December 9, 2022

How Twitter Silenced Conservatives

The second “Twitter Files” release provides concrete evidence of how censorship really took place.

“Shadow banning” is a term for what Big Tech companies have been doing for years to suppress primarily conservative speech. Occasionally you hear news that so-and-so was banned from Twitter or Facebook, but the far more prevalent redlining of free speech is shadow banning, wherein the user may or may not even suspect anything is going on as a social media platform silently reduces his reach and squelches his voice.

The second big “Twitter Files” release by Elon Musk now provides real evidence of just that.

Nearly five years ago, former Twitter software engineer Abhinov Vadrevu explained: “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.”

Journalist Bari Weiss, one of the reporters to whom Musk has entrusted these files, confirms as much in a long thread on Twitter. “A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics,” Weiss began. “All in secret, without informing users.”

Not just in secret, but with flat-out lies and denials. “Twitter denied that it does such things,” Weiss said. “In 2018, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: ‘We do not shadow ban.’ They added: ‘And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.’” Twitter’s official account said in July 2018, “People are asking us if we shadow ban. We don’t.”

Oh yes they did.

The Twitter bigwigs don’t all call it shadow banning, of course. They call it “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” One Twitter executive explained: “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool.”

Weiss went into detail on who and how: “The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team — Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 ‘cases’ a day. But there existed a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper. That is the ‘Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,’ known as ‘SIP-PES.’”

She included screenshots from Twitter’s own system applying certain labels like “Trends Blacklist,” “Search Blacklist,” or “Do Not Amplify” to disfavored individuals. Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of anti-COVID lockdown Great Barrington Declaration fame was one victim. Popular radio host Dan Bongino was another. Conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk was a third.

We don’t know how extensively these terms were applied or to what accounts, but Musk announced, “Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal.” In any case, we have known for many years that, somehow, this sort of algorithmic manipulation was exactly the tactic for speech suppression used by Twitter as well as Facebook.

The Patriot Post’s Facebook page, for example, has suffered immense traffic suppression since June 2020. Only a fraction of our 736,000 followers see any of our posts, and traffic from Facebook to our website has plummeted to only 10-15% of what it once was. There’s no way that happened naturally. As Weiss has proved with concrete evidence of Twitter’s censorship, our experience is hardly unique among conservative news sites or personalities on either major social media platform.

Indeed, after this Twitter bombshell, that sound you hear in the distance is the shredders and secure emptying of virtual trash cans at Facebook headquarters.

Twitter is the platform preferred by those who want to quickly disseminate news and information. Elections can and have hinged on what voters learn via Twitter. Thus, it is vitally important for the health of our Republic that dialogue freely take place.

George Orwell didn’t write 1984 as an instruction manual, but the real life Thought Police at Twitter were using it that way, making a concerted effort to reduce the reach of anyone espousing “thoughtcrime.”

Twitter is a private company, but it is also one of the nation’s foremost platforms for speech. If that speech isn’t free — or is even suppressed, sometimes at the behest of the federal government and with the filtering of a former FBI lawyer — then the First Amendment has clearly been infringed in both letter and spirit.

Tell us again who is the “threat to democracy”?

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.