Rumours that Twitter has begun ‘shadowbanning’ politically inconvenient users have been confirmed by a source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech. His claim was corroborated by a senior editor at a major publisher.
According to the source, Twitter maintains a ‘whitelist’ of favoured Twitter accounts and a ‘blacklist’ of unfavoured accounts. Accounts on the whitelist are prioritised in search results, even if they’re not the most popular among users. Meanwhile, accounts on the blacklist have their posts hidden from both search results and other users’ timelines.
Our source was backed up by a senior editor at a major digital publisher, who told Breitbart that Twitter told him it deliberately whitelists and blacklists users. He added that he was afraid of the site’s power, noting that his tweets could disappear from users’ timelines if he got on the wrong side of the company.
Shadowbanning, sometimes known as “Stealth Banning” or “Hell Banning,” is commonly used by online community managers to block content posted by spammers. Instead of banning a user directly (which would alert the spammer to their status, prompting them to create a new account), their content is merely hidden from public view.
For site owners, the ideal shadowban is when a user never realizes he’s been shadowbanned.
However, Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines.
Among the users complaining of shadowbans are sci-fi author and alt-right figurehead Vox Day, geek culture blogger “Daddy Warpig,” and the popular pro-Trump account Ricky Vaughn. League of Gamers founder and former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, as well as adult actress and anti-censorship activist Mercedes Carrera, have also reported that their tweets are not appearing on the timelines of their followers.
With shadowbans now confirmed by an inside source, there is little room for doubt that the platform is intent on silencing conservatives. Furthermore, it has demonstrated a complete lack of regard for transparency, concealing its shadowbanning system from users and hiding its political bias behind a veneer of opposition to online abuse. (In reality, the site turns a blind eye to abuse from left-wingers.)
Users in search of a transparent, politically unbiased platform will soon have to find — or build — an alternative.
The University of Texas at Austin police department issued a disorderly conduct citation to an outdoor preacher on Tuesday after students complained that his message had offended them.
The preacher, who was standing just off campus, recorded his interaction with several university police officers, who explained that it was illegal for him to offend the students.
The preacher was an intern with Campus Ministry USA, an evangelical ministry organization that travels around college campuses loudly preaching their message. The ministry is headed by one Brother Jed Smock, who told The Daily Caller that his intern Joshua “was speaking out against STDs, warning against anal sex.”
The university told TheDC that the officer was responding to students who claimed to be “verbally harassed” by the intern-preacher. The video shows the officer explaining that the intern’s use of “anal” and “penis” offended students, before issuing a citation for disorderly conduct. “After a lawyer representing Joshua called the chief of police, the chief called Joshua and apologized. The citation was withdrawn.” Brother Jed told TheDC.
The four remaining occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge surrendered Thursday morning, bringing an end to the standoff on its 41st day.
Jeff Banta, Sean Anderson, Sandy Anderson and David Fry were taken into FBI custody.
Fry was the last to surrender, finally emerging after an extended phone dialogue with supporters who tried for over an hour after the others left to get him to walk out.
By contrast, the surrender of the others appeared to go off as planned.
FBI agents in armored vehicles had moved in Wednesday night on the four still at the refuge, hemming them into their camp and insisting they put down their guns and surrender.
Also Wednesday night, the FBI arrested Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy at Portland International Airport. He faces federal charges related to the 2014 standoff at his ranch. Bundy, 74, was booked into the downtown Multnomah County jail at 10:54 p.m.
His booking mug shot was released Thursday morning by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office.
Meanwhile, the surreal scene played out across social media.
With the Bundys and the Malheur National Wildlife occupation, America witnessed its first armed occupation in the kinetic, 140-character social-media age.
Updates:
11:46 a.m.: The Bundy family says on Facebook: "They are safe. Thank you God for watching over us. Keep us in your hand and deliver from this present evil," asreactions begin to come in.
11:41 a.m.: The FBI announces it will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. in Burns to discuss law enforcement's next steps.
11:36 a.m.: Gov. Kate Brown speaks about the end of the occupation:
Gov. Kate Brown on the end of the Malheur occupationGov. Kate Brown on the end of the Malheur occupation
11:21 a.m.: The FBI puts out a statement that includes the following from Billy J. Williams, U.S. Attorney, District of Oregon: "The FBI brought three of the remaining Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers into custody without incident. At approximately 11:00 am, agents brought the fourth into custody without incident ... The occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge has been a long and traumatic episode for the citizens of Harney County and the members of the Burns Paiute tribe. It is a time for healing, reconciliation amongst neighbors and friends, and allowing for life to get back to normal. I want to thank our neighbors in eastern Oregon for their patience, resolve, and their kind and welcoming spirit to the many members of federal, county, state, local, and tribal law enforcement who have worked tirelessly to bring this illegal occupation to a conclusion. The fine work of so many dedicated public servants in a difficult endeavor cannot be understated. I am very proud of them all. ... Much work is left to assess the crime scene and damage to the refuge and tribal artifacts. We are committed to seeing the job done and to pursue justice for the crimes committed during the illegal occupation."
11:15 a.m.: William Fry Jr., David Fry's father, texts to an Oregonian/OregonLive reporter: "We are all relieved our prayers were answered."
11 a.m.: Hall begins sobbing after Fry turns himself in. She and Seim then resume the dialogue surrounding their patriotic movement.
As the Oregon standoff holdouts considered their options Thursday for ending the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation by surrender or death, a prominent member of the Tea Party movement emerged as a leading voice on a live broadcast phone call attempting to talk the occupiers into surrendering. KrisAnne Hall, a prominent Tea Party figure who dubs herself a constitutional...
11 a.m.: Authorities say Fry is in custody. The standoff is over.
Gavin Seim's stream on YouTube broke the news that the FBI had surrounded the four remaining armed occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, providing a real-time view of the tension at the refuge, where the occupiers joined by phone.
10:27 a.m.: Fry says he doesn't care about the movement anymore. That he's doing this for himself.
The last remaining occupier in a 27-year-old from suburban Cincinnati who drove to Oregon while his parents were on vacation in Hawaii.
10:17 a.m.: Fry says he's pointing a gun at his head.
10:11 a.m.: Fry says his biggest fear is being raped in jail.
9:56 a.m.: Three of the four occupiers are in custody of the FBI. Jeff Banta, Sean Anderson and Sandy Anderson each face a federal conspiracy charge for their role in the occupation, joining 12 others already arraigned on that charge.
9:55 a.m.: Fry says he is declaring a one-man war on the U.S. government, saying he wants "liberty or death."
9:51 a.m.: The moderators continue to try to persuade Fry to leave.
9:48 a.m.: Fry says he is feeling suicidal.
9:45 a.m.: David Fry says unless his grievances are heard, he will not come out. The feed moderators, identified as Gavin Seim, who calls himself a constitutional activist, and KrisAnne Hall, a prominent national face of the so-called patriot movement, are encouraging him to follow through and leave the encampment.
9:43 a.m.: Jeff Banta is heading out, according to the feed.
9:40 a.m.: Sandy and Sean Anderson have been arrested, according to the refuge live feed.
9:38 a.m.: Sean Anderson says the occupiers are walking out.
9:34 a.m.: Sean Anderson says on the refuge's live stream that the FBI is telling the four remaining occupiers to come out one at a time.
9:15 a.m.: Blaine Cooper, a member of the core group that took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2, has been arrested, his wife wrote on Facebook on Thursday morning. Cooper's wife, Melissa Cooper, was also among the group occupying the bird sanctuary over the past month. Cooper said Friday that he had not been home since he left the refuge Jan. 26 after learning that Finicum had been killed at a law-enforcement roadblock. A spokeswoman with the FBI in Portland declined to confirm or deny that Cooper had been arrested Thursday morning.
9:03 a.m.: Bundy will make his first appearance in U.S. District Court in Portland at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. Bundy, 74, will appear on federal charges stemming from the 2014 standoff at his ranch in Nevada.
8:40 a.m.: Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, a high-profile supporter of the Bundy family, said she and Christian evangelist Franklin Graham are traveling to the refuge. Fiore's trip to Oregon is in apparent response to a call from Ammon Bundy, who asked elected officials from across the West to come to the aid of the occupiers.
On her website, Fiore lists job creation, reducing business regulation and taxation and defending Second Amendment rights as among her priorities. She often displays her support for gun rights on social media. Last November, she promoted a 2016 calendar on Twitter that shows her with a firearm for every month of the year.
Follow the latest on Twitter: Oregonian/OregonLive reporters are tweeting updates from Burns:
A memo intended for San Diego city employees attempted to bar them from saying the words “Founding Fathers” because of the “gender bias” the term allegedly implies.
Entitled, “Visual and Correspondence Style Guidelines,” the memo sought to implement speech restrictions banning employees from uttering everyday terms like “manmade” and “mankind” on the basis that such terms exhibit “non-inclusive language.”
“Most alarmingly,” reads a press release from the Pacific Justice Institute, “is the guidelines directive, on page 76, that City employees should refrain from mentioning those to whom owe our most fundamental freedoms, the Founding Fathers.”
The legal organization has offered free help for any city employee that is reprimanded for referring to Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or any of the men that shaped the nation’s history.
“The manual’s inane attempt to recast the fathers as simply the ‘Founders’ reaches a level of political correctness, censorship and insensitivity towards time-honored American values that is indefensible,” the press release reads.
Evidently San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer was unaware of the manual’s “gender inclusive” efforts until recently.
In a tweet sent today, he stated he had already ordered the manual removed from city use, citing it as an example of how political correctness has gone wild.
“Suggesting that our Founding Fathers should be referred to as ‘Founders’ is political correctness run-amuck. We are proud of our nation’s history and there is nothing wrong with referring to the Founding Fathers,” Faulconer said.
“At my direction this was removed yesterday from the City’s correspondence manual. The manual will be reviewed for other misguided examples that defy common sense and changes will be made accordingly.”
Indeed, the case is illustrative of how political correctness can grow so out of proportion that it begins to directly infringe on civil liberties.
Cities such as Seattle have similarly moved to ban words like “citizen” and “brown bag” on the basis that such words are offensive. In Ontario, Canada,France and other places, the words “mother” and “father” have even been removed from government forms in the name of inclusiveness.
Twitter on Tuesday announced the formation of a new “Trust and Safety Council,” which will work to develop policies censoring speech on the site. The group will be comprised of more than 40 organizations from 13 regions around the world.
“With hundreds of millions of tweets sent per day, the volume of content on Twitter is massive, which makes it extraordinarily complex to strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power,” Twitter said in a statement.
"It requires a multi-layered approach where each of our 320 million users has a part to play, as do the community of experts working for safety and free expression,” the statement added.
The announcement is the latest by Twitter in a string of moves aimed at improving its public image. Both the Obama administration and members of Congress have been calling on social media sites, and particularly Twitter, to do more to assist in the fight against terrorism. A California woman filed suit against Twitter in December, claiming that propaganda spread by the Islamic State on the site contributed to her husband’s shooting death in Jordan.
The latest move will contribute to combating violent speech on the site, but will likely expand Twitter’s effort to police content far beyond that as well. Groups involved with the council include the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Feminist Frequency, European Schoolnet, and the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism.
Twitter said it intended for the group to be comprised of “safety advocates, academics and researchers focused on minors, media literacy, digital citizenship, and efforts around greater compassion and empathy on the Internet,” and that it would provide input on the site’s “safety products, policies, and programs.”
“In developing the Council, we are taking a global and inclusive approach so that we can hear a diversity of voices,” Twitter explained. “As we develop products, policies, and programs, our Trust and Safety Council will help us tap into the expertise and input of organizations at the intersection of these issues more efficiently and quickly.”
Last week, the site also announced that it had silently removed as many as 125,000 accounts belonging to members of the Islamic State since the middle of 2015. And in December, Twitter amended its terms of service to more expressly prohibit abusive language.
December 17, 2015 ought to be a date which will live in infamy, as that was the day that some of the leading Democrats in the House of Representatives came out in favor of the destruction of the First Amendment.
Flint may have seen multiple rallies in recent weeks that called attention to the city's water crisis — but few if any were as surprising as a rally held by the Genesee County Volunteer Militia.
On Sunday afternoon, about 30 militia supporters clad in camouflage gear and bearing “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, gathered outside of City Hall to demand accountability amid a national discussion over how the city’s water supply became contaminated.
“We’re here to defend this community," said Matthew Krol, the militia's executive officer, addressing the crowd in a full camouflage outfit with a handgun strapped to his hip. “We’re not going to allow (the government) to step on the people of Flint any longer.”
He added: “If it means having to take up arms in defense ... we will do that as well.”
Politically, the militia may not seem to have much in common with past leaders who have called attention to the crisis, including filmmaker Michael Moore or civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. The militia's Facebook page is filled with proclamations of gun rights, and also bears posts favorable to the armed militia that have been occupying an Oregon wildlife refuge. A handful of people in the Flint crowd on Sunday were open-carrying pistols.
Some of those disagreements became obvious when Krol told the group: “This is not a racial issue, unlike some people last week tried to say. It’s a human issue.”
Yet, Dave McKellar said his group was lending their support to a cause that has sparked a national outcry and become the subject of international headlines. Militia members have spent the last week or so delivering non-contaminated water door-to-door with the American Red Cross, and McKellar said that about 50 more militia members would have come to the rally except that he instructed them to help distribute bottled water instead.
Krol echoed Moore’s previous comments when he said local and state leaders knowingly lied to the people. As he spoke, onlookers cried: “They knew!” and “Unacceptable!”
The water supply became contaminated with lead in April 2014 while the city was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager. The state Department of Environmental Quality admitted that it failed to require corrosion-control chemicals in the water when the city switched its source to the Flint River. Other critics also blamed local officials and federal environmental experts for their roles.
For months, local and state officials failed to answer alarm bells sounded by outraged citizens who complained of discolored and foul-smelling tap water.
As for when the water may ever be safe to drink again, early test results show lead levels in Flint's drinking water appear to be falling — but experts warn it's too early to stop using bottled water and tap filters.
McKellar, a militia liaison who helped organize the rally, told the crowd that “What happened here is a crime.”
But, he added: “The only color that was involved is green.”
Contact Daniel Bethencourt: dbethencourt@freepress.com or 313-223-4531. Follow on Twitter at @_dbethencourt. Free Press Staff Writers John Wisely, Robert Allen and Matthew Dolan contributed to this report.
Ammon Bundy speaks with reporter at a news conference at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Friday, Jan. 8, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Bundy, the leader of an armed group occupying the national wildlife refuge to protest federal land management policies, said Friday he and his followers are not ready to leave even though the sheriff and many locals say the group has overstayed their welcome. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
The leader of an armed militia that has occupied a national wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon for nearly three weeks made his first contact with an FBI negotiator Thursday.
The Oregonian reported that Ammon Bundy arrived unannounced at the Burns Municipal Airport, close to where federal officials have set up a staging area. Bundy said that the FBI had begun reaching out to the group two days earlier and claimed to have 14 messages on his phone from the negotiator, whom Bundy knows only as "Chris."
Bundy spoke to the negotiator on a borrowed cell phone as reporters watched.
"I'm a face-to-face kind of guy," Bundy told the negotiator at one point, according to the Oregonian. "You reached out to me ... I'm not sure exactly what you wanted to talk about."
Bundy asked for the release of ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven, who reported to prison earlier this month to finish five year prison sentences for arson on federal land. Bundy and his group occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2 following a protest calling for the Hammonds' release
Bundy said his group is "not going to escalate" the situation, and he agreed to speak with authorities again Friday.
Bundy and the FBI made contact one day after Oregon Gov. Kate Brown expressed frustration with what she described as a lack of action by federal authorities against the group.
In a statement Thursday, the FBI acknowledged the situation has caused "tremendous disruption and hardship" for people in the community and our "response has been deliberate and measured as we seek a peaceful resolution."
On January 8 we reported on a summit between top federal officials and the giants of social media in San Jose, California.
The talks between the government and Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft centered on the use of social media to recruit terrorists and, according to CNN, “find potential agents, inspire them to become violent, and coordinate attacks.”
According to the briefing the feds want to “explore ways to more quickly and comprehensively identify terrorist content online so that online service providers can remove it if it violates their terms of service.”
The government suggested developing an algorithm similar to one used by Facebook to detect and prevent possible suicides.
“Are there other areas where online providers have used technology to identify harmful content and remove it? … Something like Facebook’s suicide process flow?” the document states.
The Intercept notes developing effective software for such an effort would be virtually impossible.
“Many believe that data mining is the crystal ball that will enable us to uncover future terrorist plots. But even in the most wildly optimistic projections, data mining isn’t tenable for that purpose,” the cryptologist Bruce Schneier writes.
“Something as unique and rare as terrorism—that’s what makes this different from credit card fraud,” Schneier told The Intercept.
Schneier said false-positives resulting from an effort to detect terrorists online would be enormous. It’s Not Just Muslims the Feds Want to Target
If implemented the effort to find precrime terrorists online would not be limited to Muslims. The federal government is also interested in denying internet access and possibly entrapping “right-wing sovereign citizen extremists” and others it considers more dangerous than Islamic fanatics.
In 2014 the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a University of Maryland project funded by the Department of Homeland Security, designated the so-called sovereign citizen movement as the number one domestic terrorist threat in America.
Sovereign citizens do not constitute a cohesive movement, although the government characterizes them as such. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates around 100,000 Americans were “hard-core sovereign believers” in 2010 and an additional 200,000 were “just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges.”
The SPLC works with the DHS to formulate the terrorist threat posed by citizens allegedly belonging to the sovereign citizen movement.
In addition to so-called sovereign citizens the government has categorized constitutionalists as potential terrorists.
In 2010 a Department of Justice guide for investigators of criminal and extremist groups listed “constitutionalists” and “survivalists” alongside organizations like al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood.
The Department of Homeland Security funded a study in 2012 that characterized Americans “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.
“While largely omitting Islamic terrorism—the report fails completely to mention the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—the study focuses on Americans who hold beliefs shared by the vast majority of conservatives and libertarians and puts them in the context of radical extremism,” writesPaul Joseph Watson.
In 2009 the DHS came under criticism when an internal document on the supposed threat of rightwing extremism came to light. The “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” document produced during the Bush administration portrays anti-government groups as dangerous and potentially violent terrorists.
There are hundreds of thousands of groups and individuals on Facebook and Twitter that would be characterized by the feds as terrorist for opposing various government policies.
It is unclear if the algorithm suggested at the San Jose summit will be limited to Muslims or if it will used against all groups and individuals the federal government considers terrorists, including constitutionalists, antiwar activists, crypto-anarchists and dozens of other political classifications.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon's governor expressed anger Wednesday over federal authorities' handling of the occupation of a national wildlife refuge by an armed group and said she intends to bill the U.S. government for what the occupation is costing state taxpayers.
Gov. Kate Brown said federal officials "must move quickly to end the occupation and hold all of the wrongdoers accountable."
"The residents of Harney County have been overlooked and underserved by federal officials' response thus far. I have conveyed these very grave concerns directly to our leaders at the highest levels of our government: the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House," she said at a news conference.
Exasperated by a tense situation that has caused fear among local residents since it began Jan. 2, Brown said, "This spectacle of lawlessness must end, and until Harney County is free of it, I will not stop insisting that federal officials enforce the law."
She said the occupation has cost Oregon taxpayers nearly half a million dollars. She didn't say what those costs entailed.
"We'll be asking federal officials to reimburse the state for these costs," she said.
Federal authorities did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Brown had originally called the news conference to discuss her agenda for the upcoming legislative session, but she focused on the occupation by Ammon Bundy and his armed group of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in remote southeastern Oregon.
People living in the area strongly voiced their views at a community meeting Tuesday night in Burns, 30 miles north of the refuge. It was the most pointed demonstration yet of local residents' desire that Bundy and his group go home.
Several people at the meeting spoke directly to Ammon Bundy, who showed up with his brother Ryan and other occupiers. One woman thanked him for drawing attention to ranchers' complaints about management of federal lands but told him it's time to go home.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Ammon, you need to go home to your family, thank you," said Jennifer Williams.
Also at the meeting was Harney County Judge Steve Grasty, who has been at the forefront of efforts among locals to show Bundy and his followers they are not welcome.
"Mr. Bundy walked in with his crowd," Grasty told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "They came into a school, packing their firearms, and strategically spread around the room."
Grasty said Bundy — who is not from Oregon — should get the point that he and his followers need to go back to their home states and leave Harney County alone.
"It seems like he's out of touch with reality," Grasty told the AP from Burns.
Reached by the AP on Wednesday, Ryan Bundy said he did not have the impression from the Tuesday night meeting that most people wanted the occupation to end.
"There were a few dissenters, by far not the majority," Bundy said.
Federal, state and local law enforcement officers have been sent to the area but so far have avoided doing anything that might provoke a confrontation. One occupier was arrested for unauthorized use of a vehicle after driving a vehicle owned by the refuge into Burns, and a Montana man who was stopped by Oregon State Police last week for a lighting violation was arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Grasty would like law enforcement to turn up the heat on Bundy and his fellow occupiers — perhaps isolate them by closing off roads leading to the refuge.
"I hope they lock it down. People shouldn't be coming and going. Maybe it's time," he said.
Bundy initially took over the refuge to protest prison terms for two local ranchers convicted of setting fires on federal lands. After the ranchers voluntarily reported to prison, Bundy has justified the occupation by saying he wants federal lands in Harney County turned over to local residents, among other demands. He has also said he is obeying a divine command.
A columnist with Duke University’s student newspaper has labeled Americans’ “obsession” with freedom of speech as nothing more than “an expression of white supremacy.”
The article, entitled “Free speech, Black lives and white fragility,” argues that the country’s devotion to the First Amendment has thwarted “an urgent and overdue conversation about racism” both on and off campus.
“I am thinking about how an urgent and overdue conversation about racism—on our campus and across our country — has been derailed by a diversionary and duplicitous obsession with the First Amendment,” writes Bennett Carpenter, a graduate student in the literature department, for The Duke Chronicle newspaper. “I am thinking about how quickly the conversation has shifted from white supremacy to white fragility — and how this shift is itself an expression of white supremacy.”
Carpenter states that although offensive and hateful speech is equally comparable to physical acts of violence, no “student activists” have ever attempted to stifle the First Amendment of other students.
“The first point to make is that, despite the hand-wringing, I have yet to see a single example of student activists violating the First Amendment,” Carpenter claims despite numerous accounts showing otherwise.
The author also claims that both murdering a human being and engaging in offensive speech are nearly identical “within the context of white supremacy.”
“Within the context of white supremacy, any distinction between a defaced poster, a racist pamphlet and legal or extralegal murder can be only of degree,” Carpenter writes.
The answer to combating the issue, Carpenter says, is to bypass the state while creating more safe spaces and “shouting down” anyone expressing an opinion they disagree with.
“Rather than relying on the state to censure hate speech, anti-racists can assume that task—calling out and shouting down every expression of white supremacy as we work to build a genuinely free society,” he says. “In the meantime, we can construct safe spaces for ourselves where hatred is barred at the door. In other words, the exact work that campus activists are already doing.”
