{"id":1156,"date":"2019-12-10T17:33:47","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T17:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=1156"},"modified":"2019-12-10T17:33:47","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T17:33:47","slug":"shadow-banning-now-enshrined-in-twitters-terms-of-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=1156","title":{"rendered":"Shadow Banning Now Enshrined in Twitter&#8217;s Terms of Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>TWITTER CENSORSHIP: \u201cSHADOW BANNING\u201d IS WRITTEN INTO THE PLATFORM\u2019S NEW TERMS<\/h1>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shtfplan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/twitter_censorship-e1513701519649.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:\u00a0Mac Slavo<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Twitter has written \u201cshadow banning\u201d aka, censorship, into their new terms.\u00a0 The platform will now intentionally \u201climit the visibility\u201d of some users. Expect those who dissent from the official narrative to be the ones censored.<\/p>\n<p>Critics have accused Twitter of censorship for quite some time now.\u00a0 But this time, it\u2019s official. The company has admitted they will attempt to silence those critical of the ruling class.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/news\/475049-twitter-terms-shadow-bans\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">According to\u00a0<em>RT,<\/em><\/a> the news terms will be taking effect in January of 2020. While the new terms don\u2019t look like much to write home about, some tweaks to the language could have larger repercussions for users, limiting their reach behind the scenes without their knowledge.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Last year, when I spoke to Twitter reps, they lied and gaslight us about their targeted manipulation of people\u2019s tweets. Now it\u2019s in their new TOS. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/dti7FSd1v6\">https:\/\/t.co\/dti7FSd1v6<\/a> nu, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RubinReport?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@RubinReport<\/a>, we\u2019re waiting for an alternative <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/W2LBYma3lU\">pic.twitter.com\/W2LBYma3lU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davereaboi\/status\/1202322161240723456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 4, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cWe may also remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>limit distribution or visibility<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>of any Content on the service, suspend or terminate users, and reclaim usernames without liability to you<\/strong>,\u201d the new terms state.<\/p>\n<p>The social media giant is telling users that it reserves the right shadow ban or \u201cthrottle\u201d or censor certain accounts. And it is not clear on what basis will it make those decisions, although we guess (based on their past which is rife with censorship) that accounts that aren\u2019t parroting the government\u2019s official narrative will be on the list.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shtfplan.com\/headline-news\/censorship-increases-twitter-suspend-more-conservatives_05082019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CENSORSHIP INCREASES: Twitter Suspend More Conservatives<\/a><\/p>\n<p>While Twitter has previously\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.twitter.com\/en_us\/topics\/company\/2018\/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">insisted<\/a>\u00a0point-blank\u00a0\u201cwe do not shadow ban,<em>\u201d<\/em>\u00a0in the pre-2020 terms the company split hairs between shadow banning and\u00a0<em>\u201c<\/em>ranking\u201d\u00a0posts to determine their prominence on the site, and acknowledged deliberately down-ranking\u00a0<em>\u201c<\/em>bad-faith actors\u201d\u00a0to limit their visibility.<\/p>\n<p>In January 2018, conservative media watchdog group Project Veritas published footage showing Abhinov Vadrevu, a former Twitter software engineer, discussing shadow banning as a\u00a0<em>\u201c<\/em>strategy<em>\u201d<\/em>\u00a0the company was at least considering, if not already using.\u00a0\u201cOne strategy is to shadow ban so you have ultimate control. The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone but they don\u2019t know they\u2019ve been banned because they keep posting and no one sees their content<em>,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Vadrevu said. \u201cSo they just think that no one is engaging with their content when in reality, no one is seeing it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The new terms will make shadow bans an official policy, all but guaranteeing continued cries of bias and censorship from the platform\u2019s many critics will be silenced.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/nworeport.me\/2019\/12\/07\/twitter-censorship-shadow-banning-is-written-into-the-platforms-new-terms\/\">https:\/\/nworeport.me\/2019\/12\/07\/twitter-censorship-shadow-banning-is-written-into-the-platforms-new-terms\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TWITTER CENSORSHIP: \u201cSHADOW BANNING\u201d IS WRITTEN INTO THE PLATFORM\u2019S NEW TERMS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}