Photo credit: Credit: veritasvisuals | YouTube

In the latest video by the undercover Project Veritas, they go deep into the Twitterverse to get to the bottom of the "shadow ban". They interview former Twitter employees on camera and explain the steps the social media company is taking to censor the political content they don't like.

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If you don't know what shadow banning is a way of 'unofficially' banning someone from the platform, but instead of blocking their access to Twitter, a shadow ban works at cutting off other users access to THEM. So, basically, no one will ever see your content, it won't get promoted in the algorithm's if it does well and it's a death sentence for content that Twitter disagrees with. All unofficially, mind you.

Former Twitter software engineer Abhinav Vadrevu said, "they just think that no one is engaging with their content when in reality, no one is seeing it." Former Twitter Content Review Agent Mo Norai says, "if it was a pro-Trump thing and I’m anti-Trump… I banned his whole account… it’s at your discretion."

When Project Veritas asked if the shadow ban process was an unwritten rule he responded, "Very. A lot of unwritten rules… It was never written it was more said." Olinda Hassan, Police Manager for Twitter Trust and Safety said, "we're trying to 'down rank'… shitty people to not show up, we’re working [that] on right now."

A shadow ban is a form of censorship that the company won't publicly acknowledge outside of former employees and whistleblowers exposing the company's bias and disregard for free speech. Twitter is one of those liberal companies that want's to act like equality is their number one concern and if you threaten or talk badly about any woman at all they will ban you, just ask Milo Yiannopoulos.

Former Twitter Software Engineer Abhinov Vadrevu added some insight to the strategy of shadow banning saying, "One strategy is to shadowban 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."

Another former engineer for the social media giant explained, "Every single conversation is going to be rated by a machine and the machine is going to say whether or not it’s a positive thing or a negative thing. And whether it’s positive or negative doesn’t (inaudible), it’s more like if somebody’s being aggressive or not. Right? Somebody’s just cursing at somebody, whatever, whatever. They may have point, but it will just vanish… It’s not going to ban the mindset, it’s going to ban, like, a way of talking."

The behind-the-scenes practice is very unnerving and it makes one wonder if these social media companies have too much power. Not only do they know every detail about everyone, they are able to control what those people see and hear on their platforms.

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Source: https://www.projectveritas.com/2018/01/11/undercover-video-twitter-engineers-to-ban-a-way-of-talking-through-shadow-banning-algorithms-to-censor-opposing-political-opinions/