Shadow Banning – Alive and Well

Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) flipped the switch to ‘on’ and had social media giants skittering for cover like rats discovered by a glaring light, as he called out Twitter for their controversial practice of “shadow banning” conservative content.

His fury against biased treatment and the subsequent threat of legal action comes on the heels of Twitter temporarily hiding accounts by keeping them off the auto-populated drop-down search box.

Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust and Safety Lead, who proudly claims to be a new mom and immigrant, swiftly responded to Nunes’ claims by blogging a lengthy and detailed reply including the declaration, “People are asking us if we shadow ban. We do not.”

Yeah, but they do.  As recently as a week past.

What is Shadow Banning?

Shadow Banning is a practice by social media companies that deliberately hide content to all except the person who posted – while keeping the poster in the dark.  It's social media platforms’ way of making one feel ignored by the cool kids in the cafeteria at lunch time in hopes they’ll sit elsewhere.

One former Twitter engineer explains:

"One strategy is to shadowban so you have ultimate control. The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone but they don't know they've been banned because they keep posting and no one sees their content. So they just think that no one is engaging with their content when in reality, no one is seeing it."

And you can watch Project Veritas’ undercover interview of social media employees crow in detail their hate for President Trump and conservatives by watching this video.  It’s quite disturbing if one values a fair and balanced use of the First Amendment.

Nunes is not alone in be being bullied by the self-praising cool kids as Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Mark Meadows (R-NC), -- all members of the House Freedom Caucus -- and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel have not felt the love of late either.

Two sessions with the House Judiciary Committee prompted promises from Facebook, Google, and Twitter that they do not discriminate against conservatives – which is again proving to be a bunch of hooey.

Semantics

Twitter began their explanation tour with a flat-out denial followed craftily by calling the recent incident against Nunes and other prominent Republicans, an “issue.”  As they opined:

“Yesterday, we identified an issue where some accounts weren’t auto-suggested in search even when people were searching for their specific name. To be clear, this only impacted our search auto-suggestions. The accounts, their tweets and surrounding conversation about those accounts were showing up in search results. We do not shadowban. 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…they still do.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, tweeted recently (but you may not have seen it): “Twitter tries to disappear conservatives. So @Twitter shadowbanned me even though I've been tweeted out repeatedly by @RealDonaldTrump.”

Yes, Virginia, Shadow Banning Does Persist

“Auto-suggested.”  So, it’s just a different term for – wait for it -- Shadow Banning.  If Twitter and Facebook are making it increasingly difficult for conservatives to get their message out, by monitoring and tweaking the search bars, it is simply a sneaky way to explain their censorship.

Trump, Nunes, and all conservatives must be diligent observers of their social media pages, as it appears some form of censorship, cloaked in mundane geek speak, will be employed.  They are playing a dangerous political game of Whack-A-Mole, if you will – and yes, just like the carnival that comes through town, their game is rigged.