Report: Twitter is Shadowbanning the “Politically Inconvenient”

Near the beginning of this year, I posited the question: “Is free speech at Twitter in danger?”

I think we can now sadly answer, “Yes.”

Twitter is almost certainly using the practice of shadowbanning (Short definition: Suppressing an unfavored user’s content rather than directly banning him.) against “politically inconvenient” users.

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. . . .

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.

I’m afraid Milo Yiannopoulos is correct in concluding, “Users in search of a transparent, politically unbiased platform will soon have to find — or build — an alternative.”

And, again, I say this with sadness as a frequent tweeter myself.  Twitter once furthered free speech.  Now it is suppressing it.