack,Motherboard shared screenshotsthat showed how the hack was executed. The screenshot showed how, internally, Twitter tags certain accounts asTrend Blacklist or Search Blacklistto mark accounts that have violated community guidelines and have been restricted from appearing in trending pages and searches, respectively. Like in 2018, Trump supporters took this as proof that Twitter is shadow banning them, but as Motherboard puts it: VICEs traffic tools show tweets by conservatives linking to our article, saying the screenshots we published reveal a shadowban conspiracy, are leading thousands of viewers to our site.

Today, conversations around shadow banning seem to be gaining momentum in a time where Black people, especially, have real concerns regarding over-policing. Overall, platforms need to do better in applying their community guidelines evenly and ensuring they do not echo our faulty governments habit of criminalizing Blackness, so often the very engine that fuels the content is what keeps these spaces alive.

Refinery29 reached out to TikTok for comment regarding ongoing shadow banning claims and will update this story when we receive a response.

See the rest here:

What Is Shadow Banning & Why Are TikTokers Complaining ...

@mirilagrasta

A new academic paper from City, University of London is calling on Instagram to do more to protect women and vulnerable users online.

Published in Feminist Media Studies this summer, How Instagrams algorithm is censoring women and vulnerable users but helping online abusers argues that Instagrams algorithm is censoring women and vulnerable users, but doing little to protect them and stop abusers.

The paper was researched and written by Carolina Are, a Sociology PhD Candidate and Visiting Lecturer at City, University of London and a UN Women Generation Equality ambassador. It unveils how Instagram is censoring certain accounts for showing skin and nudity, worrying these posts might promote or facilitate prostitution.

Among the most affected accounts are those owned by athletes, sex workers and dancers, who often end up having their posts hidden or deleted from the social network. The paper also delves into how Instagrams algorithm tends to discriminate against women.

Instagrams censoring also comes in the form of shadow-banning, where accounts and posts are hidden from the explore or search functions of the platform. Often, when this happens, users wont get notified of Instagrams action on their account and content, and will only realise they have been shadow-banned from a drop in engagement.

The paper then goes on to argue that Instagram fails to protect the same users it censors from different types of online harassment and abuse. These include trolling as well as cyber-flashing, which happens when a user receives unsolicited photos and messages by abusers.

A pole dancer and instructor, Are has been vocal about the issue on her social media channels during the past year. She believes that harassment has emotional, psychological and economic costs for victims, and it makes women stop contributing to online platforms.

The same platforms that were going to give them a voice are also giving users new opportunities to harass, insult and silence them, Are told City, University of London.

Her latest academic paper, as well as her blog and social media posts, are pushing for Instagram to tackle the issue by checking accounts that have experienced harassment and censorship, by identifying and calling out unfair moderation practices, and by providing better moderation through the use of report a problem or help tools.

She told City, University of London: Social media platforms have become a form of civic space. Because of this, platforms need to be held accountable about their biases, and they need to be more transparent about the rules that govern them.

I have witnessed hateful comments and the lack of moderation surrounding them driving women off platforms and having to deal with their traumatic consequences without support.

It is not sustainable for large parts of Instagrams user population to continue being silenced by and targeted with abuse on social media.

If social media architecture is kept as it is, offline inequalities may become even greater online, and the value that social media platforms could provide to our society will be lost.

Carolina Are is an active pole dancer, blogger and activist. She is on Instagram and Twitter as @bloggeronpole. Her blogs, thoughts, dance routines and academic updates can be found at bloggeronpole.com.

Read more from the original source:

New Research Calls On Instagram To Protect Women And Vulnerable Users - TechRound

Black creators on TikTok claim the popular social media app is still shadow banning their content despite the companys pledge to better support creators of color after weeks of criticism of the platform. Shadow banning refers toblocking or partially blocking a user or their content from a web forum so its not immediately apparent to the user that they have been banned.

Black creators told Digital Trends that theyve seen their follower and view counts drastically shrink after they posted about experiencing racism on the app or the Black Lives Matter movement, or after they spoke about race broadly. Some claim theyve had their videos taken down without being given a reason leaving them left to wonder why.

Ive had multiple videos taken down and they dont respond at all, said Nakita David, who has 380,000 followers on the app, in an interview with Digital Trends. If you work really hard on a video and TikTok just decides to delete it for whatever reason, its the worst pain.

Another creator, Cindy Manu, 19, who lives in South London, said when she started her TikTok in September 2019, she was getting over 50,000 views on average. She would regularly be featured on the apps coveted For You page where popular videos are shown to a wider audience garnering her millions of views.

Then, as worldwide Black Lives Matter protests began to pick up, Manu noticed videos go missing from her feed, and her view count sharply dropped to just a couple hundred views, even though she didnt switch up her content at all.

I actually went back through my videos and looked to see if there was anything explicit or swearing, but there was literally nothing, she told Digital Trends. Thats when I realized TikTok took it down itself. It made me really annoyed.

A TikTok spokesperson denied the allegation in a statement about shadow banning.

This isnt something that we do, said A.B. Obi-Okoye, a spokesperson for TikTok, in an email to Digital Trends. We make our Community Guidelines publicly available and encourage users to review them so they can understand what type of content isnt permitted on the platform. Users also have the ability to appeal decisions they believe to have been made in error.

TikTok has come under fire in recent weeks, not only from the United States government over security concerns, but also for how it moderates the content of its 800 million active users.

TikTok has been accused of hiding hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter, suppressing content relating to protests in Hong Kong, and limiting the reach of videos made by disabled users.

Internal documents obtained by The Intercept also revealed that moderators were told to stifle content made by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled.

In May, thousands of TikTok users changed their profile pictures to the Black power symbol in an effort to show support for Black creators reportedly being censored on the app. Users were also encouraged to follow Black creators and share their content instead of their own.

I knew people who were on there for years and only had 200 followers, said Lex Scott, the organizer of Mays #BlackoutTuesday protest on TikTok and founder of the Utah chapter of Black Lives Matter. Then you see these people go from 200 followers to over 10,000 during the blackout. It was really powerful.

Following the protest on the app, TikTok released a series of actions that it would take to better support Black creators. In June, the company said, we acknowledge and apologize to our Black creators and community who have felt unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed.

TikTok added it would take concrete actions to build a better, more inclusive platform.

But some Black creators and activists, like Scott, believe TikToks promises were short-lived.

I am shadow banned, said Scott. Our content is being restricted, and I believe it may be by design as well. I think we all just want to know why they are doing this to us.

David, who posts comedy and commentary, said her posts about Black Lives Matter dont do as well as they used to when she created her account late last year.

Its been a lot worse since they said they would start working with Black creators, she said. The Black Lives Matter movement is nowhere to be seen on TikTok anymore. Its really sad.

Black creators like David and Manu have attempted to reach out to TikTok to understand why their posts were deleted or how they violated community guidelines, but said they did not hear back.

It affects your mental health, Manu said. You think its your fault that your videos arent doing well.

And since the influencer industry has become a lucrative career path for the social media-savvy, shadow banning also threatens another essential aspect of a Black creators life: Income.

Ive spent a lot of time making content that should be doing good and getting recognition for it to get nothing. That messes with my income, said 17-year-old Denise Nguimdoh, who has over 300,000 followers. We know when our content is doing well, so it is really obvious to us when we are shadow banned.

Ive had brand deals and promos, but now it all just came to a stop, said Manu. A couple months ago, I was getting [direct messages]; now I havent gotten anything and Ive stopped gaining followers.

Before her follower count plateaued and her views took a downfall, Manu said she was able to navigate promotional deals regularly and have a bonus income along with her job as a retail associate at a department store. Now, she said, she is just frustrated.

Everything was just starting to look really promising, said Manu. I feel like Ive come out and made some good content and just got like 500 views. Now I have to work twice as hard to get my content out there than white creators.

Both Manu and David said they plan to start focusing their attention on other social media platforms outside of TikTok like YouTube and Instagram especially if they continue to feel like their content is being shadow banned.

I think TikTok needs to be more diverse, said David. TikTok is a steppingstone, but you can never rely on TikTok because its not consistent.

See more here:

Black creators say TikTok is still secretly blocking their content - Digital Trends

Twitter was the victim this week of the worst hacking attack ever on a social media company. But as bad as it was, it could have been worse.

On Wednesday, hackers got hold of a number of blue checkmark Twitter accounts (designated as "authentic") belonging to important titans of industry, politicians, and celebrities, and launched a scam to get more than a $100,000 in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The Associated Press reports by the end of the day, the hack had received almost 12.9 bitcoins (as of this writing 1 bitcoin = $9,111).

Among the victims were Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian, and Warren Buffett and there may have been hundreds more.

Dan Gainor of MRC TechWatch says the crooks could have aimed higher. "Apparently conmen got on and raided Twitter for all things Bitcoin money," he described. " Last number I heard was apparently $110,000 that people had sent along which seems, in the realm of what they did, kind of petty."

The scam is viewed as a shot across the bow, warning of what could happen if a truly malevolent mind were to hack in.

"[They] could have picked one of the big health care companies that's supposed to be trying to find a solution to the virus, [or they] could have reported some big news and that would have affected their stock price," Gainor suggests. "They could have set up [for example] a conversation between the leader of Iran and Donald Trump, basically declaring war."

The FBI has been called in to conduct a forensic investigation to see who hacked the platform and how.

"How do you classify this? Is this fraud and grand theft? Is this terrorism?" Gainor wonders. "You can certainly argue that shutting down what has become critical communications infrastructure for the globe is a terrorist act."

CBS News reports today that 130 accounts were targeted on Wednesday and quotes New York's attorney general as saying the attack "raises serious concerns about data security and how platforms like Twitter could be used to harm public debate."

What's trending? Censorship

Speaking of Twitter, conservatives have been complaining, with no evidence, for a long time that the social media platform has been shadow banning and otherwise censoring their content. But now they have proof, says Gainor.

One of the results of this week's big hacking scandal involving Twitter was the release of a screenshot of the control panel Twitter moderators see for each account. Shown in the image were buttons that allow employees to keep an account from trending, and another that would keep the account from coming up on a search. In other words, the social media giant has been caught red-handed censoring content.

Gainor explains that conservatives know this has been happening but have been unable to prove it. "Anybody who looks at 'Twitter Trending' topics, you will notice sometimes that there's a topic that everybody's talking about and it's got 300,000 tweets and then there's a topic that's got 6,000 tweets and it's ahead of it on Twitter Trending," he tells OneNewsNow.

They now have the smoking gun, as it were and Gainor says it might come back to bite Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (pictured), who recently testified before the Senate Intelligence and the House Energy and Commerce Committees and swore, under oath, that Twitter was not engaged in censorship.

"Did Jack Dorsey, when he testified in front of Congress, lie to Congress? If he did, there are criminal penalties for that," says the MRC spokesman adding that that could be a big blow to all social media companies that have relied on their status as mere platforms, not publishers, to not be held responsible for content.

"[Twitter] randomly restricts content, it randomly silences people in a very predictable, political way and as a result they're undermining support for this legal protection that all the social media companies have," he argues.

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Hacking reveals the bitter truth about Twitter - OneNewsNow

At the start of the year, Twitter officially made shadowbanning, a controversial practice that involves limiting the distribution or visibility of user posts in a way thats difficult to detect, part of its terms of service.

Now new leaked screenshots from Motherboard appear to show an internal Twitter user administration tool that can be used by Twitter staff to blacklist user accounts from search and trends.

The screenshots show details about the target users account, such as whether the account has been suspended, is permanently suspended, or has protected status. They also show several other tags including a Trends Blacklist tag and a Search Blacklist tag.

Two of Motherboards sources who provided the screenshots claim that the internal panel shown in these screenshots is used by Twitter workers to interact with user accounts.

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Several Twitter users have accused Twitter of shadowbanning their tweets this year.

In June, the pop culture satirical news account Price of Reason documented how Twitter had shadowbanned one of its viral tweets that made fun of HBO Maxs controversial decision to stop Bugs Bunnys hunter adversary Elmer Fudd using a gun in its Looney Tunes remake.

The account owner noticed a drastic slowdown in engagement after his tweet had started to go viral and discovered that he was being blacklisted from Twitter search, causing both his account and the tweet to be scrubbed from search results.

Its as if neither it or I ever existed, Price of Reason told Reclaim The Net.

While Twitter made shadowbanning official from January 1 of this year, undercover video from a January 2018 Project Veritas report shows a former Twitter engineer discussing the tactic almost two years before it was added to the terms.

In the video, the former Twitter engineer, Abhinov Vadrevu, states: One strategy is to shadowban so that you have ultimate control.

In the same video, former Twitter executive Olinda Hassan states: Its something were working on. Were trying to get the sh*tty people not to show up. Its a product thing were working on.

Project Veritas had its Twitter ads account banned because of this video almost two years later in November 2019.

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Leaked screenshots appear to show internal Twitter tool that can blacklist users from search and trends - Reclaim The Net