‘Shadowbanning’: No longer just a right-wing conspiracy
Kaylee McGhee White
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Elon Musk revealed the second part of his “Twitter Files” expose on Thursday, and it confirmed what many had long suspected: The platform actively suppressed the accounts of prominent conservatives, “preventing disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limiting the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.”
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601008766861815808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
It wasn’t too long ago that this secretive “shadowbanning” policy was dismissed by establishment media as just another right-wing conspiracy. Now we know for sure that it wasn’t. According to the documents and details released by journalist Bari Weiss, users who questioned COVID-19 policies, including school shutdowns, were put on a “Trends Blacklist” that prevented their tweets from trending. Other prominent conservative commentators, such as Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, were slapped with “Do Not Amplify” and “Search Blacklist” labels. The popular Libs of TikTok account was suspended repeatedly and prevented from posting despite internal admission from Twitter officials that she hadn’t violated any of its policies.
‘SOVIET-STYLE BULLS***’: DAN BONGINO AND CHARLIE KIRK DECRY ‘TWITTER FILES’ BLACKLIST
Musk also confirmed when asked directly that Twitter’s shadowbanning affected political candidates while they were running for office. It’s not hard to guess which political party those candidates belonged to.
These revelations follow the first Twitter Files dump, which revealed Twitter’s aggressive effort to suppress circulation of the New York Post’s bombshell report about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Both reports thus far prove Twitter acted the way you’d expect a leftist activist to: taking orders from Democratic members of the incoming Biden administration, cracking down on content that questioned or challenged leftist ideology, and punishing users who resisted its efforts.
The problem, of course, is that Twitter isn’t an activist organization or Democratic PAC. It’s a public forum on which national conversations take place, and the targeted efforts by Twitter officials to control who participated in those conversations and what they were allowed to say should disturb everyone.
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