Twitter then released a statement, saying, “We do not shadow ban,” but then in the very next sentence admitted, “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).”672 They played with the definition of shadow banning too, defining it as, “deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it.” That’s why it’s more appropriate to label it shadow suppressing or throttling than to call it a “ban.”
Earlier that year an undercover journalist at Project Veritas had spoken with various former and current employees of Twitter including a Content Review Agent who admitted that there were a lot of “unwritten rules” about shadow banning and that “It was never written, it was more said.”673 A Policy Manager for Twitter’s Trust and Safety council named Olinda Hassan said the company was working on down-ranking “shitty people” so their tweets don’t show up.674
A former software engineer at Twitter told the undercover journalist, “One strategy is to shadow ban 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.”675
Twitter most likely uses shadow throttling (instead of a full shadow ban) to limit the reach of certain users, so some people are able to see and interact with their tweets, but far less than if no such filter was activated on the accounts. Facebook admits they limit the distribution of posts unless users pay to “Boost” the post, so it’s foolish to think Twitter isn’t shadow throttling accounts as well using a filter to limit the reach of people the company has deemed politically problematic.
When Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sat down for a rare interview with CNN in August 2018 he said that the company is considering removing the “like” button from all tweets, and hiding people’s follower counts.676 A few months later he repeated the same thing, indicating they may get rid of the “like” button “soon.”677
Hiding the number of “likes” and retweets people’s posts get would make shadow banning certain individuals or tweets about specific topics almost impossible to detect, because without being able to see how many people are clicking “like” on a post, users wouldn’t know if their followers were actually seeing the post at all.
People who use Twitter get a feel for how many “likes” an average tweet gets, and if all of a sudden their engagement dropped 95% and went from getting twenty likes per tweet to only one or two, they would notice something was wrong and suspect that people weren’t seeing their tweets. Some have pointed out that certain tweets they have posted appear to them when they’re logged in, but when looking at their feed from a different browser (not logged in) they don’t show up, adding to the concerns that Twitter is shadow banning certain tweets.678
Censoring Accounts by Suspending Users
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey once said his goal was to have Twitter function as a basic utility, like water.679 And in their early years, Twitter executives used to call their company the “free speech wing of the free speech party,” but as the culture changed, and the social justice warriors clamored for more censorship, Jack Dorsey said their once unofficial motto about being the free speech wing of the free speech party was actually just “a joke.”680
While he may have been idealistic when starting the company, he later succumbed to pressure to “reign in” the wild, wild west nature of Twitter and rolled out increasingly strict policies resulting in a number of high profile people being permanently banned for saying things that are commonplace on Twitter.
Milo Yiannopoulos got banned permanently in July 2016 for trolling “comedian” and actress Leslie Jones about how horrible the all-female Ghostbusters remake was.681 Political operative and unofficial Trump advisor Roger Stone got banned in October 2017 after going off about several CNN hosts including Don Lemon, Jake Tapper, and Ana Navarro for “using an expletive” to describe them and saying they should be “mocked” and “punished” for constantly lying about the President.682
Tommy Robinson was permanently banned from Twitter for posting facts about crimes committed by Muslims in the UK.683 Twitter has suspended other people’s accounts for posting facts about black crime statistics in America as well.684
Jayda Fransen, another vocal critic of Muslim immigration to the UK and founder of “Britain First,” was banned less than one month after President Trump retweeted a few of her videos showing violent Muslim mobs attacking people, which put her on the radar of activist groups who wanted to take her down for spreading “Islamophobia.”685
Blogger Chuck Johnson was banned for saying he was going to “take out” Black Lives Matter troll DeRay McKesson, meaning expose him and take him out of the game, but Twitter claimed it was a threat of violence.686 Johnson responded on his blog saying “Twitter doesn’t seem to have a problem with people using their service to coordinate riots [referring to the recent spree of Black Lives Matter riots that had been occurring]. But they do have a problem with the kind of journalism I do.”687
Supposed “white supremacist” Jared Taylor was also banned, along with the account for his American Renaissance organization as a part of a crack down on “abusive content,” but Taylor doesn’t use slurs or heated rhetoric and seems like a mild-mannered senior citizen who is just pushing back against anti-white racism, and celebrating European culture and achievements. Despite being called a “white supremacist” he actually says that Jews and Asians on average have higher IQs than white Europeans.688
Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys [conservative men’s fraternity], was banned after he was falsely labeled the leader of a “hate group.” He then sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for defamation.689 Comedian Owen Benjamin was banned after going on a rant about anti-gun activist David Hogg where he said “Don’t you think it’s weird that you are telling grown men how to live when you barely have pubes?”690
Comedian Anthony Cumia, who was once co-host of the Opie and Anthony show, was banned in June 2017 for “harassing” a writer for The A.V. Club after he called her a “fat old trans looking twat.”691 YouTuber Sargon of Akkad was banned in August 2017 for posting sarcastic comments that included “racial slurs.”692
Free speech activist Lindsay Shepherd was banned in July 2019 for “misgendering” a transgender “woman” who sexually harassed her. The “woman” attacked Shepherd, who had just had a baby, saying “At least my pussy is tight and not loose after pushing out a 10 pound baby.”693 This same “woman,” who goes by the name Jessica Yaniv, has been filing discrimination claims against waxing salons for refusing to do a Brazilian wax on “her” penis.694
Lindsay Shepherd responded, “This is how men who don’t have functional romantic relationships speak. But… I guess that’s kinda what you are!” At least I have a uterus, you fat ugly man.”695 Twitter then banned Lindsay Shepherd for calling “Jessica” a man, and not the transgender “woman” who clearly violated Twitter’s policy against sexual harassment.