Twitter Shadowbanning ‘Real and Happening Every Day’ Says Inside Source

Breitbart | by MILO YIANNOPOULOS | 16 Feb 2016

AP Photo/Isa Simsek, Zaman

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.

The pattern of shadowban reports, which skews towards the alt-right, the populist right, and cultural libertarians, follows close on the heels of Twitter’s establishment of a “Trust and Safety Council” packed with left-wing advocacy groups, as well as Islamic research centre the Wahid Institute.

It also follows my prediction that Twitter would use its influence to interfere in the 2016 presidential election by muffling conservative voices on the platform.

For close to a year now, Breitbart has covered Twitter’s march towards political censorship. In May 2015 Allum Bokhari reported that the site had begun to experiment with shadowbans, ostensibly to protect users from abuse. Then, as now, it was suspected that “protecting users from abuse” was an excuse to implement a system that would later be used for political censorship.

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.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS POLICE GIVE PREACHER CITATION FOR OFFENDING STUDENTS

Daily Caller | Peter Hasson - FEBRUARY 12, 2016

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.

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SAN DIEGO ATTEMPTS TO BAN TERM ‘FOUNDING FATHERS’ DUE TO ‘GENDER BIAS’

Adan Salazar | Infowars - FEBRUARY 10, 2016

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.