Is Leaked List Of ‘Shadow Banned’ Twitter Users Proof Of Targeted Censorship Of Truth?
by Susan Duclos, All News Pipeline:
A list has been leaked online that purports to show one page out of 82 pages of Twitter usernames that have been targeted for censorship in what has been described as a “shadow ban.” While ANP has not been able to confirm the veracity of the partial list as of yet, what we can confirm is that 1) Insiders have previously admitted to the fact that Twitter does use “shadow banning” practices, and; 2) That names on the list have proven without a doubt that their articles, followers, shares and retweets have suffered a 30-50 percent decrease, which was reported before the list was leaked.
Shadow Banning- In February 2016, Breitbart News received confirmation from an inside source that Twitter had been “shadow banning” politically inconvenient users, meaning users that shared articles and information that does not align with the ideology of those that run Twitter. “Shadow banning” is described in the following manner:
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.
According to that report, Twitter was using their “stealth banning” in order to influence the 2016 presidential election, by censoring the “news” their users were exposed to. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been accused in the past of running a “systemic campaign” against conservatives, as well as “purging” conservatives from the social media platform, in order to “silence conservative voices online.”
THE LIST
According to the list making the rounds on Twitter, hashtag “#shadowban, it alleges this is just one page of 82 pages which consist of thousands of names. The list is prefaced with the following statement:
“For the time being, only a partial list of the most notorious accounts is being provided due to the literally thousands of accounts on the list. The list appears to have been created more by an algorithm using filters for ‘buzzwords’ than just popular accounts (this assessment was made due to the fact that an entire portion of the list contained back-to-back “deplorable” accounts with either deplorable in the user name, or profile description). Twitter also uses a filter that has an “admin delay” in which a post is delayed for view until its filter approves the post. If the person is low priority, it will normally take only 15-20 seconds once it runs through the buzzwords. If it’s high profile, it may take manual approval. The “Impressions” are reduced with a limit capacity which is why you’re seeing less and less likes and retweets from conservative accounts: because limiting impressions means less people seeing tweets from these accounts in their regular news feeds. Ironically, Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0 are not on the list. The anomaly in the list is that not all on the list are Trump supporters. Rumor has it remaining docs with headers will be on 4Chan”
The one page of 82 of the list of alleged accounts being shadow banned, via image shown below:
A few points about the list, the names and the reference to the “deplorables” in the statement above the list.
Point one: Many of these names are clearly “conservative” in nature, and many well known in the truth movement. Point Two: The fact that the statement specifically mentions “back-to-back” deplorable accounts” clearly indicates that they are specifically targeting Trump supporters because users did not start adding the word “deplorable” onto their names, or profiles, until Hillary Clinton claimed publicly that Trump supporters belonged in a basket of “deplorables,” which was highly controversial during the election cycle, and to which Trump and his supporters started using as a badge of honor. Point Three: The fact that so many deplorables are supposedly on the remaining pages of this “list,” if real, would mean that Twitter was still adding names to their supposed “shadow ban” list after Breitbart exposed their shadow banning practices, because their article was in February 2016, and Clinton’s statement was in September 2016.
EVIDENCE VIA ANALYTICS OF TWITTER SHADOW BANNING PRACTICES
While attempting to verify the veracity of this Twitter shadow ban list #1of82, which I will reiterate now, we could not confirm, nor debunk, I did run across an article from someone on this list, published before the list was published publicly, which provides data, via analytics, that show that Twitter has been “shadow banning” his posts and shares.
Middle row, 14th name from the top, is @Cernovich, which is the account of Mike Cernovich, who owns the popular website Danger & Play. On March 14, 2017, six days ago, Cernovich showed via screen shots of his analytics tools, that he had gained an average of 500 followers per day, until March 11, 2017, when those numbers showed a dramatic decrease to average approximately 100 a day, with one of those days showing only 28 new followers.
