Twitter is fundamentally corrupt.

Posted by Pointman on January 20, 2018 · 23 Comments 

In March of 2017, when the Westminster bridge terrorist attack occurred in London, I tweeted a reference to an article I’d written on terrorism. When I later checked my Twitter timeline, which is a chronological list of your tweets, it was missing. That wasn’t really a shock to me, as it’d happened occasionally before. Just as a proof positive, I tweeted a fairly innocuous sympathy tweet which immediately appeared on my timeline. I then tweeted a reference to another article on terrorism and it was blackholed as well.

This sort of devious and dishonest behaviour from a component of the social media monopoly came as no surprise to me, since it’s been a growing trend I noticed a number of years ago. I first put it down to forgetfulness on my part and in my trusting innocence just assumed whatever I tweeted would eventually appear but after a number of instances, I set up a second dummy Twitter account in a different name from out of the darknet. By simply subscribing it to the Pointman twitter feed, I was able to monitor which of my tweets were being blackholed.

They’ve since got a lot more devious in censoring messages they don’t approve of by the use of what’s called “shadow” banning. The message being censored is now visible to you, and only to you in your timeline – but nobody else ever sees it. This more subtle way of suppressing ideas or opinions they don’t like has two big advantages. Firstly, the individual being censored is not aware of it happening unless they happen to have a second twitter account in another name which subscribes to their twitter feed. Secondly, it enables Twitter to ban or selectively censor individuals without having to justify it as a breach of what’s laughingly called their community guidelines.

This sort of fundamentally dishonest and devious behaviour is a complete breach of the implicit trust placed in them by their customers, and it shows a company abusing a dominant market position untrammeled by any vestige of that outdated concept called integrity.

At this time last year, I announced a change in direction of my blogging activities here. I was of the opinion that the climate wars were effectively over and the alarmists were in retreat in all directions. Certainly, the slashing of budgets and bureaucracies in the last year has reinforced that viewpoint. There’s still a few fanatic holdouts around the world reminiscent of Japanese soldiers of WWII living like fanatic animals on a few Pacific islands, but it’s over. I wanted to move the blog off the almost exclusive concentration on global warming, to a greater variety of topics but most especially protecting the freedom of the Internet.

Achieving such an objective involves overcoming two rather large significant hurdles, neither of which are trivial and both of which strain the resources of a one man blog, which this is. From past experience, the chances of making some meaningful impact in the climate wars by blogging looked equally as bleak when I first started, but I do believe my modest efforts along with those of a lot of other more influential people did have some sort of impact, however slight it might have been.

The first problem to overcome is getting the ordinary person to see that there really is a problem with the social media giants suppressing opinions they don’t like and promoting to the exclusion of all others the political ideologies they espouse. People all over the world tend to interact with other people and organisations on the basis of tentatively granting them some measure of trust, which’ll grow if it’s not abused. When you tell them the organisation they trust is being deceitful and manipulative, you’re indirectly questioning their judgment in trusting that organisation. It’s analogous to a person agonising for ages about which particular brand of car to buy, and having made that purchase, will defend it to the hilt irrespective of whether it turns out to be a lemon.

It’s all too understandable for people to write off whatever you say as tin-foil hat conspiracy stuff. You can tell them the true situation, and can even ask them to test it for themselves by doing simple things like setting up a second Twitter account to monitor what happens to their tweets, and then publishing a variety of controversial tweets. If they’re left-wing or anti-Semitic they’ll always get published. Anything similarly controversial but right-wing usually gets suppressed and in extreme cases can get your account suspended or closed completely, and there’s no court of appeal against such dictatorial practices.

Doing such simple and intriguing exercises like that for themselves would shortly prove there is a problem, but in my experience it’s an unfortunate side-effect of the blogosphere that it all too often produces a passive, inert and not-my-problem mentality that simply prefers to read rather than actually doing something in response to an article. It’s all too common for people to have a good cathartic bitch, but do absolutely nothing about it themselves. The option is always there to experiment with the Twitter censorship regime and you can have a lot of fun tugging on the censorship tiger’s tail.

Fortunately, the conundrum of convincing people there is a problem is being addressed by the valiant James O’Keefe of Project Veritas fame. In a series of three undercover reports, he catches Twitter employees openly boasting of furnishing the DoJ with any information they want about their customers, just as long as they don’t approve of their opinions, without needing a court order. Of course, if the request for the information is related to a left-wing user, some sort of legal process would be involved.

Twitter employs hundreds of people to go through your supposedly private messages with other users, as well as any pictures or attachments, and even raises the possibility of blackmailing their own customers or wreaking malicious damage on their lives by leaking information mistakenly thought to be confidential between the two twitter users.

But what is even more sinister, is Twitter’s co-operation with foreign totalitarian governments. The game there appears to be banning users the government doesn’t approve of in return for Twitter access to their country, and if you watch the video connected with the Veritas article, you can see how secretive and sensitive an area it is. Call me cynical, but how much information about dissidents using Twitter do they hand over to oppressive regimes? Judging by the evasive body language, I suspect there’s a large pot of dirty secrets at the heart of Twitter. I would advise any dissident or individual in deep ordure with their government, to avoid like the plague any usage of Twitter.

On the other side of the political spectrum, anything that advances their liberal agenda is permissible, even when it’s blatantly untrue or is just plain propaganda. Abuses of the platform by apologists for Muslim extremism in the immediate aftermath of the Westminster bridge atrocity using automatic tweeting robots to astroturf non-existent sentiments, although reported to them by many people, remained defiantly up.

I think O’Keefe has done a fine job of nailing problem number one, awareness of deceit, and to a larger audience than I could ever reach. He’s planted firmly the seed of doubt about their duplicitous behaviour and partisan censorship policies, so it’s not an area of endeavour I’ll be pursuing to any large extent, though I’ll probably do an occasional piece just for the fun of tugging the tail.

You’d think that after the Veritas exposés, Twitter would play it cool for a while, or at least until the stink dies down, but their arrogance knows no bounds, and they’ve no problem going from their usual passive censorship to activities a lot more direct and sinister. Recently, they suspended the account for a week of the Ohio Republican congressional candidate Chris DePizzo for tweets he’d made about his Democrat rival. You can find the story of it and the offending tweets, but I’m blowed if I can see what, if anything, was so offensive.

This is quite simply election rigging.

In another instance that happened in the last week, the Twitter account of the House Intelligence Committee, who produced the report on FISA abuse that’s currently before Congress, was momentarily suspended with no reason given. Again, this is blatant manipulation of public opinion, but this time being exercised on a branch of the government. By the way, do I have to tell you any of the inevitable leaks of the FISA memo won’t be allowed to appear on Twitter, but they’ll be on Gab or Wikileaks, who’re offering a cool one million dollars for a leak. Since by all accounts it’s highly damaging to both the Democrat party and its minions it compromised in the DoJ, FBI and elements of the intelligence services, it’ll only get on Twitter long after it’s been plastered all over the whole of the Internet.

The second problem is advising people what options they have in response to such blatant dishonesty on Twitter’s part. They have a market dominant position in messaging which they are arrogantly abusing and people have a certain apathy, if not inertia, in moving off that platform. What you must take on board, is that information about you is being collected and sold, whether you thought of it as being private or not. What’s more, if your name is mentioned in a tweet by others, that information is also being data captured and sold on. In that case, even if you don’t have an account with them, any detail adduced about you, whether accurate or inaccurate, is flogged on to others without either your knowledge or permission.

There is absolutely no privacy if you use Twitter, and you’d be a fool to have any expectation of it. It can also be very dangerous for you, should a tweet of yours give the always alert Twitter thought police an excuse to report you to the real police and get you in serious trouble, as this unfortunate user found out.

The answer to the second problem is actually quite simple – do not use Twitter, especially as there’s a fast-growing alternative to it which is uncensored and offers significantly better facilities and features to its users. It’s called Gab, and I moved over to it a year ago. You can find me there by searching for Pointman. There is a real feeling of liberation in being able to express your opinion on something without having to couch it in terms that won’t offend some 12yo snowflake censor. It was the first to offer 300 character messaging and the massively overdue feature of being able to edit your tweets after they’ve been sent.

Given no moderation, a fair number of extremists or just plain vanilla lunatics have camped out there, but if you don’t subscribe to them, there’s no problem. If you want commentary on events that’s meaty rather than for Tofu eaters of a sensitive disposition, it’s rapidly becoming the venue to be at. Once you start using it, especially for the unfiltered news feed of politically incorrect items that Twitter black holes, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to use Twitter.

An added bonus, if you’re still wedded to Twitter, is that any Gab message can be automatically added to your Twitter account as an ordinary tweet. I find this facility especially good in spotting which of my messages are being blackholed by the Twitter Gestapo. With this facility, you can have it both ways and it makes it easier to wean yourself off Twitter. It’ll be interesting to see if this article appears on Twitter or just gets blackholed.

The most followed user on Twitter is President Trump, who has a following of 46.9 million subscribers. You’d think the Twitter louts wouldn’t mess with that, but there are persistent rumours of them occasionally playing games with some of his tweets. If you consider that he’s practically destroyed CNN as a viable business, there’s nothing to stop him doing exactly the same with Twitter, should they piss him off.

Him moving over to Gab as his primary messaging platform and echoing his tweets over to Twitter, could only be good for Internet democracy. With one flick of a switch in Gab, he could cut off the replication of his messages to Twitter, and Gab would suddenly acquire 50 million new subscribers at Twitter’s expense.

Gowon the Don, do it.

©Pointman

Related articles by Pointman:

A message in two parts – part one.

A message in two parts – part two.

Betrayal by those you once trusted.

Internet censorship and whither shall we go?

The loss of faith in the political class.

All articles dealing with censorship.

All articles on terrorism.

Click for a list of other articles.

Filed under Article · Tagged with Censorship, FISA, Twitter