Another nearby page deals with the broader topic of Media Bias in general.

Many young people get news and opinions from social media rather than television or other mass media, but social media sites engage in bias and censorship, just as TV and newspapers have for years.

Related topics:
Bias and Censorship in Social Media in General
Privacy issues on Facebook
News about Google
Habitual dependence on cell phones
Anything you have ever said can be used against you

The FBI and Twitter

Mr. Musk is by far the most productive African-American.
Elon Musk Is The Unsung Hero Of The 2024 Election.  It seemed unfathomable four years ago that the guy known for making electric cars and space tech would go on to play an instrumental role in shaping the discourse among the American electorate.  Then again, nothing about U.S. politics is "normal" these days.  Amid the celebration of Donald Trump's and Republicans' election victories Tuesday night stands Elon Musk and his historic decision to purchase Twitter two years ago.  What may have appeared as a trivial acquisition to some has been one of the most transformative decisions impacting freedom of speech in modern U.S. history.  Prior to Musk's purchase, Twitter was just another weapon in the censorship industrial complex's arsenal.  The Big Tech company regularly colluded with the federal government to censor Americans whose posts — no matter how factually accurate — ran afoul of what regime bureaucrats found to be inconvenient to the dishonest narratives they pushed at any given time.  This unholy alliance knew no bounds, even going as far as to interfere in the 2020 election to the benefit of Joe Biden.  When the New York Post dropped its infamous Hunter Biden laptop story documenting the Biden family's foreign business dealings days before the 2020 contest, Twitter went into full-on censorship mode.

A Blanket Of Darkness Is Falling Over The West.  From Sweden and Germany, to Australia and New Zealand, to France and Finland, to America and Canada, to Armenia and Italy, to Britain and Ireland, a network of censorship has been developing and steadily solidifying.  Censorship has even been imposed on scientists.  Ironically, this blanket of darkness has occurred in those countries with the longest tradition of freedom, specifically of freedom of speech, assembly and of writing.  Soon, the peoples of those countries will have to resort to samizdat.  When Musk took over Twitter and exposed the systematic censorship apparatus within the organization, he also revealed that part of the censorship was being carried out at the request of the Biden regime (Facebook likewise agreed to impose censorship).  By doing so, he opened the window to what was, in fact, a governmental conspiracy to establish censorship, thereby ironically putting an end to the automatic dismissal of "conspiracy theories" for those persons who could not, or would not, connect the dots.  He also fired the vermin who were carrying out the censorship.

9th Circuit: Feds Free to Censor 'Anti-Vaccine' 'Misinformation' Via Pressure on Social Media Companies.  What a wild coincidence:  one branch of government (judiciary) doesn't mind another branch of government (executive) doing whatever it likes extraconstitutionally. [...] Not being a legal scholar, I'm sure there's a good answer to this, but I'm not clear:  why would CHD sue Meta and not the government for violating its First Amendment rights, when it was at the government's behest that Meta acted?

The 2024 Elections and the Return of the Surveillance State.  The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Murthy v.  Missouri (2024) takes place at a pivotal moment in American history.  In this case, the Court declined to prevent the federal government from colluding with social media firms.  This move raises the possibility of a crushing recurrence of state-sponsored cowardice better known as totalitarianism.  The Murthy case sets an ominous precedent that reinforces Senator Mark Warner's claim that it is absolutely essential for the federal government to communicate with social media companies to prevent malign foreign election interference.  Shortly after the Court's decision, the FBI announced that it was resuming coordination with social media firms to uncover alleged 2024 election interference.  Given the behavior of the FBI and American intelligence officials during the 2016 and 2020 elections, most Americans should be worried about the return of the surveillance state's ability to initiate domestic election interference.

Do the Plotters of the '51 Intel Experts' Coup Deserve Prison?  [Scroll down]  They had known since December 2019 that this [Hunter Biden laptop] story might drop.  That was when Mac Isaac alerted the FBI to a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at his computer repair shop in Delaware.  Fearing that the story might break at any time, operatives within the FBI reached out to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms well before the 2020 election and warned them of a potential Russian pre-election "hack and dump" operation.  If done with ill intent, these operatives deserve prison time as well.  On the day the Post story broke, representatives from the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force met with Facebook execs.  As would later be confirmed at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, the FBI knew that the laptop was, in fact, Hunter Biden's.

The Censorship-Industrial Complex and How It has the Internet in its Grip.  As the Twitter Files were released from December 2022 to March 2023, suppression and cover-ups came to light.  Among the revelations were the concealment of the Hunter Biden laptop story, President Trump's suspension, the sidelining of tweets favorable to the events of January 6, the FBI's influence in acting against accounts that questioned the results of the 2020 election, and Twitter's participation in online influence campaigns in other countries. [...] When Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed the Amazon Files this February, as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation, pressure from the White House to suppress content was exposed.  One email from a senior executive official read: "Who can we talk to about the high levels of propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation at Amazon?" Books critical of the Covid-19 vaccine program, or deemed "disinformation," were either removed or buried in the search results.

State Department Won't Say If It's Colluding With Big Tech To Censor Speech Ahead Of 2024 Election.  The State Department is refusing to say whether it is communicating with Big Tech platforms to censor free speech online leading up to the 2024 election.  The agency's silence on the matter came after The Federalist asked about a new working group launched by the United States and Poland on Monday that seeks to counter Russian "disinformation" about Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.  Called the "Ukraine Communications Group (UCG)," the body will involve the two aforementioned countries and representatives from NATO states, and work to "coordinate messaging, promote accurate reporting of Russia's full-scale invasion, amplify Ukrainian voices, and expose Kremlin information manipulation."  According to the Associated Press, James Rubin, the special envoy and coordinator for the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC), was involved with and attended the UCG's inaugural launch in Warsaw.

Facebook intensifies crushing of conservative speech.  In the last two days, Facebook restricted my user functions.  The first time, I was advised future alleged violations would engender harsher penalties; I interpreted that to be an 'iron fist in a velvet glove' intimation that future conservative political speech would fall victim to leftist Zuckerberg's axe.  In the latest instance, I was falsely accused of attempting to share "sexual content."  A sentence of two days' duration was wrongly handed down.  I had posted several memes, none having anything to with sex, to my MAGA Citizen News Group.  Earlier this month, the social media site automatically 'disappeared' my posting of a bare link to a May 29 American Thinker article: "Trump and the true basis of conservatism."  The Facebook speech-crushings I've endured signal Democrat megadonor Zuckerberg's site is intentionally quashing users' pro-Trump, anti-Biden, and patriotic messages in these months leading to November's presidential election.  Facebook had automatically blocked 25 of my recent attempts to post article links from conservative venues, including American Thinker, Breitbart, and Gateway Pundit to the MAGA page I administer.  I'd never had article-link posts to it blocked in the past.

FBI Confirms It's Restarting Online Censorship Efforts Ahead Of 2024 Election.  On Monday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that federal agencies such as the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) restarted discussions with Big Tech platforms.  According to NextGov/FCW, this coordination will focus on "removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears."  Warner claimed these talks resumed in March, around the same time oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri — which centers on the feds' censorship efforts — were heard before the U.S. Supreme Court.  When pressed on the validity of Warner's remarks, an FBI representative confirmed to The Federalist that the agency has resumed communications with social media companies ahead of the 2024 election.

A Massive Government-Censorship Industrial Complex.  SCOTUS will rule in June 2024 on a First Amendment free speech case the federal judge called "the most massive attack against free speech in United States history" and the circuit court judge described as "fairly unsubtle strong-arming" by government officials using "mafiosi style" threats to increase regulation.  Should government officials immediately cease contacting social media companies to censor content, with exceptions for illegal speech?  The U.S. government attorney, Brian Fletcher, eloquently argues for SCOTUS to discuss the following theoretical legal issues regarding free speech censorship on social media rather than specifics of the case.  Should the government have privacy in speech moderation policies?  The lawsuit discovery process exposed government pressure applied behind closed doors, with 24/7 badgering and profanity arising from the highest W.H., FBI, CDC, and CISA officials until Big Tech capitulation.  The Twitter Files released by Elon Musk and the House Weaponization of the Federal Government subcommittee investigation uncovered a massive government-funded censorship-industrial complex that links third-party "trust and safety teams" within universities and foundations to social media platforms.

Taibbi: Biden's [the] 'Only Candidate Who Can Expect Not to Be Censored' and That's a Threat to Democracy.  On Wednesday's broadcast of the Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends," journalist Matt Taibbi said that President Joe Biden and censorship under his administration is a threat to democracy and "heading into the 2024 presidential election cycle, Joe Biden is probably the only candidate who can expect not to be censored."  Before the interview with Taibbi began, co-host Brian Kilmeade played video of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying, "President Biden has done something that no other President in history has done, which is to order media, particularly the social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google, to censor his political opponents. ... If you have a President who can censor his political opponents, he has a license for any kind of atrocity.  That is a genuine threat to our democracy."

Woman Records Very Creepy Visit by the FBI.  [Scroll down]  We're seeing Gestapo-like tactics, the byproduct of the politicization of the DOJ that began when Obama picked Eric Holder to lead the department during his presidency.  Should we be shocked?  If Biden's DOJ interfered in IRS investigations into his son and tried to cobble together a sweetheart plea agreement for Hunter's tax and gun charges, no — this is par for the course.  The bureau had over 100 agents working with Twitter and their ex-spook executives in creating a public influencing operation that censored news and posts of content they found disagreeable, almost always conservative in its politics.  The Biden administration pressured Amazon to censor books that were reportedly anti-COVID vaccine.  As for other issues, FBI agents have been visiting the homes of pro-life activists.  If Trump wins the 2024 election, a clear-out of the entire DOJ must be on the to-do list.

8 Shocking Takeaways From Landmark Murthy v. Missouri Censorship Case.  On Monday, the censorship-industrial complex was put on trial when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the landmark free speech case Murthy v. Missouri.  Evidence in the case revealed that in the run-up to the 2020 election, and increasingly thereafter, a raft of federal agencies both directly and via cutouts cajoled, coerced, and colluded with social media companies to censor wrongthinking Americans at a magnitude of millions of posts on matters ranging from the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story to the integrity of mass mail-in balloting and the efficacy of Covid vaccines.  The Louisiana district court that originally heard the case found, and a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel affirmed, that these efforts — emanating from entities such as the Biden White House, FBI, and CDC to control the digital public square, interfering in our elections and skewing public policy debates — likely constituted a massive assault on the First Amendment.  The feds, the courts suggested, had effectively turned the likes of Facebook and X/Twitter into its deputized speech police, becoming state actors whose "content moderation" decisions violated constitutional restrictions on abridging speech.

This Country Cannot Afford A Weak Supreme Court Decision On Internet Censorship.  The Biden administration attempted to distract the Supreme Court from the voluminous evidence of federal abuse of Americans' speech rights during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri Monday.  It sounded like several justices followed the feds' waving red flag.  "The government may not use coercive threats to suppress speech, but it is entitled to speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers," said Biden administration lawyer Brian Fletcher in his opening remarks.  He and several justices asserted government speech prerogatives that would flip the Constitution upside down.  The government doesn't have constitutional rights.  Constitutional rights belong to the people and restrain the government.  The people's right to speak may not be abridged.  Government officials' speaking, in their official capacities, may certainly be abridged.  Indeed, it often must be, precisely to restrict officials from abusing the state's monopoly on violence to bully citizens into serfdom.

A turbulent day for free speech at the Supreme Court.  When can the federal government use its coercive regulatory powers to silence ideas it doesn't like on social media?  That was the question presented to the Supreme Court on Monday, and while a majority seems ready to protect the First Amendment, too many justices seemed ready to give the government the benefit of the doubt. [...] That is not how the First Amendment is supposed to work.  The federal government does not have a First Amendment right to anything.  The same is true with state and local governments.  The First Amendment is a protection for people, not governments.  If the Biden administration wants to cajole people to get vaccinated, it is free to do so from the bully pulpit.  What it is not allowed to do is use government power or threats to censor people who disagree with its COVID policies.  That is what the Biden administration did, not just on vaccines but on other subjects, such as posts about the virus originating in China or questioning Biden policies on racial justice, Afghanistan, or Ukraine.

Supreme Court Hears Social Media Censorship Case (The Twitter Files Goes to Court).  Last March, Matt Taibbi testified before congress about the investigation that was widely known as the Twitter Files. [...] On July 4th last year, a federal judge in Louisiana granted a preliminary injunctions forbidding the government from many interactions with social media companies.  The judge wrote that the case appeared to involve a "massive attack against free speech." [...] The White House pushback on the Twitter Files and this case was that the government hadn't ordered anyone to do anything it had just held collegial meetings with representatives of the social media companies and occasionally sent over lists of problematic accounts.  If the companies decided to remove or limit those accounts that was their doing, not the government's.  Nevertheless, the ruling was seen as a major blow to White House efforts to control disinformation. [...] The DOJ appealed the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals the following day.

SCOTUS Set to Hear Free Speech Case on Biden Admin Colluding With Big Tech to Stifle 'Misinformation'.  As we wrote in Oct. 2023, the attorneys general of Missouri and Lousiana, along with five plaintiffs, asked the United States Supreme Court to uphold an injunction prohibiting the Biden administration from colluding with Big Tech companies to stifle free speech on social media sites by calling it "misinformation."  They also argued that the case should be heard in front of the High Court. [...] SCOTUS will hear arguments in what's now called Murthy v.  Missouri, which may become a landmark case in the fight to uphold Americans' First Amendment rights[.] Journalist Glenn Greenwald and Twitter-X owner Elon Musk were just a few of the people talking about the case in anticipation of the SCOTUS hearing the case:  [Tweet]

Consequences Minus Truth.  [Scroll down]  At issue specifically is the government's conduct in coercing social media companies to censor opinion in order to suppress so-called "vaccine hesitancy" and to manipulate public debate in the 2020 election.  Government lawyers have argued that they were merely "communicating" with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others about "public health disinformation and election conspiracies."  You can reasonably suppose that this was our government's effort to disable the truth, especially as it conflicted with its own policy and activities — from supporting BLM riots to enabling election fraud to mandating dubious vaccines.  Former employees of the FBI and the CIA were directly implanted in social media companies to oversee the carrying-out of censorship orders from their old headquarters.  The former general counsel (top lawyer) for the FBI, James Baker, slid unnoticed into the general counsel seat at Twitter until Elon Musk bought the company late in 2022 and flushed him out.  The so-called Twitter Files uncovered by indy reporters Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and others, produced reams of emails from FBI officials nagging Twitter execs to de-platform people and bury their dissent.  You can be sure these were threats, not mere suggestions.

Supreme Court Refuses to Permit Twitter to Outline Scope of FBI/DHS Unlawful Domestic Surveillance.  During the Twitter File releases, existing DHS/FBI guidance controlled what the Twitter legal team was allowed to share with researchers.  The Twitter File group gave Twitter search terms, and the Twitter team entered the search words/phrases and generated results.  However, the Twitter legal team then had to filter that information against the instructions of DHS/FBI to determine what the research group was allowed to know; ultimately, what was allowed to become public information.  This reality stimulates the question:  where/when did that prior guidance from DHS/FBI originate?  The answer to that question is discovered in a little-known lawsuit by Twitter against the U.S. government.

What Will the FBI Not Do?  The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant — ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech.  "The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries," the bureau said in a statement.  "As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.  The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public.  It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency."  Almost all of the FBI communique is untrue, except the phrase about the bureau's "engagements which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries."

Testimony before Congress shows 1984 is here, and Obama started it.  Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, two honest men who worked on the Twitter Files, exposing how the government collaborated with Twitter to affect the 2020 election, testified before the House today.  What they said should terrify you.  Beginning in January 2017, under then-president Obama's direction, the government instituted a social media manipulation system intended to game the 2020 election through censorship and controlled information (which, to my mind, amounts to misinformation).  It was unconstitutional, but it worked.  And now, using the vehicle of the corrupt criminal action against Trump, the government is bypassing manipulating information and is planning to target ordinary Americans.

Biden Admin Praised YouTube's Censorship, Used It To Pressure Facebook To Intensify Suppression Of Vaccine Stories.  As the Biden administration pressured Big Tech companies to censor Americans' speech during the COVID vaccine rollout, Google's YouTube went along with the White House's requests before Facebook was pressured to follow suit, according to documents shared with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and obtained by The Daily Wire.  In an April 18, 2021, email, Facebook President for Global Affairs Nick Clegg expressed concern after Andy Slavitt, a senior White House advisor, told him that Facebook was "lagging behind" as YouTube "made significant advances to remove content leading to vaccine hesitancy."

How Democrats steal our constitutional rights.  If you're reading this post, I'm betting that you're aware of the Twitter files, which revealed that the Deep State was working closely with Big Tech to censor content about Russiagate, COVID, the vaccinations, and Biden family corruption.  Therefore, I won't rehash that.  However, if you haven't seen Tucker Carlson's most recent interview, this one with Douglass Mackey, you don't know that the administration is also using its police powers to silence political speech.  Douglass Mackey is the man who posted a joke on Twitter telling people to text their votes for Hillary.  It was a joke identical to posts that Democrats were putting up regarding voting for Trump.  However, unlike the Democrats, Mackey was hunted down.  Seven days into the Biden administration, he was on the receiving end of an FBI raid and staring at 11 years in prison for election interference.  The fact that there was no evidence that anyone, even a Democrat, was stupid enough to take his joke seriously was irrelevant.

Elon Musk, "The Degree to Which Twitter Was an Arm of the Govt, Was Not Well Understood by the Public".  Several people have pointed out this conversation between Joe Rogan and Twitter owner Elon Musk.  There are a couple of interesting aspects to the conversation; one of the more interesting is not generally being noticed.  The primary point, raised by many, is how Elon Musk discusses the scale and scope of U.S. government involvement in the operation of Twitter as an information and discussion platform.  Almost all of those making this note are unfamiliar with our multi-year research and outlines long before Elon Musk entered the picture.  As affirmed during the conversation, the FBI and various government agencies, under the auspices of the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS), were in a direct relationship with Twitter offices to control information on the platform.  This is not a surprise to CTH readers.  The instructions on content removal, content moderation, and demands to remove accounts, were part of the DHS broader initiative to control information.  [Video clip]

SCOTUS Takes Up Free Speech Case.  Late Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Missouri v. Biden, a case that may end the Biden administration's circumvention of the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to Big Tech.  The case was initially filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with various private plaintiffs who allege that social media platforms censored them at the behest of federal agencies.  U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty ruled for the plaintiffs on July 4, enjoining the agencies from communicating with platforms about "content moderation."  The Biden administration sought relief from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and lost again, making a Supreme Court clash inevitable.

Supreme Court Takes Up Landmark Government Censorship Case.  The Supreme Court on Friday took up Missouri v.  Biden, the free speech case challenging the Biden administration's efforts to censor content on social media, while issuing a pause on a preliminary injunction granted by a lower court.  Republican attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration over its communications with social media companies related to the suppression of online speech, arguing it violated the First Amendment.  District of Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty issued an injunction in July blocking certain parts of President Joe Biden's administration from colluding with social media platforms to censor content online.  The Supreme Court paused the injunction, but agreed to take up the case, according to the court order.

The High-tech Lynching of America.  [Scroll down]  In 2020 the main issues for Deep State influence and control of the American people were the COVID-19 pandemic and the November national election.  The CIA, FBI, and DHS, which all had personnel who were hired by such social media companies as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, also had information-and-influence portals to these social media companies.  However, directly influencing the election through censorship was perceived to be constitutionally problematic.  In June of 2020, the Election Integrity Project was formed by Alex Stamos, who was then a "research professor" at Stanford University, after resigning his role at Facebook as chief security officer in 2018.  Stamos' first endeavor at EIP was to meet with the Chris Krebs, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Department of Homeland Security to identify what EIP needed to do to influence the upcoming election, particularly regarding censorship, which CISA was reluctant to do.  Although Stamos had a staff of some 120 at EIP, keeping up with flagging and censoring the tens of millions of social media posts deemed to have "misinformation" would be impossible.

Somewhat related:
Biden Regime's SEC Sues Elon Musk in Their Baseless "Investigation" Over His Perfectly Lawful Purchase of X/Twitter.  Is the Biden regime looking for a way to somehow reverse Elon Musk's perfectly lawful purchase of X (formerly Twitter)?  Today's developing story reads as a fit of revenge.  Jim Hoft previously reported, the SEC has been baselessly investigating Musk's purchase of X/Twitter since 2022.  Now they are suing him and Musk is not happy.  CNBC reported that the Regime's SEC has sued Musk because they subpoenaed him in September to show up in a San Francisco court and testify regarding his perfectly lawful purchase of X/Twitter.  He did not show up likely assuming it was a trap.

Jim Jordan Subpoenas FBI Agent Who Flagged Tweets.  Congressman Jim Jordan, acting as the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has formally summoned FBI agent Elvis Chan via a subpoena, demanding he come forth and share information about the FBI's active involvement in online censorship.  This move comes amidst escalating concerns around freedom of speech, and as a potentially significant case regarding the same issue is hovering on the doorstep of the Supreme Court.

Online Censorship [is] Going to [the] Supreme Court.  Missouri v.  Biden, one of the most important free speech cases in American history, is almost certainly going to the Supreme Court.  The case centers around whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment of the Constitution when it pressured social media platforms to take down or de-amplify accounts that voiced speech the government disagreed with.  Two of the plaintiffs in the case are Stanford University's Dr. Jay Battacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, currently on leave from Harvard, who co-wrote a statement called the Great Barrington Declaration, which laid out an alternative public health response to lockdowns and school closures.  For that, they were personally targeted by Anthony Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins, who orchestrated a media campaign to discredit them.  On social media, they were censored and shadow-banned, which is at the heart of the case.

Appeals Court Upholds Injunction Blocking CDC, FBI, White House from Censorship.  A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a modified version of an injunction in the landmark Missouri v. Biden case, blocking the White House and federal agencies from pressuring social media companies to censor American citizens.  However, two major arms of the federal government, the sprawling State Department and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) were exempted from the modified injunction, which was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Court Rules Biden Admin Violated First Amendment by Improperly Influencing Tech Companies.  The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the Biden Administration likely violated the First Amendment by influencing tech companies to censor content on the coronavirus and elections.  The ruling also removed restrictions "on the departments of State, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services and on agencies including the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency," according to the Washington Post.  The appeals court found that those agencies and departments had not coerced social media sites to censor content.  Still, this is a huge victory for free speech, and the court was specific and breathtaking in its criticisms.

Facebook Files V: How Facebook Bent the Knee to White House Demands.  On the latest episode of uncovering the Censorship Industrial Complex, Rep. Jim Jordan exposed how the White House used foreign misinformation to get Facebook to do its political bidding.  Jordan released part five of the Facebook Files on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday which brought to light an alliance between the formerly U.K. based censorship activist organization Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), the Biden White House and Facebook. "Foreign activists at the CCDH feed false info to the Biden White House," Jordan wrote.  "The Biden Admin then uses the full weight of the federal govt to coerce Facebook to censor Americans, Biden's critics and political opponents, and the truth."  In March 2021, the CCDH claimed that 12 accounts, dubbed the "disinformation dozen," accounted for 65% of "of anti-vaccine content circulating on social media."  But it seems the disinformation complainers became the disinformation spreaders.  Jordan said that even Facebook was aware that the claim was false.  "First, that 65% stat?  CCDH was off by quite a bit.  Facebook knew the actual number was closer to 0.05%," he added[.]

Government Intel And Security Agencies [are] Behind NGO Demands For More Censorship By X/Twitter.  The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) are nongovernmental organizations, their leaders say.  When they demand more censorship of online hate speech, as they are currently doing of X, formerly Twitter, those NGOs are doing it as free citizens and not, say, as government agents.  But the fact of the matter is that the US and other Western governments fund ISD, the UK government indirectly funds CCDH, and, for at least 40 years, ADL spied on its enemies and shared intelligence with the US, Israel and other governments.  The reason all of this matters is that ADL's advertiser boycott against X may be an effort by governments to regain the ability to censor users on X that they had under Twitter before Musk's takeover last November.  Internal Twitter and Facebook messages show that representatives of the US government, including the White House, FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as the UK government, successfully demanded Facebook and Twitter censorship of their users over the last several years.

Democrats Are Becoming the Censorship Party.  A House hearing on July 20 held by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government showed that the Biden administration is already censoring social media on a massive scale, putting blinders on all of us.  Hearing witness D. John Sauer, special assistant attorney general for Louisiana, described preliminary findings by a federal judge that Biden staff in the White House, the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services, and almost every other executive department meet regularly with social media executives and pressure them to remove or demote criticisms of Biden economic and energy policies, Biden family members and even items that depict the first lady in an unflattering way.  According to Sauer, "millions of American voices" have been silenced in violation of the First Amendment.  Sauer cited some 18,000 communications from Team Biden to tech executives orchestrating a vast ongoing censorship operation.

The Press's War Against Free Speech.  Have we gotten to the point that it's politically necessary to defend the principle of free speech?  Apparently so.  Consider the reaction of journalists — people who, more than anyone else in our society, have a professional and economic interest in free speech — to Louisiana-based District Judge Terry Doughty's July 4 decision on a motion to bar agencies of the federal government from pressuring social media outlets to suppress information the agencies deem "misinformation."  The injunction barring federal agencies from communicating with these firms was blocked from going into effect by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on July 14.  But no final judgment in the case has been entered, and, whatever the ultimate result, the wisdom of government speech suppression — and the bizarre and outspoken support thereof by large parts of the press — remain continuing issues.

FBI Told Twitter Hunter Biden Laptop Was Real on Day It Was Censored.  House Judiciary committee Republicans revealed Thursday that a senior FBI official told Twitter that Hunter Biden's laptop was real and not Russian disinformation on the day the social-media company censored a New York Post story relying on emails from that laptop.  Laura Dehmlow, the now-section chief of the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), confirmed in a closed-door deposition that when Twitter asked whether the laptop was real, an official said: "Yes, it was."  An FBI lawyer on the call then promptly jumped in and said: "No further comment."  According to Dehmlow, internal deliberations were held after that call in which the decision was made that FITF would say "no comment" going forward.  Later on the same day, there was a call between the FBI and social-media company Meta in which the agency declined comment when asked if the laptop was real.

FBI Told Twitter Hunter Biden Laptop Was Real When New York Post Story Broke.  The FBI, which had known Hunter Biden's laptop was authentic since 2019, admitted to Twitter that it was real on the day the New York Post published its reporting on the laptop — but then switched its narrative to "no further comment" and refused to acknowledge the laptop's veracity to any other Big Tech companies ahead of the 2020 election, according to July 17 testimony from Laura Dehmlow, the section chief of the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF).  In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray obtained by The Federalist, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan outlined how "Dehmlow revealed that the same FBI personnel who were warning social media companies about a potential Russian 'hack and leak' operation in the run-up to the 2020 election knew that the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was not Russian disinformation." Dehmlow also testified that previous FITF Section Chief Bradley Benavides and his subordinates who were tasked with sniffing out Russian influence "knew that Hunter Biden's laptop was real."

Appeals Court Halts Order Blocking Government's Censorship Collusion with Big Tech.  A federal appeals court has temporarily halted a ruling from a lower court that prevented key members of the Biden administration from pressuring social media companies to censor Americans.  The Justice Department's request for a temporary halt was granted by the three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, made up of Clinton-appointee Carl E. Stewart, Obama-appointee James E. Graves and Trump-appointee Andrew S. Oldham.

Twitter Court Filing Cites Alarming FTC Conduct Pressuring Consent Decree Arbiter to Target Elon Musk and Company.  Prior to Elon Musk taking control of Twitter, the social media company entered a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission putting a neutral arbiter from Ernst & Young in an oversight position for the company's privacy, data collection and information security protocols.  Given what we know about DHS and FBI control and influence over Twitter content, there is a certain irony in the prior position of the FTC regarding user privacy.  That said, Twitter's new parent company X Corp filed a court motion Thursday [7/13/2023] asking a federal court overseeing the settlement to either throw out the consent decree entirely, or put it on hold until the FTC turns over documents to Twitter showing historic bias against the company.  Twitter is also seeking to bar the FTC from deposing CEO Elon Musk over issues that preceded his arrival.

Where Have All The Liberals Gone?  Yesterday a House Committee — Republican-led, but still — released a series of documents showing without a doubt that the FBI has been forwarding thousands of content moderation "requests" to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube on behalf of the SBU, Ukraine's Security Agency.  The documents not only contain incontrovertible evidence that our own FBI pressures tech companies to censor material, but that the Bureau is outsourcing such work to a foreign government, in this case Ukraine.  This passage below for instance reads "The SBU requested for your review and if appropriate deletion/suspension of these accounts."

Whistleblowers: FBI failed to warn agents on social media censorship.  Several FBI whistleblowers told the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that the bureau's leaders failed to take steps to abide by a U.S. District judge's temporary injunction against the Biden administration working with social media companies to censor speech.  According to the disclosures, the FBI usually would immediately disseminate information and provide training when the federal judiciary issues new legal guidance or directives.  The information typically would come in email alerts, the immediate circulation of training materials and official guidance from FBI headquarters in Washington.

Free speech is seen as a threat:
Emergency Petition Filed in Major Biden Admin Social Media Censorship Case.  The attorneys general for Missouri and Louisiana have submitted a petition to oppose the Biden administration's motion to stay an injunction against its efforts allowing it to contact social media firms about a range of online content, including its efforts to flag so-called misinformation.  Over the weekend, the two states filed a memorandum of opposition to the administration's motion, coming days after a federal judge partially granted an injunction that blocks various Biden administration officials and government agencies such as the Justice Department and the FBI from working with big tech firms to censor posts on social media.  It came in response to a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general, who accused the White House and various federal agencies of putting pressure on social media firms to take down posts or suspend accounts.  "Evidence in this case overwhelmingly shows that the way the Government supposedly 'prevent[s] grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes' is to pressure and induce social-media platforms to censor disfavored viewpoints on COVID-19, elections, and other core political speech," they argued on Sunday [7/9/2023].

Judge Bars Biden Press Secretary From Flagging Posts For Big Tech To Censor, Two Years After Admin Bragged About It.  Afederal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday specifically barred President Joe Biden's press secretary from colluding with corporate tech giants to censor Americans' speech.  In a preliminary injunction handed down on July 4, Judge Terry Doughty, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, implemented restrictions on collusion between the Biden White House and social media companies.  White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was among the more than three dozen administration officials specifically named who are now prohibited from engaging in collaborative censorship.

Federal Judge Blocks Biden Officials From Contacting Social Media Companies: Report.  A federal judge issued an injunction on Tuesday that bans numerous top Biden administration officials and agencies from communicating and meeting with social media companies.  The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by two Republican attorneys general who "produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content," said U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty.  Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who filed the lawsuit against the lawsuit while he was still serving as Missouri's attorney general, responded to the news by calling it a "Big win for the First Amendment on this Independence Day."  "White House officials, CDC & others are stopped cold.  We need to continue the fight to take down the Vast Censorship Enterprise," he said.  "Their view of 'misinformation' isn't an excuse to censor.  This is the most important free speech case in a generation.  Freedom is on the march."

Federal judge bans Biden administration members from meeting with social media companies.  A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with Big Tech companies in an extraordinary ruling that could change how social media is used.  In his dramatic ruling on Tuesday, Donald Trump-appointed Judge Terry A. Doughty said that "during the COVID-19 pandemic... the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth'".

Biden Administration 'Colluded' With Big Tech To Censor Americans, House Lawmakers Report Says.  U.S. House lawmakers accused the Biden Administration in a new report on Monday of conspiring with Big Tech to directly undermine American citizens' First Amendment rights by censoring free speech through government-funded third-party intermediaries.  The House Weaponization Subcommittee released an interim staff report detailing how President Joe Biden's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allegedly used the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to surveil and censor Americans' speech on social media in the run-up of the 2020 election and the 2022 midterm elections.  "CISA must be reined in, as must the Biden Administration's 'whole-of-government' approach to social media censorship," lawmakers wrote in the report.  "Every American has the right to express his or her opinion online, and to receive information from others.  Government classifications of opinions as 'misinformation' or 'disinformation' do not nullify the First Amendment's guarantees."

The Ministry of Truth Media: The Enemies List.  One of the first examples of the Ministry of Truth Media's slavish support for authority was revealed in Matt Taibbi's Twitter files report on the Hamilton 68 hoax.  Hamilton 68 was a tracking list created by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD).  In August 2017 the project was announced with a claim that it had "linked 600 Twitter accounts to Russian influence online."  The Alliance for Securing Democracy claimed some accounts on the Hamilton 68 list were "directly controlled by Russia" and others were "users who on their own initiative reliably repeat and amplify Russian themes."  But the Twitter Files shows the only offense of many on the list was to express otherwise conventional political opinions at odds with the agenda of the Alliance for Securing Democracy's advisory board.  One ASD board member was John Podesta, chair of the Hillary Clinton 2016 Presidential campaign, one-time top advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and co-founder of the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

New Twitter Files Expose FBI-Ukraine Plot to Censor Users.  The latest Twitter Files suggest the FBI helped Ukrainian intelligence in an effort to encourage Twitter to censor users, even American journalists.  The Grayzone News host Aaron Maté unleashed the latest installment of The Twitter Files on June 7 in a thread that Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi called "perhaps the most [scathing] about the FBI."  Maté reported the evidence, both on Twitter and Substack:  "The FBI aided a Ukrainian intelligence effort to ban Twitter users and collect their data, leaks reveal.  Twitter declined to censor journalists targeted by Ukraine, including Aaron Maté."  This newly released evidence once again implicates the U.S. government in an anti-free speech censorship plot, this time in reported coordination with a foreign government.  According to The Twitter Files, FBI Special Agent Aleksandr Kobzanets sent a list of 163 accounts to Twitter in March 2022.  The agent did so on behalf of "Ukraine's main intelligence agency," SBU, with the following comment:  "These accounts are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation."  The now-infamous FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan was copied on the email according to a screenshot shared by Maté.

Combating The Censorship Industrial Complex.  It's been nearly six months since the first installment of the Twitter Files — the journalistic effort by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and many others to expose the myriad channels by which the U.S government cooperated with Twitter on content moderation and censorship — was first published. [...] For six months, not much of consequence has happened, either in Washington or the mainstream media, in response.  Those who owe us mea culpas have not provided them, tending instead to attack the individual reporters or ignore their findings.  Meanwhile, some concerning developments have emerged: Congress formed the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in order to conduct its own investigation, which would have been encouraging had it not culminated in representative Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands threatening Taibbi with imprisonment for his testimony; Mark Warner's RESTRICT Act, which would yield the federal government an enormous media-censorship leeway, was introduced in the Senate in March; Montana banned TikTok statewide; special counsel John Durham's report on Russian interference was released and received with a profound lack of interest in the FBI's dubious and error-laden investigation; and the Global Disinformation Index, a British NGO that ranks news outlets on a scale of "risky" to "least risky" (this website is one of the GDI's ten "riskiest"), was shown to have received funding from the State Department (via the National Endowment for Democracy), which it subsequently lost.

Elon Musk Reveals Line Of Code Twitter Used To Suppress Tweets If They Contained Certain Words.  Twitter owner Elon Musk revealed during an interview this week that engineers at the social media company recently discovered a line of code more than decade old that would suppress tweets if they contained specific words.  Musk made the remarks during an interview with The Babylon Bee published on Twitter on Wednesday.  Twitter's previous censorship of The Babylon Bee was one of the company's actions that sparked Musk's interest in buying Twitter. [...] Musk confirmed the single line of code was being applied to all tweets, noting that there were about a thousand words on the list that, if used in a tweet, would suppress that tweet.

After Covid: Twelve Challenges for a Shattered World.  Big Tech surveilled before the pandemic response but the quasi-martial law of the period consolidated the power of the government over private data.  The Twitter Files have proven the huge role that the police state played in censorship of science and any opinion that contradicted regime priorities.  Facebook groups were blasted away.  LinkedIn and Twitter accounts were banned.  Even Google search results were gamed.  This was why those of us in the resistance had such a very difficult time finding each other in the first place.  When they demanded social distancing, they wanted more than human separation of six feet.  They wanted to stop the formation of any serious resistance.  They wanted us all isolated, disoriented, and thus easy to control.  As a result, the tools that we once believed were designed for more human connection were deployed to keep us apart.  Yes, there are many lawsuits ongoing that challenge this practice as a violation of First-Amendment rights.  Court discovery has produced many thousands of pages, and the decisions seem likely to land in the correct position.  But here's what is spooky.  If these court challenges really posed much of a threat to the practice, wouldn't mainstream social platforms be eschewing censorship right now?  They are not.  YouTube is the king of takedowns.  Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook do the same.

How the FBI Hacked Twitter.  After journalist Matt Taibbi published the first batch of internal Twitter documents known as the Twitter files, he tweeted that the company's deputy general counsel, James Baker, was vetting them.  "The news that Baker was reviewing the 'Twitter files' surprised everyone involved," Taibbi wrote.  That apparently included even Twitter's new boss, Elon Musk, who added that Baker may have deleted some of the files he was supposed to be reviewing.  Baker had been the top lawyer at the FBI when it interfered in the 2016 presidential election.  News that he might have been burying evidence of the spy service's use of a social media company to interfere with the 2020 election, is rightly setting off alarm bells.  In fact, the FBI's penetration of Twitter constituted just one part of a much larger intelligence operation — one in which the bureau offshored the machinery it used to interfere in the 2016 election and embedded it within the private sector.

Twittergate files: FBI offered to become 'belly button' for intelligence demands to ban accounts.  The latest Twitter documents revealed that the CIA sent warnings about a book claiming that Joe and Hunter Biden conducted corruption in Ukraine.  Following up a breakdown of what led to Twitter's cooperation with the FBI, journalist Matt Taibbi's latest Twitter Files dump detailed how that partnership allowed the agency to become the 'belly button' to filter government demands.  Among those demands included a message from the CIA warning about a new book by former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, which contained claims of corruption by the US government, specifically, by the Bidens.

Twitter Files: The FBI "Belly Button".  Reporter Matt Taibbi has dropped the latest round of Twitter files, this time dubbed "The FBI Belly Button."  The new files detail a tangled web being woven between the FBI, the State Department, Twitter (and other social media companies) and media.  While Twitter exec Yoel Roth was keen to deal with the FBI, he and others in the social media giant quickly became concerned about the flood of other agencies rushing in to get their piece of the censorship pie.  The FBI has had their hooks in Twitter since long before the 2020 election, but when you get into bed with the devil, you'd best believe you'll soon find yourself sleeping on the edge.  Twitter execs thought they were working on behalf of social justice, but instead just worked themselves into being exalted secretaries.  The fact that the FBI actually had (former-but-not-so-former) employees working at Twitter, and paid out the tech company $3,415,323 is explained in great detail throughout this latest thread.

'Twitter Files' document connection to government agencies via 'belly button'.  A new release of internal Twitter correspondence details the relationship between the social media company and government agencies, which one agent compared to a belly button.  The latest drop of the Twitter Files, a series of releases provided by Elon Musk to allies detailing communications of the social media platform's leadership, offers insights into the company's relationship with the FBI.  The company established regular communications and received requests from an assortment of agencies, according to emails released by journalist Matt Taibbi.  These connections were better formed after the company clashed with the Global Engagement Center, a State Department-funded agency that regularly flagged Russian accounts in 2020 reports.

10 Scandals To Keep Your Eye On In 2023.  [#1] Government's Puppeteering of Big Tech and Media:  The ongoing release of the "Twitter Files" closed 2022 with a new scandal, as the internal communications of the tech giant exposed extensive coordination between the government and Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other big players controlling the flow of information.  While conservatives have known — and complained — for years of Big Tech's censorship and shadowbanning, by purchasing Twitter and giving independent journalists access to corporate emails, Elon Musk provided indisputable confirmation that Twitter both censored and blacklisted conservatives.  The censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the silencing of scientific criticism of the government's heavy-handed Covid regime, both at the prompting of federal agents, proved the most appalling.

The FBI's Top Ten Most Dangerous Thought Crimes of 2022:  [Thread reader]
  [#1]   The vaccine does not prevent spread
  [#2]   Natural immunity is real and, in fact, optimal
  [#3]   Ballot harvesting laws were changed in 2020 to give Dems a major electoral advantage
  [#4]   Biological men are naturally stronger than women.
  [#5]   This coronavirus most likely leaked from a gain-of-function research lab in Wuhan, China.
  [#6]   Placing every man, woman and child in lockdown will do more harm than good.
  [#7]   A drag queen reading books to a classroom of 6 year olds is sexually abnormal behavior.
  [#8]   My doctor prescribed me Ivermectin.
  [#9]   Your best protection against COVID is to lose weight, improve your lifestyle.  Get outside, spend time on the beach, walk nature trails, etc.
  [#10]   The mRNA COVID vaccine is still experimental and is potentially dangerous, especially to young people.

'Twitter Files' Put FBI Failures In Full Focus.  Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi joins Gregg guest hosting on 'Hannity' to discuss how the FBI has deflected blame about alleged censorship scheme.  [Video clip]

Why 'liberals' don't care about the Twitter Files.  The latest installment of the Twitter Files came out over the Christmas holiday alleging that the CIA, FBI and White House had been involved in content moderation on the site, and also that the platform had "rigged" the COVID-19 debate.  The ninth report published by Matt Taibbi on Christmas Eve and the latest by David Zweig on Monday have been reported by mainstream outlets, but only barely.  All of the Twitter Files to date, reported by Taibbi along with independent journalists Zweig, Bari Weiss, [and] Michael Shellenberg appear to show massive and widespread cooperation between the federal government and Twitter in regulating basic speech.  One might expect such revelations to spark great controversy and generate top headlines.  One would be wrong:  With the exception of Fox News, among national major news outlets, most have primarily published reports or opinion that seek to undermine the seriousness of these reports.  The 'liberal' mission appears to be to nuke the Twitter Files and defame its reporters.

The FBI Refuses to Name Other Social Media Companies It's Paying.  According to Cindy Harper of Reclaim the Net, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has not named the social networks it has paid.  This development comes on the heels of news confirming that the bureau paid Twitter at least $3.5 million.  FBI representatives talked to Fox News and revealed that the sizable Twitter payment was a "reimbursement" for expenses and costs of its requests.  The FBI revealed that the group had paid other social media platforms apart from Twitter.  Fox News pressed the FBI to reveal the names of other companies it had paid for these activities.  In the end, the FBI was unwilling to provide additional information concerning the topic.  However, the FBI representatives revealed that the agency offers payment for all reasonable expenses connected to the acquisition of information that is critical for legal processes.

Ten major revelations exposing [the] extent of government pressure on Big Tech to censor Americans.  Two hundred and thirty-one years ago this month, America's founders enshrined free speech as the first protection in the ratified Bill of Rights with a declaration that the government could not infringe expression.  A series of blockbuster revelations at the end of 2022 show just how imperiled those protections have become in the era of Big Tech.  From Elon Musk's "Twitter files" to an FBI agent's candid testimony, Americans have gotten a glimpse into a once-hidden enterprise where federal agencies pressured social media platforms — directly and through proxies — to censor content under their terms of service.  The goal, it appears, was to preserve the ruling elite's favored narratives on everything from the pandemic to election integrity.  The exposés have undercut claims that the FBI only targeted foreign disinformation, making clear that everyday opinions of Americans were also in the crosshairs.  They also have raised alarm across the political spectrum about the future of free speech in the world's most famous constitutional republic.

Biden's Unopposed Imposition of Stalinism.  While conservatives tend to be more tolerant of different viewpoints, the progressive liberals who have taken over the Democrat Party want to completely eradicate anyone with an incompatible vision.  Censorship of opposing views has become the official modus operandi of the federal government.  "Joe Biden's partisan political enemies," said Tucker Carlson, "are now officially enemies of the state."  The government is collaborating with social media to crack down on private communication when it is critical of Biden's policies.  "The Biden administration considers censorship applicable to private speech," said Tucker Carlson.  "What you say in private, when you're alone with your phone.  You won't be able to say or read what you want because the Democrats intend to control the flow of information.  Nothing that questions official regime policy will reach you."  Soon Biden's minions will be listening to all your phone calls and emails, and monitoring your social media posts as they do in China.  No private communication of prohibited ideas will be allowed.

The FBI Destroyed Its Once Great Reputation.  In recent years the FBI destroyed its stellar reputation and evolved into being the secret police of the Democrat Party Incidents such as ignoring Hillary's servers in the bathroom and destroying the evidence, the Russiagate hoax, and sending an army of G-Men to execute political raids of the homes of Republicans, including the political raid at the home of a former President, and so much more.  Thanks to its leaders, who care more about politics than law enforcement, the FBI has become a political embarrassment.  Most of the agents still do their jobs correctly.  But the leaders who make the big decisions have destroyed the way America thinks about the FBI, sending the reputation of the world's most outstanding law enforcement agency down the toilet.  Their involvement in making sure the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden scandal quiet may have given Biden the margin of victory in 2020.  Now the proof of the FBI'S involvement in the scandal has been released, but the FBI, the once great crime fighting organization, responded to the release of the Twitter files in the most unprofessional manner possible:  they called anyone who believed them "conspiracy theorists trying to discredit the Bureau."  Actually, the FBI discredited themselves with no help from any of us.

What Will the FBI Not Do?  The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant — ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech. [...] Almost all of the FBI communique is untrue, except the phrase about the bureau's "engagements which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries."  Future disclosures will no doubt reveal similar FBI subcontracting with other social media concerns of Silicon Valley to stifle free expression and news deemed problematic to the FBI's agenda.  The FBI did not merely engage in "correspondence" with Twitter to protect the company and its "customers."  Instead, it effectively hired Twitter to suppress the free expression of some of its users, as well as news stories deemed unhelpful to the Biden campaign and administration — to the degree that the bureau's requests sometimes even exceeded those of Twitter's own left-wing censors.

Twitter Files 9 Shows CIA, Other Security State Involvement in Censorship.  The CIA was among a number of security state agencies, including the State Department and the Pentagon, involved in censorship at Twitter, according to the ninth tranche of Twitter Files released by Elon Musk, via journalist Matt Taibbi.  Following the bizarre statement released by the FBI, calling the Twitter Files reporting "misinformation" spread by "conspiracy theorists" with the "sole purpose of discrediting the agency," Taibbi posted a new tranche revealing much more widespread government involvement in censorship than previously known — adding, "Why stop with one [agency]?"

Twitter Files Thread: The Spies Who Loved Twitter.  After weeks of "Twitter Files" reports, the FBI issued a statement Wednesday.  It didn't refute allegations.  Instead, it decried "conspiracy theorists" publishing "misinformation," whose "sole aim" is to "discredit the agency."  They must think us unambitious, if our "sole aim" is to discredit the FBI.  After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the #TwitterFiles.  Why stop with one?  The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government — from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.  The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors — from local cops to media to state government.  Thousands upon thousands of official "reports" flowed through the FITF and the FBI's San Francisco field office.

Why You Need to Start Paying Attention to the 'Twitter Files'.  The "Twitter Files" have now officially had more sequels than Planet of the Apes and can be difficult to absorb.  Thus, I don't think they're getting the attention they deserve.  For those of you not following the "Twitter Files" drops, let me catch you up on what I believe are some of the most important parts:
  •   The FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million to censor conservatives.
  •   The FBI pressured Twitter to give them information that would legally require warrants, though they did not have warrants.
  •   Leading up to the 2020 election, the FBI would eventually hold weekly meetings with Twitter and tell them whose tweets to squelch and which accounts they wanted to be suspended.  Almost all were those of conservatives.
  •   The FBI knew the Hunter Biden laptop story was real, they knew it was coming out — weeks before the 2020 election — and they told Big Tech to expect a "Russian disinformation" drop and squelch the story.  That means the FBI corrupted the election to help Joe "totally showered with his daughter, Ashley" Biden.
  •   There are so many former FBI employees at Twitter that they have their own Slack channel.

'Twitter Files' Show Intel Reports Flagging Ukraine And COVID 'Narratives'.  Twitter received intelligence reports from U.S. agencies raising concerns about foreign influence by flagging users and posts focused on Ukraine "propaganda," COVID vaccines, and much more, according to the latest disclosure in "The Twitter Files."  Journalist Matt Taibbi shared on Saturday excerpts in a thread responding to the FBI defending as "traditional" and "longstanding" its correspondence with Twitter in the face of concerns that the bureau was going out of its way to pressure social media companies to censor content.  "Many people wonder if Internet platforms receive direction from intelligence agencies about moderation of foreign policy news stories.  It appears Twitter did, in some cases by way of the" FBI and its Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), Taibbi said. "These reports are far more factually controversial than domestic counterparts," he added.

New Twitter Files drop: the FBI was a liaison for all sorts of government agencies.  The First Amendment is clear:  The government may not regulate speech — yet that's precisely what the latest Twitter Files from Matt Taibbi show the FBI did.  In the lead-up to the 2020 election, acting on behalf of itself and other agencies, the FBI had Twitter censor anything that it deemed "misinformation."  Additionally, beginning in 2022, the FBI asked Twitter to shut down hundreds of accounts that countered the Biden administration's Ukraine narrative.  In other words, the government was doing indirectly, via Twitter, that which it cannot do directly:  censoring speech with which it disagrees. [...] The government cannot censor political speech — and it cannot avoid that absolute proscription by requesting or bullying a third party into censoring the speech on the government's behalf.  But that's precisely what happened:  FBI asked for censorship, and Twitter said "yes."

How the FBI Used Twitter to Lie to You.  This image of the FBI fails to highlight an important fact.  The FBI is allowed to lie to you.  They can lie to acquire information or encourage a confession.  Unlike entertainment, agents don't need a story to fill a certain screen time, or number of theater seats.  They just need to convince a very small audience just dumb enough to reveal something incriminating to their new friends. [...] The targets for the FBI's 2020 fabrication were Twitter staffers with titles like "Trust and Safety," "Site Integrity," "Product Trust," or "Legal Policy and Trust."  They mostly worked to prevent 280-character tweets causing distress to potential readers with marginalized identities.  There were many ex-FBI staff at Twitter, including attorney James Baker.  Twitter staffers were primed to expect nefarious Russian efforts to influence the 2020 presidential election, including fake information, a laptop that didn't belong to Hunter Biden or was hacked, salacious contents that were false and would be leaked.  Being asked to help the FBI and given temporary Top Secret Clearance were ego-feeding perks.  Twitter executive Yoel Roth apparently enjoyed running out of boring names for meetings with the FBI.

Twitter Files part 9: Vast web of coordination between tech giant and CIA, State Department, other agencies.  Substack writer Matt Taibbi released the latest installment of the "Twitter Files" on Christmas Eve, detailing that coordination between the tech giant and government agencies went way beyond the FBI. In a massive series of tweets, Taibbi insisted that the FBI was simply the "doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government — from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA."  The journalist explained that Twitter had so many interactions with OGAs (or "other government agencies" as they are called in the tweets), the company couldn't keep them all straight:  He explained, "Twitter had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track.  Is today the DOD, and tomorrow the FBI?  Is it the weekly call, or the monthly meeting?  It was dizzying."

House Investigation Into Twitter Files Has Been Launched.  Incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Mike Johnson have announced the official launch of an investigation into FBI censorship revealed in the "Twitter files."  "We are investigating politicization and abuses at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as Big Tech's censorship of conservatives online.  Newly released information shows the FBI has coordinated extensively with Twitter to censor or otherwise affect content on Twitter's platform.  These documents show that the FBI maintained this relationship with Twitter apart from any particularized need for a specific investigation, but as a permanent and ongoing surveillance operation.  These revelations sadly reinforce our deep concerns about the FBI's misconduct and its hostility to the First Amendment," a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray states.

FBI response to Twitter Files is on brand.  Michael Shellenberger's revelations about the FBI's efforts to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story should have been shocking.  But we are long past the time when we can legitimately expect our top government officials to be more than a power-grabbing group of grifters.  Among the revelations was the fact that the FBI had 80 agents monitoring Twitter and feeding suggestions about accounts and tweets to censor.  Lots of people are rightly outraged about that, but in itself it is hardly surprising.  The growth of the security state has become pervasive enough to make me almost shrug.  Sad, I know.  What stood out to me is the fact that the FBI outright lied to Twitter (and I assume to Google, Apple, Facebook, and others) about the Hunter Biden laptop and encouraged these companies to suppress the stories based upon the lie that it was Russian disinformation.  The FBI had the laptop and knew it was genuine, but they carried out an operation to convince others that it was a Russian plant and that the information on it would be released in a foreign government's attempt to sway the 2020 election.  [Tweet]

The Valley and the Swamp.  The real value of all those Twitter email dumps so far is that we now have probative evidence for what many already knew — old news for the insightful.  Silicon Valley is a subsidiary of the D.C. political swamp, two ethical wastelands populated by tenured partisans.  The path to electoral victory today has little to do with vote tallies and a lot more to do with how well you "prebunk" (AKA cook) the electorate.  With enough prebunking, you can run for office from your basement and skip the hazards of the debate stage.  Official prebunking is the cyber or internet version of "cutout" operations.  Cutouts are Intelligence Community tools and tactics that allow agencies like the CIA, NSA, and FBI to perform dirty tricks, sordid or criminal operations, at home that might otherwise be illegal or embarrassing.  Using a cutout, like Twitter or Facebook, allows government agencies and dirty cops at agencies like the NSA and FBI to have "plausible deniability."  If the facts surrounding the 2016 "Russiagate" operation ever come to light, Christopher Steele, Fiona Hill, and Alexander Vindman will probably emerge as animate examples of probative contemporary human cutouts.

FBI Admits It Meddles In 'Numerous Companies,' Not Just Twitter.  After a series of "Twitter Files" detailed Twitter's extensive collusion with the FBI and federal agencies to control public discourse before Elon Musk took over the tech giant, the FBI on Wednesday tried to salvage its reputation by spinning the revelations as normal procedure.  "The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries," the FBI said in a statement to Fox News.  "As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers."

FBI declines to list other social media companies it paid, says $3.5 mil Twitter payment was 'reimbursement'.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation is declining to specify what other social media companies the federal agency gave money to after Fox News confirmed that it paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million.  FBI officials told Fox News that the nearly $3.5 million payment to Twitter was a "reimbursement" for the "reasonable costs and expenses associated with their response to a legal process... For complying with legal requests, and a standard procedure."  The FBI officials also said that Twitter isn't the only social media company that is being paid by the federal agency, telling Fox News "We don't just reimburse Twitter."

FBI dismisses 'Twitter Files,' says working with private companies is 'longstanding and ongoing' practice.  The FBI released a statement responding to the revelations in the so-called "Twitter Files," which showed the FBI's involvement in political censorship on Twitter.  [Tweet]  "The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our tradition, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries," the FBI's statement said.  "As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers," the statement claimed.

Bidenana Republic.  Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter has led him to reveal that the FBI and other intelligence agencies leaned on Twitter to suppress criticism of the government, particularly its covid policy, support of Ukraine and Hunter Biden's laptop, which the FBI protected under Bill Barr.  This suppression of Hunter's drug abuse, sex abuse and political corruption enabled the election of Biden, a man who sells his country to the highest bidder.  Twitter was only one of the social media outlets that worked for the FBI.  The bureau owned the media in Washington through leaks and the like.  Now it owns social media.  And while the FBI covered up Biden Family corruption, it invented a weird story about Trump stealing nuclear code, a fairy tale that convinced a Biden appointee to issue a warrant to raid Mar-a-Lago.  The FBI stole 11,000 non-classified documents, including clothing, in an effort to intimidate and discredit him.

FBI and Twitter formed a censorship alliance and they can't be allowed to get away with it.  "They are probing & pushing everywhere."  That line sums up an increasingly alarming element in the seventh installment of the so-called "Twitter files."  "They" were the agents of Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they were pushing for the censorship of citizens in an array of stories.  Writer Michael Shellenberger added critical details on how the FBI was directly engaged in censorship at the company.  However, this batch of documents contains a particularly menacing element to the FBI-Twitter censorship alliance.  The documents show what writer Shellenberger described as a concentrated effort "to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published."  Twitter has admitted that it made a mistake in blocking the Hunter laptop story.  After roughly two years, even media that pushed the false "Russian disinformation" claims have acknowledged that the laptop is authentic.

The naked truth on the Hunter Biden laptop coverup.  [Scroll down]  The second Watergate phrase that commands our attention now is "The coverup is worse than the crime."  That's because we are on the cusp of the coverup phase of what the FBI, and perhaps the CIA and others, did to influence the outcome of the 2020 election.  Predictable denials of "Nothing to see here" come despite clear proof that agents interfered with the First Amendment rights of the American public, and not just on Twitter.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said agents warned him about "Russian disinformation" before the election.  Those warnings came in weekly meetings FBI agents had in San Francisco with the Big Tech firms and some reportedly mentioned Hunter Biden.

Most Americans Support Criminal Prosecution For Twitter Censors Who Colluded With Feds.  The vast majority of Americans support criminal prosecution for Twitter employees who worked with the U.S. government to suppress tweets in a possible violation of the First Amendment, a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found.  Elon Musk's ongoing Twitter Files have revealed that the platform engaged in widespread censorship in partnership with the FBI, which pressured the company to share private information with the agency outside of normal legal avenues and to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story implicating President Joe Biden in his son's foreign business dealings.  Among respondents, 74% believed the Twitter employees who worked with the FBI to censor users should be criminally prosecuted, and only 26% thought they shouldn't, according to the poll.

Good move, but Musk has all the answers, not Schiff.
Musk Demands Answers From Adam Schiff About Bombshell News FBI Paid Twitter to Censor.  As we reported, the latest Twitter files revealed that the FBI pushed Twitter and other social media to squash the Hunter Biden laptop story without any evidence that it was a foreign operation and that they arranged for Top Secret security clearances for executives of Twitter to see some of the information that they wanted them to pursue regarding election "threats."  That was a far cry from the disclaimer the FBI issued last week when the Twitter files started dropping.  They said that they just provided information to Twitter and that whatever Twitter did with it was their own business.  But it gets worse.  The latest Twitter files that were dropped by Michael Shellenberger have yet another bombshell, and now Elon Musk himself is demanding answers about it from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the lame-duck present head of the House Intelligence Committee.

Why Did the FBI Want Joe Biden to Become President?  The FBI has been controlling what you and I have been allowed to say on the Internet.  The Bureau had a bunch of "former" employees on Twitter's payroll actively helping suppress free speech on their platform.  The FBI had secret channels of communication between an agency of them and a privately-owned social media company that were used exclusively to control the public narrative about an election-changing event.  The FBI also paid Twitter millions of taxpayer dollars to suppress our own free speech.  Is this a great country, or what?  Who or what authorized them, a federal agency, to spend my tax dollars on manipulating social media to deliberately advance a false narrative about Hunter's laptop? [...] Only one word accurately describes the crime the FBI has committed, and that word is treason.

FBI Agent Elvis Chan Gave Twitter Execs Top Secret Clearance in Advance of 2020 Election.  New internal documents from Twitter, revealed today as part of Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" series, show FBI Agent Elvis Chan arranged for Top Secret security clearance — the highest level of US national security clearance — to be granted to Twitter executives for the purpose of facilitating the censorship of suspected misinformation in advance of the 2020 election.  [Tweet]  Elvis Chan has long been closely involved in working with social media companies to identify and censor suspected misinformation from sources both foreign and domestic, especially with regard to suspected election interference.  This has included regularly sending lists of social media posts to social media companies for them to take down, as well as the suspension of the New York Post and others for what was subsequently borne out to be a true story about Hunter Biden's laptop.

Are FBI And CIA Agents 'Sheep Dipped' At Twitter And Other Tech Companies?  According to the latest drop of "Twitter Files" from Michael Shellenberger, "As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees — 'Bu alumni' — working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals."  It appears that Twitter still has 14 employees on the payroll who worked at the FBI and CIA.  The problem isn't just confined to Twitter.  My colleague and Federalist contributor Ben Weingarten recently wrote an article for the New York Post, "Inside revolving door between Democrat Deep State and Big Tech."  In addition to covering what was happening at Twitter, Weingarten details a broader number of suspicious links between Silicon Valley and U.S. intelligence agencies.  Given the near-constant string of deep-state scandals and social media censorship we've endured in recent years, a big question we should all be trying to answer right now is, "What exactly are all these spooks doing at tech companies?"

More Twitter Files: Intelligence Community Pressure Campaign against Twitter.  Michael Shellenberger has just published the latest batch of what has come to be known as the Twitter Files.  It's a follow-up to Matt Taibbi's recent Twitter Files release concerning FBI's pressure campaign against Twitter to remove content the agency found objectionable.  Today's release provides more details on the relationship between Twitter and the FBI, the suppression and removal of the Hunter Biden story from Twitter the FBI's desire for Twitter to confirm a "foreign interference" narrative that didn't exist, and how the FBI sought user location information for tweets that weren't remotely criminal.

Evidence shows FBI, Biden campaign and Twitter worked together to suppress Hunter story.  Members of the intelligence community, and censors at Twitter, stress that they just didn't know the Hunter Biden laptop was real, so they erred on the side of caution.  "It has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation," the infamous letter from 50 former officials said.  Now we know that was a lie.  The FBI already had Hunter's laptop — it was handed over to them by the owner of a Delaware repair shop, the same man who would provide it to The [New York] Post nearly a year later.  It's also increasingly obvious that the FBI had a heads up that the information was about to be published.

FBI, DOJ 'discredited' information about Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings.  Independent writer Michael Shellenberger released part 7 of the "Twitter Files" on Monday, delving into how the FBI and intelligence community "discredited factual information about Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings."  The lengthy Twitter thread reveals what Shellenberger calls an "influence campaign" by the FBI that eventually "worked" when Twitter censored Hunter Biden's scandalous laptop.  Elon Musk had been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter's past and present actions curating content on the platform, including censored content.  The Twitter owner has enlisted independent journalists to slowly release evidence of these actions in a series dubbed the "Twitter Files" that continue to expose once-secret communications.

The FBI Paid Twitter Millions of Dollars For Their "Influence Campaign".  On Monday [12/19/2022], the next round of Twitter Files [was released], proving to be the most [embarrassing] file drop to date.  The drop, which was reported [...] by Michael Shellenberger, showed just how far the FBI went while working with Twitter to influence the 2020 election in Joe Biden's favor.  According to the [files], the FBI paid Twitter $3.4 million dollars of taxpayer money for their "staff time."  "The FBI's influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time," reported Shellenberger.

Latest 'Twitter Files' show FBI repeatedly bullied executives over not reporting 'state propaganda' enough.  The FBI repeatedly grilled Twitter execs about censorship on the social media platform in the summer of 2020 — insisting that the company provide more information about removing "state propaganda" from the site, according to the latest Twitter Files release.  The agency's Foreign Influence Task Force — which deals with cyber threats — interrogated Twitteron itsreportingabout official state media actors' use of the site, according to emails unearthed byindependent journalistMatt Taibbi in what he dubbed the "Twitter Files Supplemental" Sunday night.  San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan pressured former Twitter trust and safety chief Yoel Roth in July 2020 for more information about how they prevented bad actors from using the platform, according to screengrabs of email correspondence posted by Taibbi.

The [worst] Twitter File just dropped, highlighting FBI wrongdoing.  Michael Shellenberger has published the latest expose on Twitter, and this time, it's not Twitter that looks corrupt; it's the FBI, which knowingly lied to social media outlets about the Hunter Biden laptop.  It's impossible to believe that it did so for any other reason than to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by hiding Joe Biden's corruption.  Let's get the most important point out first:  The FBI knew at all relevant times that Hunter Biden's hard drive was the real deal and that every bit of information on it — crooked dealings with foreign governments, money laundering for Joe, sexually obsessive videos, drug usage — was entirely legitimate.  Nevertheless, the FBI aggressively worked with Twitter and other social media outlets to suppress this fact by falsely claiming that the hard drive was "Russian disinformation" or a hack.

The Feds' 'Misinformation' Scam.  The biggest political story of 2022 was not the midterm election.  It was the release of the "Twitter Files" by Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter.  In the sixth installment published last week on Twitter in a thread by journalist Matt Taibbi, the headline was "Twitter, the FBI Subsidiary."  The FBI had its own channel of communication for tipping off Twitter executives as to authors of tweets who needed to be censored, if not banned, for posting "election misinformation" during the 2020 election season.  What was insidious is that some of the offending tweets were satirical in nature and posted by people with relatively few followers.  At least 80 FBI agents were assigned to a social media task force.  The Department of Homeland Security had its own operation.  Both were inspired by the alleged foreign interference in the 2016 election, known now as the "Russian collusion hoax."  However, it was just days before Election Day for the 2022 midterms that we learned that censorship has been a secret project for over two years of the DHS, the FBI, and "Big Tech."  Apart from Twitter, that included Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Wikipedia, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Verizon Media.

After Learning That Twitter Employs At Least 15 Former FBI Agents, We Searched Facebook — What We Found Is Alarming.  Twitter's top ranks were riddled with ex-FBI agents and executives, stitching the company even closer to the federal agency now under fire for leaning on Twitter to meddle in the 2020 elections.  More than a dozen former feds flocked to the company in the months and years prior to Elon Musk's purchase of the social network in October.  The FBI's influence was considerably more significant than just James Baker, the FBI's former general counsel who later worked in the same role for Twitter.  He was recently fired by Musk for interfering in the billionaire's efforts to come clean about past transgressions at the company.

FBI Used Twitter To Censor, But Emails From The Latest Twitter Files Reveal That They Also Used Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Wikimedia And Reddit.  Another round of Twitter Files has dropped, and this one comes courtesy of Matt Taibbi (who the Washington Post laughably dubbed a "conservative journalist").  This latest round features how deeply the FBI, DHS, state governments, and others were involved in what was and wasn't allowed on the social media platform.  Most of the focus is on the FBI.

FBI Refuses to reveal how many social media firms it is secretly influencing.  The FBI has refused to say how many social media companies it works with, defending their actions after it emerged that agents from the bureau regularly met with Twitter executives and handed over lists of accounts they found questionable.  Officials from the bureau even asked for Twitter to hand over the locations from where the Twitter accounts were being operated, in a disturbing move that many saw as an attack on the First Amendment.

FBI Targeted Right Side Broadcasting Network for Censorship Ahead of Midterms.  The FBI's "National Election Command Post" (NECP) sent an email asking its San Francisco field office to pressure Twitter to censor the Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), a conservative news channel made popular by streaming Trump campaign rallies, two days before the 2022 midterm elections.  In the email, dated November 6, 2022, the NECP gave its San Francisco field office a list of 25 accounts "being utilized to spread misinformation about the upcoming election," a list which included RSBN.

New Twitter Files Show FBI Flagging Accounts for Company to Punish.  Emails from the FBI to Twitter released on Dec. 16 showed bureau officials flagging specific people for Twitter to take action against, the latest tranche of documents that bolster evidence that the government and Big Tech have been colluding to censor Americans.  In one missive dated Nov. 3, FBI officials flagged 25 accounts, including that of the media outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network that had created posts that "may warrant additional action due to the accounts being utilized to spread misinformation about the upcoming election."  The list was sent to Twitter several days later by Elvis Chan, a top official at the FBI's office in San Francisco.

Deep State Suspicions.  As the records of Twitter are being released by the new owner, Elon Musk, the FBI seems to have run that platform, manipulating public discourse, undercutting then President Trump, and affecting the 2020 election outcomes, along with other things like the public health response to COVID.  The most easy-to-read summary of the latest document releases is at Townhall where Matt Vespa puts the evidence in a very readable form.

Former Rolling Stone Editor Perfectly Describes the FBI's Relationship With Twitter.  The endless troves of documents have shredded the claims that the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice operate as impartial entities.  That's no longer the case — these agencies are now geared toward influencing public opinion at the behest of their Democratic Party overlords.  They're the only ones who benefit from this system of state-sponsored censorship.  Taibbi described the FBI-Twitter relationship perfectly as one of "master-canine".

DHS and FBI Content Removal Requests to Twitter.  Independent journalist Matt Taibbi has released the sixth installment after review of more Twitter File data.  Keep in mind, the research group containing Mr. Taibbi are only seeing the consequences side of the content removal process.  What specifically happened in/around the portal of information flowing into Twitter HQ is a different division.  Taibbi et al are only seeing the consequences from the requests that entered the Twitter system.  The first section of Taibbi's analysis is the most interesting.  Having tracked the issue for several years, I would modify some of the descriptive language Taibbi presents yet agree with the overall context of his presentation.  Taibbi begins by noting, "Twitter's contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary."  I would safely take that a step further, yes there is a subsidiary relationship; however, as years of government involvement continued by 2016 Twitter became the subsidiary of DHS, not vice-versa.

New York Post: Twitter Is 'Riddled' with Ex-FBI Employees.  A recent report from the New York Post claims that Twitter's top ranks are filled with ex-FBI agents and executives.  Many of these employees were swept away by Elon Musk's massive layoffs, but some feds are likely still on the payroll.  The New York Post reports that many of Twitter's top executive roles were staffed with ex-FBI agents, connecting the company even closer to the federal agency which is being criticized for allegedly leaning on Twitter before the 2020 elections.

Twitter's top ranks riddled with ex-FBI employees.  Twitter's top ranks were riddled with ex-FBI agents and executives, stitching the company even closer to the federal agency now under fire for leaning on Twitter to meddle in the 2020 elections.  More than a dozen former feds flocked to the company in the months and years prior to Elon Musk's purchase of the social network in October.  The [New York] Post found FBI influence was considerably more significant than just James Baker, the FBI's former general counsel who later worked in the same role for Twitter.  He was recently fired by Musk for interfering in the billionaire's efforts to come clean about past transgressions at the company.

FBI warned Twitter during 'weekly' meetings of Hunter Biden 'hack-and-leak operation' before censoring The Post.  The FBI warned Twitter during "weekly" meetings before the 2020 election to expect "hack-and-leak operations" by "state actors" involving Hunter Biden, and "likely" in October, according to a sworn declaration by Twitter's former head of site integrity, Yoel Roth.  The warnings were so specific that Twitter immediately censored The Post's scoop about Hunter Biden's laptop on Oct. 14, 2020, citing its "hacked materials" policy, a move described on Saturday as "election interference" by Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk.  The extraordinary revelation for the first time lays bare how the FBI was involved in pre-bunking the story of the laptop, which had been in the bureau's possession for almost a year.

What's missing from the Twitter files: The truth about the FBI.  Elon Musk half-delivered on his promise to tell all about Twitter's censorship of The New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election.  What was missing were details of specific warnings we know the FBI made to Twitter about a Russian "hack and leak operation" involving Hunter during their weekly meetings with top executives of the social media giant in the days and weeks before The Post published its exclusive bombshell.  We know that FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan testified Tuesday in a lawsuit against the Biden administration brought by Republican attorneys that he organized those weekly meetings with Twitter and Facebook in San Francisco for as many as seven Washington-based FBI agents in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.  Twitter's then-head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth has stated in a sworn declaration that he was told during those meetings to expect "hack-and-leak operations" by state actors involving Hunter Biden.

Timely news and commentary about censorship on Twitter:

Some Laws that Could Save Free Speech.  Over the last several years, Americans' unalienable right to free speech has been under relentless assault by an alliance of government agencies, corporations, universities, and social media giants. [...] Americans who dare publicly question government and media-prescribed positions on COVID-19 vaccines safety, the effectiveness of masks, the war in Ukraine, the 2020 election, lockdowns, parental rights, transgenderism, CRT and other issues face deplatforming and even subsequent possible loss of job and access to banking services.  Breitbart News recently published a chilling report on a vast, well funded "post-2016 empire of 'disinformation' censorship that ... extends far beyond the federal government," working tirelessly to "suppress non-progressive viewpoints, and harm the business models that support them."  This empire's enormous power was demonstrated in early 2021, when Twitter prevented President Trump from communicating with the American public by suspending his account.

Chairman Jim Jordan Subpoenas CDC and Other Agencies After Allegations of Government Censorship.  Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has issued subpoenas to officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC).  The chairman hopes to obtain documents and communications related to the Committee's investigation into allegations of federal government coercion and collusion with private companies and third-party groups to censor speech.  Recent public reporting, including The Twitter Files, has revealed the extent to which the federal government has exerted pressure and collaborated with Big Tech and other intermediaries to suppress certain viewpoints, a practice that violates the First Amendment principles.

Ukraine Intelligence Admit to Using FBI to Remove Facebook Content They View as "Against Our Country".  Comrade rebels, a remarkable bit of independent journalism by Lee Fang, who interviews a high-ranking Ukraine intelligence official named Ilia Vitiuk.  Within the interview the head of the Ukraine Cyber Information Security Service admits to how they use the FBI to pressure Facebook into removing content the Ukraine government doesn't like.

Meet The Shadowy Group That Ran The Federal Government's Censorship Scheme.  The State Department's Global Engagement Center used a cutout corporation headed by a former intelligence officer to fund and promote the blacklisting of conservative media outlets and other censorship endeavors, research by The Federalist reveals.  When Elon Musk gave a group of independent journalists access to internal Twitter communications, the resulting "Twitter Files" quickly revealed the existence of a Censorship-Industrial Complex that included an array of federal agencies colluding with social media companies to censor disfavored speech.  One of the many federal players was the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC) — but GEC did much more than cajole tech giants to censor viewpoints the government didn't like.  As The Federalist previously reported, GEC funded the development of censorship tools and used "government employees to act as sales reps pitching the censorship products to Big Tech."

19 Times Democrats And DOJ Deliberately Politicized Law Enforcement.  [#9] At the House Weaponization Committee's second hearing held last month, Subsack reporter and lead "Twitter Files" author Matt Taibbi testified, "We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, the DHS, the HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA."  "A focus of this fast-growing network ... is making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations or sympathies are deemed misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation," Taibbi said. "That last term is just a euphemism for 'true but inconvenient.'"  In August, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan's podcast and revealed the FBI prepped the company to wrongly deem the Hunter Biden laptop story a vehicle of Russian interference.

America's Censorship Regime Goes on Trial.  [Scroll down]  The cascade of shutdowns of support groups and accounts belonging to the vaccine injured on Facebook and other social media platforms continues to this day.  [Ernest] Ramirez, [Brianne] Dressen, and others learned that when their accounts weren't suspended or removed, they were shadow-banned — meaning that the platforms' algorithms buried their posts so that they were rarely, if ever, viewable, even to like-minded individuals facing similar health problems.  In Dressen's words: "The constant threat of having our groups shut down and our connections pulled apart left me and many other members and leaders frozen, unable to communicate and connect with those who needed our help the most.  We spent more time managing the chaos of the censorship algorithms that continued to evolve, than we did actually helping people through the trauma of their injuries."  The obstacles encountered by Ramirez, Dressen, and thousands of other individuals with similar experiences and opinions were in no way coincidental or accidental.  Nor were they the result of a series of errors in judgment made by low-level employees of social media platforms.  Rather, they were the products of concerted efforts at the highest levels of the American government to ensure that individuals with opposing viewpoints could not be heard, contrary to the guarantees made to every American citizen in the Bill of Rights.

Elon Musk's Twitter Platform Blocks Substack Content from Distribution, Matt Taibbi Departs Twitter.  When Elon Musk bought Twitter, CTH warned to refrain from forming opinion of the takeover because of the DHS network with it.  Either Musk did due diligence in the purchase and was aware of DHS attachment, or Musk didn't know of the scale of DHS involvement.  Both possibilities painted a rather odd perspective of the Musk motive.  The latest development upon the new Twitter platform, includes Twitter no longer permitting Substack authors to promote their articles. "Twitter is now blocking likes, retweets, and comments on tweets that include a link to a Substack newsletter.  In addition, Twitter users cannot pin a tweet that includes a Substack link to their profile."  Apparently, Twitter views the growth of Substack as a business threat.  Unfortunately, that leaves a Substack author like Matt Taibbi in a tough position; especially because he is one of the lead independent journalists highlighting the findings within a review of Twitter's prior corporate correspondence and networking with DHS officials, also known as "the Twitter files."  As a result, Taibbi was forced to choose between Twitter and Substack.

Shellenberger: The Government Funding Someone Else To Censor Information Is Still A First Amendment Violation.  Michael Shellenberger, who testified at the "Twitter Files" hearing last month, talked to Joe Rogan about working on the project and what they found about how intelligence agencies infiltrated social media companies. [...] "What you're looking at is the apparatus that was created by the war on terror over the last 20 years starting after 9/11," Shellenberger said about the censorship bureaucracy that has appeared recently, and the social ecosystem that supports it.  "Aspen is funded by the U.S. government, Stanford is funded by the U.S. government... We're talking about U.S. government-funded organizations."  "They created something called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within the Department of Homeland Security to supposedly protect the media environment from foreign influence.  They created something called the foreign influence task force within the FBI to basically start policing domestic speech on those platforms.  They start organizing all the different social media companies to participate in these meetings."  "If the U.S. government is censoring information, that is obviously a violation of the first amendment.  But if the U.S. government is funding somebody else to censor information, that is also a violation of the first amendment," he said.

Twitter Will Never Stop Censoring Conservatives.  It's Broken Beyond Repair.  Ayear ago, I was locked out of my Twitter account.  On Friday morning, with no explanation, my account was unlocked.  For a journalist, losing access to Twitter and to one's followers is no small thing.  I don't have a huge following, but Twitter is an important platform in my industry, and losing my access to it limited my ability to do my job effectively.  I was locked out for saying that Rachel Levine, a high-ranking official in the Biden administration's Department of Health and Human Services, is a man.  Levine is "trans."  He identifies and dresses as a woman, but he is a man.  To be clear, I wasn't saying that to be nasty but because The Babylon Bee, a Christian satire site, had been censored and locked out by Twitter for naming Levine its "Man of the Year" in mockery of USA Today.  USA Today had included Levine, a man, as one of its 2022 "Women of the Year."  (To be clear, even if I had said it to be nasty, that still doesn't justify Twitter's censorship.)

Did Twitter's algorithm have a back door for gov't censors?  Would it surprise anyone if it did?  On Friday, "Chief Twit" Elon Musk released part of Twitter's traffic algorithms as promised, and it didn't take long for coders to find some interesting nuggets. [...] The reporting of Matt Taibbi, Michael Schellenberger, and Bari Weiss already made clear that previous Twitter management complied with censorship requests from Homeland Security, the FBI, and the CDC, among others.  That they formalized this mechanism into the algorithm should surprise no one, although it does speak to the penetration of Twitter's business model by the government-censorship industrial complex.  The "suppress misinformation" code is an explicit extension of those censorship efforts, encouraged and demanded in no small part by Congress in the few years preceding Musk's buyout of Twitter.  Perhaps the algorithm to "recommend candidates to follow" needs a bit more explanation, though.  Did that get directed by government too, or is that a more natural algorithm based on a user's own tweets?  It's an open question as to why Twitter would recommend candidates at all, of course, and how that might get considered as in-kind campaigning if the FEC took an impartial interest in that sort of thing.

The Warnings Unheeded Now Threaten Our Fundamental Freedoms.  The First Amendment is at a critical juncture.  Recent congressional hearings on the Twitter Files brought the matter into full public view.  Freedom of speech and of the press are hanging by a precarious thread.  Do we want a future in which information flows freely, or one in which an information elite controls those flows "for our own good?"  The choices we make over the next few years will determine which of those futures we get.  It's tragic that we have let the problem reach this dangerous state.  What heightens the tragedy, however, is that the war against America's most cherished freedoms was predictable and preventable.  If those of us who value freedom want to win, we're going to need a strategy grounded in a clear understanding of what's happening and why.  The Twitter Files story is shocking.  Allegations that big tech and social media manipulate information have been around for as long as we've had tech and social media companies.  Allegations of bias among the mainstream media are even older.  In recent years, however, both the allegations and the supporting evidence have ratcheted upward to unprecedented levels.

The Censored Generation.  The implicit deal with companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc., is very simple:  we will look at your ads if you give us a service for free.  The deal did not include censorship.  But what is society to expect when those doing the censoring seem to see absolutely nothing wrong with it, that it didn't even occur to them that what they were engaged in — often at the specific request of governmental agencies — was at all a problem?  For a generation that has grown up with speech codes and enforced nicety and automatic deference to the feelings of others and swaddled in bubble wrap against the vagaries of life, censoring speech is not only not an ethical leap[,] it is the right thing to do.

Federal Judge Delivers Major Setback To Biden Admin In Pivotal Censorship Case.  A federal judge ruled against the Biden administration's efforts to dismiss a case involving online censorship Monday, saying that the states of Missouri and Louisiana had "plausibly alleged" First Amendment violations.  United States District Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana denied the Biden administration's motion to dismiss a suit brought on May 5 by Republican Attorneys General Erik Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana.  Schmitt and Landry said the Biden administration colluded with social media companies to censor debate on multiple issues, including the 2020 presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eight Startling and Uncomfortable Ways the Democrat Party Emulates the Nazi Party.  [#5] The Nazis were notorious for book-burning rituals to intimidate and send the message that they would shut down anyone and anything that did not align with their ideology.  Once in control of the national levers of powers, they did so with impunity particularly in the education sector whose revised primary purpose was to brainwash the youth.  The Democrat Party is figuratively burning books as it uses social media mobs as the vehicle to send the message that they will shut down anyone or anything that does not align with their ideology.

Twitter Files reveal government-sponsored suppression of the truth with the help of Stanford University.  According to LifeSiteNews, "the nineteenth 'Twitter Files' installment has revealed that a Stanford University initiative routinely told social media companies to suppress posts containing '[t]rue content which might promote vaccine hesitancy.'"  Journalist Matt Taibbi posted the latest batch of files on March 17th.  Taibbi stated that a federally funded Stanford University initiative called the Virality Project instructed Big Tech social media platforms such as Twitter and TikTok to take action against admittedly true posts regarding the experimental COVID-19 vaccines as part of its fight against "disinformation."  The Virality Project, which is partially funded by the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation, also directed the social media giants to treat "often true posts which could fuel hesitancy" as "misinformation" on their platforms.  Some of us on conservative sites have long alleged that this has been happening.  Those on the left often deem anything with which they disagree, especially if true, to be "misinformation" or "disinformation."

Twitter Is Censoring Republicans Again.  After Elon Musk took over Twitter, a renaissance of engagement with conservative thinkers began.  Even someone as insignificant as myself compared to much larger accounts started gaining thousands of followers a month.  Recently, that growth has slowed to a trickle and impressions have fallen through the floor.  Now, there's even more direct evidence that the censorship is back with a vengeance.  Tucker Carlson recently shared statements from Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump in which both men broke from the preferred narrative on Ukraine.  His account is now shadowbanned, and not showing up in searches.

NewsGuard Claims Not To Be Government-Funded, But A $750K Grant Suggests Otherwise.  The media-ratings giant NewsGuard denied it was "government-funded" after being called out as part of the vast Censorship Complex during congressional hearings last week.  But government records and the company's own public announcement celebrating a nearly $750,000 federal grant suggest otherwise.  On Thursday, independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger appeared before the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to testify about what they had discovered during a review of internal Twitter communications.  An hour before the weird hearing began, Taibbi released the latest installment of the "Twitter Files."

The Censorship Complex Isn't A 'Tinfoil Hat' Conspiracy.  "It may be possible — if we can take off the tinfoil hat — that there is not a vast conspiracy," Democrat Colin Allred of Texas scoffed at independent journalist Matt Taibbi during Thursday's House Judiciary subcommittee hearing.  But while Allred was busy deriding Taibbi and fellow witness, journalist Michael Shellenberger, the public was digesting the latest installment of the "Twitter Files" — which contained yet further proof that the government funds and leads a sprawling Censorship Complex.  Taibbi dropped the Twitter thread about an hour before the House Judiciary's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing began.  And notwithstanding the breadth and depth of the players revealed in the 17-or-so earlier installments of the "Twitter Files," Thursday's reporting exposed even more government-funded organizations pushing Twitter to censor speech.

House Democrats use a hearing to attack free speech and a free press.  The latest attacks came as journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified about breaking the "Twitter Files" story, detailing how the FBI and other agencies secretly sought to censor or ban citizens from social media.  In her opening statement, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), the ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee, attacked them as "so-called journalists" and said they were "a direct threat" to the safety of others by reporting the censorship story.  Taibbi pushed back, saying that "I'm not a 'so-called journalist'" and giving a brief description of his award-winning career at Rolling Stone magazine and other publications.  Yet other committee members also attacked the honesty of the two journalists.  And after failed efforts to claim they were Elon Musk's corrupt "scribes," or limited by him in their investigations, the committee members attacked their ethics.  The witnesses were attacked on everything but their choice of socks.  Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) even claimed that "being a Republican witness today certainly casts a cloud over your objectivity."  When Wasserman Schultz impugned the two journalists' honesty and ethics, she immediately "reclaimed (her) time" to prevent them from defending themselves.  When the subcommittee chair gave them a chance to answer her claims, Wasserman Schultz and her Democratic colleagues objected that a witness was allowed to defend himself after being blocked from doing so.

Disinformation Inc: State Department misses deadline to provide info on conservative blacklists.  The State Department has missed a deadline set by Rep. James Comer (R-KY) to provide documents related to the agency's funding of the Global Disinformation Index, a group blacklisting conservative media outlets.  Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, demanded on Feb. 23 that the department turn over records by March 9 related to GDI, which received $665,000 combined between 2020 and 2021 from the State Department-backed Global Engagement Center and National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit group.  However, the State Department missed the deadline and has been in touch with Comer, according to the committee.

'Twitter Files' hearing erupts as Matt Taibbi refuses to reveal sources in heated exchange with Democrat.  Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, was accused of badgering journalist Matt Taibbi into revealing a source on Thursday during a heated House Judiciary Committee hearing on the "Twitter Files," but the reporter wouldn't budge.  Sourcing was a sensitive subject as it had already come up during the hearing when Taibbi was asked directly about it regarding his reporting on internal Twitter communications and accusations of government censorship.  Garcia asked Taibbi when Twitter owner Elon Musk first approached him to partake in the "Twitter Files" project, which has allowed once-secret internal discussions to be exposed, revealing an array of issues.  Taibbi began to say he couldn't reveal that information when Garcia insisted she simply needed a date.  "I can't give it to you, unfortunately, because this is a question of sourcing, and I'm a journalist.  I don't reveal my sources," Taibbi said.

Ranking Democrat Accuses 'Twitter Files' Reporters of Endangering Employees by Exposing Censorship.  Representative Stacey Plaskett (D., Virgin Islands) ripped into Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger during a Thursday hearing on the Twitter Files, accusing the pair of journalists of endangering the lives of Twitter employees by exposing how the social-media platform partnered with various federal agencies to censor disfavored political views.  Plaskett, ranking member of the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, used her allotted time during the first round of questioning to dismiss the witnesses' concerns about the FBI and other federal agencies pressuring Twitter to take action against users who spread so-called "disinformation" on a variety of politically charged subjects.  Instead of expressing outrage at the government's role in censoring political speech, Plaskett attacked the witnesses for allegedly endangering Twitter employees by publishing their redacted internal communications.

This week we saw more proof of the Democrats' disdain for democracy.  Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, who are among the authors of the Twitter Files, were in D.C. to testify regarding Twitter's inner workings before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.  Twitter had suppressed the expose of Hunter Biden's Laptop which was the most important story of the 2020 election cycle.  A NewsBusters poll revealed that 16% of Biden voters would have voted differently had they known of Hunter's laptop.  Another survey showed that 79 percent of Americans think Trump would have won reelection if voters had known facts about Hunter's laptop.  The Twitter Files series that began last December revealed how the Social Media giant was colluding with government agencies and Democrat politicians to manipulate the narrative in favor of the Democrats.  For every claim they made, they provided evidence of documents or screenshots of correspondence.  Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio chaired the hearings and made it clear that selective state-sponsored targeting 'disinformation' is an attack on the First Amendment.

Matt Taibbi Releases Twitter File Review #18 — Whole of Government Censorship Approach, Including Senate Intel and Legislative Branch.  [Scroll down]  You can see how the legislative branch, the Senate Intelligence Committee, the same institution that created the weaponized intelligence apparatus where they held oversight, subcontracted the Trump-Russia evidence finding to partners of the intelligence community.  This is a symbiotic relationship.  Taibbi is on the right trail in following the SSCI and HPSCI manipulation of the social media platforms, specifically Twitter.  In addition to the SSCI creating the structure that supports the intelligence weaponization by DHS and FBI, Senate Intel Chair Richard Burr and then Senate Intel Vice-Chair Mark Warner are at the epicenter of it.

Taibbi: Censorship from Every Corner of Government, Even the CIA.  In his opening statement at today's House hearing, Mr. Taibbi said, "Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the GlobalEngagement Center at State, even the CIA.  For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps 20 quasi-private entities doing the same, including Stanford's Election Integrity Project, Newsguard, the Global Disinformation Index, and others, many taxpayer-funded."  Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before Congress today [3/9/2023].  It was shocking, but the media will not cover it.  They've mostly ignored these hearings to date.

Weaponized FTC Demands Twitter Hand Over Journalists' Work.  The FTC, led by Democrats, sent twelve letters to Twitter and its lawyers since Mr. Musk took over on October 27.  Mr. Musk told Twitter employees in November the company would do whatever it takes to follow both the letter and the spirit of the FTC order, the [Wall Street] Journal reported at the time.  The FTC also seeks to depose Mr. Musk in connection with the probe.  The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee obtained the so-called demand letters, which published excerpts of them Tuesday in a staff report about the FTC's investigation.  According to the Journal, the letters indicate Twitter responded to the FTC but that the agency, as of late January, felt the company was engaging in a "troubling pattern of ongoing delay" that raises "serious concerns about its compliance."  The Judiciary panel's report, the first by a new subcommittee examining what Republicans call the "weaponization" of federal agencies, accused the FTC of overstepping its authority at the urging of progressive groups unhappy with Mr. Musk's acquisition of the company.  "There is no logical reason, for example, why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter," the report said.

Twitter discloses another possible government censorship effort.  In the 17th release of the "Twitter Files," journalist Matt Taibbi disclosed that the U.S. government is funding a group that has supported the censorship of dissenting viewpoints on social media, including those of U.S. citizens.  That may sound familiar.  Just a few weeks ago, I wrote here that the congressionally created, federally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had supported the British-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI).  The index was widely ridiculed for targeting ten conservative and libertarian sites as the most dangerous sources of disinformation; it sought to persuade advertisers to withdraw support for those sites, while listing their most liberal counterparts as among the most trustworthy.  At the time, I noted that the Biden administration had played us for chumps.  As we celebrated the demise of the infamous Disinformation Governing Board with its "Disinformation Nanny," the Biden administration never disclosed a larger censorship program.  Shortly after my column posted in The Hill, the NED wrote to me to say that it was discontinuing support for the GDI. Microsoft also was forced into retreat after it was shown to be pushing the GDI's biased blacklist.  Again, many celebrated a victory for free speech.  Yet, here we are again [...]

People Behind Biden Announce Creation of Formal National Surveillance State, Yet No One Seems Bothered.  On March 2, 2023, the people in control of the Joe Biden administration officially announced that government control of internet content was now officially a part of the national security apparatus.  If you have followed the history of how the Fourth Branch of Government has been created, you will immediately recognize the intent of this new framework.  The "National Cybersecurity Strategy" aligns with, supports, and works in concert with a total U.S. surveillance system, where definitions of information are then applied to "cybersecurity" and communication vectors.  This policy is both a surveillance system and an information filtration prism where the government will decide what is information, disinformation, misinformation and malinformation, then act upon it.  In part, this appears to be a response to the revelations around government influence of social media, the Twitter Files.  Now we see the formalization of the intent.  The government will be the arbiter of truth and cyber security, not the communication platforms or private companies.  This announcement puts the government in control.

How the feds spend $74M a year to try to censor Americans.  Have you ever tweeted about Russia?  You could be tarred as an "unwitting proliferator of Russian narratives" by US government scorekeepers.  Do you support the French "yellow vest" anti-lockdown protests?  You are "Russia-aligned," according to Uncle Sam.  Are you a Cuban immigrant to America?  A federal contractor might try to get you banned on Twitter because you're a Hindu nationalist.  Journalist Matt Taibbi is back with perhaps the most bizarre installment yet of the Twitter Files.  Americans' freedom of speech is increasingly endangered by a vast, federally funded Disinformation Industrial Complex.  The feds and their contractors are going on ever-more wild goose chases to suppress any views the Washington establishment disapproves.  Taibbi reveals the "devastating secret" behind the "sprawling complex of disinformation studies 'labs' at" top universities: "Most of these 'experts' know nothing."

Obama's Global Engagement Center (GEC) Labeled U.S. Accounts as "Foreign Actors" to Promote Media Narrative.  Matt Taibbi has done another extensive review of Twitter data in File Release #17.  This information release focuses on the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an internal sub-agency within the State Department as constructed by the Obama administration.  As noted by Taibbi, the GEC was funded mostly from the Pentagon and the financial outlays were to various leftist organizations who constructed the Trump-Russia narrative.  The outcome of the original deception created a need for the illusion of "foreign influence agents" in U.S. social media, specifically in this instance, Twitter.  The GEC was created as a targeting system to label any voice adverse to the Obama interests as a "foreign actor."  Generally speaking, the GEC network identified usernames and social media account information they deemed adversarial to the Obama administration, then told Twitter to take down the accounts.  The people working within GEC were political activists, financed through government agencies by the very taxpayers' they were targeting.  Ironic, no?

6 Ways The Censorship Complex Silences Speech It Doesn't Want You To Say Or Hear.  While Twitter censored certain speech as part of its coordination with other partisan actors, Twitter also censored speech in the normal course of its operations.  And because Twitter was staffed heavily by Democrats, it was mostly conservative voices that were silenced.  As the "Twitter Files" revealed, "Twitter had a huge toolbox for controlling the visibility of any user, including a 'Search Blacklist' (for Dan Bongino), a 'Trends Blacklist' for Stanford's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and a 'Do Not Amplify' setting for conservative activist Charlie Kirk."  As one insider explained, the visibility filtering is a "very powerful tool" "to suppress what people see."  Twitter used visibility filters to keep certain users from showing up in search results, limit the reach of certain tweets, and ban certain users' tweets from hashtag searches and the "trending" section.  Twitter aggressively applied these filters to Trump prior to the election and almost certainly to other elected officials' accounts as well.  And while censoring the speech of Americans, Twitter allowed the Department of Defense to run covert propaganda operations, "whitelisting" Pentagon accounts to prevent the covert accounts from being banned.

Suppose The Four Twits Aren't the Only Twits.  [Scroll down] Our problem is not that the intelligence community and the Deep State are bullies and the wokey crowd are cowards.  No, I think that our problem is that, when the Big One hits, they really won't have a clue what to do.  Suppose we are heading into a nasty recession.  You think Biden & Co. will do anything except print and spend more money on climate change and systemic racism?  Last time the Democrats got us into a nasty inflationary spiral Ronald Reagan got us out with tax rate cuts and spending restraint, a policy diametrically opposed to the Keynesian consensus and sneered at by all the Great and the Good.  To this day our liberal friends burble about Reagan's "trickle-down economics."  Suppose the war in Ukraine starts to "escalate"?  You think Biden & Blinken & Milley & Co. can figure out how to avoid blowing up the planet?  Looking back at the chaotic wars since the end of the Cold War, I am not optimistic.  Everything the national security apparatus has done since then has been Stumble Town.

Bombshells, Landmines, and Nemesis.  Another landmine was a recent, also underreported, almost nonchalant accusation that the CIA used the FBI as a sort of entre to Twitter so the kindred federal agencies could suppress the expression of particular Americans.  Journalist Matt Taibbi published a recent disturbing trove of internal communications, apparently revealing that the CIA, with help from the FBI, consistently sought to modulate and censure content on Twitter.  Taibbi noted that the CIA was sensitive that it was prohibited by statute from the domestic surveillance of American citizens.  And so it preferred the nebulous phraseology, "Other Government Agency" (OGA).  At the same time, he pointed out how top Twitter executives such as top censor Yoel Roth simply could not keep up with the avalanche of requests from the FBI, and by extension the CIA, Department of Defense, and State Department.  In other words, a left-wing Twitter hierarchy, infamous for selectively banning the communications and expressions of more conservative users, was outdone by the thought police of the U.S. government.

'Shaddup,' the Government Said.  It's not just the major media that have been corrupted by the government (acting as megaphones for government agencies and so fearful of offending their sources that they help them cover up wrongdoing), but the new media, which we had supposed would allow alternative sources of information to become more widely available, is severely compromised.  This week, following the exposure of pre-Elon Musk-takeover Twitter and the revelations of government censorship of the website, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government began its hearings.  The focus to start was on Twitter, but I cannot believe that higher-ranked sites like Facebook are any different.  We just do not yet have access to their inner operations.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna Torches Yoel Roth — Exposes Democrat-Big.  The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday held a full committee hearing on government-big tech collusion and suppression of speech in regard to the Hunter Biden laptop report.  Republican members were prepared, brought in the evidence, and executed brilliantly at the hearing.  Democrats sounded like self-absorbed liars who support the denial of God-given human rights.  Twitter's top former censors were on the hot seat all day as they appeared before a Republican-led House Oversight Committee to answer questions about their outrageous and targeted censorship of conservatives.  Republican lawmakers like badass Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-GA), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) scored knockout blow after knockout blow as they exposed the former Twitter execs for colluding with the FBI and private-public groups in restricting free speech and silencing Americans in a clear violation to the US Constitution.

How Twitter flew cover for Biden.  First, the "Twitter Files" lifted the lid on Big Tech bias that had been shielding President Biden and his son Hunter from deserved scrutiny.  Congressional hearings provided added details of how Washington officialdom egged on the social media firm, famous for its little blue bird of free expression, to fly cover for the Biden brand.  Americans deserve a full accounting.  Public testimony began Wednesday [2/8/2023] with the House Oversight and Accountability Committee's hearing titled "Protecting Speech From Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter's Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story."  Former Twitter executives Vijaya Gadde, James Baker and Yoel Roth all testified.  All were central figures in the company's internal deliberations as Washington's political class bombarded them with entreaties to quash awareness of Hunter's embarrassing laptop revelations prior to the 2020 presidential election.

Rep. Higgins Tells Twitter Executives to Prepare to be Arrested for Interfering in 2020 Election.  On Wednesday, former top executives at Twitter appeared before the House oversight committee to give testimony regarding the social media giant's management of information related to Joe Biden's son and interference with the 2020 election.  The hearing marks the start of the agenda of the newly-Republican controlled House, highlighting their focus on long-standing claims that major tech companies exhibited a bias against conservatism.  At one point during the hearing, Republican Rep. Clay Higgins unleashed on former Twitter execs James Baker, Vijaya Gadde & Yoel Roth, saying that they need to get ready to be arrested.

What to make of the Twitter hearings held yesterday.  [Numerous tweets with video clips — well worth your time to view them all.]

Ex-Twitter executives now say they forget key details of censoring Post's Hunter Biden laptop scoop.  A trio of former bigwigs at Twitter told the House Oversight Committee Wednesday they could not recall major facts about the decision to suppress The Post's bombshell October 2020 stories on Hunter Biden's laptop — though one claimed the decision was based in part on the social media giant's own echo chamber rather than the demands of federal law enforcement.  Under questioning led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), former Twitter deputy general counsel James Baker, ex-head of trust and safety Yoel Roth and former policy director Vijaya Gadde took turns deflecting allegations of "collusion" between the FBI and Twitter to censor The [New York] Post.  "Simple question, did you talk to the FBI about the Hunter Biden story?" Jordan asked Baker point-blank at one point.  "To the best of my recollection, I did not talk to the FBI about the Hunter Biden story before that day," replied Baker, referencing Oct. 14, 2020, when The Post published the first of its world-exclusive reports.  "Did you talk to them after?" Jordan pressed, to which Baker said, "I do not recall."

Elon Musk Identifies the State Dept Origin Behind Twitter Content Control Mechanisms.  He still hasn't identified the source code, the proverbial ghost in the machine, buried deep in the algorithmic code; however, Twitter owner Elon Musk has finally identified the agency within the U.S. government who spearheaded the creation.  The "Global Engagement Center" (GEC) of the State Dept.  The GEC mission is described as, "To direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations,".  However, when you overlay the expanded Dept of State mission that Obama delivered, transferring GEC intent to domestic operations, suddenly the background of Jack's Magic Coffee Shop makes sense.

Congress is set to expose what may be the largest censorship system in U.S. history.  This coming week a new House select subcommittee will hold its first hearing on the FBI and the possible "weaponization" of government agencies.  A variety of such controversies have contributed to plunging public trust in government and the FBI in particular.  The role of the FBI in prior scandals will remain a point of heated debate in Congress.  However, members of both parties should be able to agree on the need to investigate one of the most serious allegations: Censorship by surrogate.  Many of the allegations of FBI bias are worthy of investigation.  Some of those allegations are problems of personnel who can be removed.  But a far more menacing problem has emerged in recent months with the release of information from Twitter.

Our lawsuit uncovers more shocking evidence Team Biden used Big Tech to censor.  The First Amendment is the bedrock of American liberty.  Our citizens have the right, if not civic duty, to engage in open, dynamic discourse, and no government has the right to limit, suppress, censor or otherwise control it.  Yet as we dig deeper into discovery in our Big Tech censorship case — Missouri and Louisiana v. Biden — we uncover ever-more truly appalling abuses of power that President Joe Biden's director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, admitted come from "the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the" White House.  Such evidence proves the Biden administration is leveraging its power to coerce social-media companies to suppress the speech of thousands, if not millions, of Americans who disagree with its political narratives.  Naturally, the First Amendment prohibits censorship.  Yet the Biden team has worked to circumvent this fundamental constitutional protection by inducing, threatening and colluding with private companies to suppress speech.  It's illegal; but when Big Government enters into such a conspiracy with Big Business to violate your rights, it's also known by another name:  fascism.

Nets Hide Elon's Explosive Twitter Files On Hunter Scandal Suppression.  The bombshells from the Twitter files keep on coming, yet the liberal media elite keep ignoring them.  Last month when Tesla founder and Twitter owner Elon Musk began tweeting out former Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi's explosive reporting on how Twitter (under pressure from government agents) suppressed the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story in the final days before the election.  It was an exhaustive and shocking account that confirmed what Republicans, conservatives and Donald Trump supporters had suspected all along, that Big Tech and Big Media had joined Big Government in rigging the 2020 election for President Joe Biden.  So how much time did the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks devote to Musk and Taibbi's exposing how Twitter hid Hunter's laptop scandal?  A miniscule 128 seconds (2 minutes and 8 seconds).

Elon Highlights 'Concerning' Process to Destroy Secret Instructions from FBI to Twitter.  We've been reporting on the troubling close relationship that the FBI has had with Twitter.  The Twitter files have revealed the continual effort to censor people on the site as well as to act as a conduit for requests to censor from other governmental agencies — including the intelligence community.  Now PayPal co-founder and general partner of Craft Ventures, David Sacks, who has been close to Elon Musk, is highlighting one of the most concerning aspects of that FBI contacts to Benny Johnson on his show.  Sacks explained how the FBI was delivering secret instructions to Twitter via a special tool called "teleport" so that what they sent would disappear after ten days.  According to Sacks, such instructions could not be screenshot.  [Tweet]  But they could tell that some messages were sent via the teleport tool when they were looking at the emails and the FBI would tell Twitter Safety head Yoel Roth to look at the messages they just sent him on teleport.

New Twitter Files reveal pharmaceutical industry lobbied social media over COVID vaccine content.  Investigative journalist Lee Fang unveiled the latest edition of the Twitter Files on Monday, showcasing how "the pharmaceutical industry lobbied social media to shape content" related to the COVID vaccine.  "The push included direct pressure from Pfizer partner BioNTech to censor activists demanding low-cost generic vaccines for low-income countries," Fang wrote.  Twitter owner Elon Musk has been vocal about transparency when it comes to Twitter's past and present actions curating content on the platform, including censored content.  He has enlisted independent journalists to slowly release evidence of these actions in a series dubbed the "Twitter Files" that continue to expose once-secret communications.

Devin Nunes Discusses Twitter File Drop #14 — Congress Demanding Twitter Censor Information About the Nunes Memo.  Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes appears on Fox News to discuss the release of Twitter File #14 which was centered around the legislative branch attempting to censor his "Nunes Memo."  The essence of Twitter File #14 was how the Senate Intelligence Committee, senators Feinstein (D-CA) and Warner (D-VA) along with House Intel Committee Adam Schiff (D-CA) pressured Twitter to remove content that supported the assertions of HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes.

Newly Released Files Show Pfizer Shill And FDA Boss Scott Gottlieb Pushed Twitter To Censor Critics.  The latest Twitter Files involving the tech giant's response to the pandemic puts a focus on Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner and sitting board member of prominent COVID vaccine manufacturer Pfizer.  Alex Berenson, a vocal COVID contrarian whose past commentary on the vaccine has received scorn by critics and praise by fans, was the latest to be granted access to Elon Musk's Twitter Files, publishing his findings on his "Unreported Truths" Substack newsletter.  Berenson shared an August 2021 email Gottlieb sent to Twitter's senior public policy manager Todd O'Boyle flagging a tweet written by former Trump administration official Dr. Brett Giroir, who had written "It's now clear #COVID19 natural immunity is superior to #vaccine immunity, by A LOT.  There's no scientific justification for #vax proof if a person had prior infection."  [Video clip]

Twitter Files: Pfizer Board Member Dr. Scott Gottlieb Pressured Company to Censor Donald Trump's FDA Commissioner.  New internal emails released via the Twitter Files reveal that Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a member of the board of directors of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and former FDA commissioner, colluded with a top White House lobbyist to pressure Twitter to suppress a tweet from Dr. Brett Giroir, acting commissioner of the FDA under Donald Trump.  The emails were released through journalist and coronavirus policy skeptic Alex Berenson, who posted the findings on his newsletter, Unreported Truths.

State Dept.  Defends Labeling Lab Leak 'Foreign Disinformation,' Flagging Tweets On Subject.  The State Department on Thursday denied asking Twitter to censor certain posts and accounts due to being "foreign disinformation" after internal Twitter communications revealed the department reportedly flagged some tweets as problematic for Twitter staff.  In the latest batch of the "Twitter Files" published by journalist Matt Taibbi, documents purportedly showed that the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an office within the State Department, was working with Twitter to identify certain posts and accounts spreading alleged "disinformation" on behalf of foreign governments.  During a press briefing Thursday, State Department Spokesman Ned Price denied this had been done for the purpose of censorship, insisting it was simply an informative service for Twitter and meant to protect American interests.

How Democrat Adam Schiff abused his power to demand I be kicked off Twitter simply due to a personal vendetta.  Back from holiday vacation, I found an interesting email waiting for me in my inbox from Matt Taibbi, the independent journo Elon Musk tasked with reviewing and releasing internal Twitter documents about decisions to censor content and ban users from the platform.  "Paul," Taibbi wrote, "just found a crazy email on Twitter — did you know Adam Schiff's staff ... asked Twitter to have you banned?"  I was gobsmacked.  This would explain why Twitter could never give me a reason for suspending my account, even though I had broken none of its rules.  Schiff, the powerful Democratic chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, made his "request" to ban me through his staff in a November 2020 memo to Twitter.  Three months later, in early February 2021, I was kicked off the platform.

Liberal Think Tank Behind Hunter Biden Story Cover-Up Collusion Recruited Arizona Government Workers.  A prominent liberal think tank that helped suppress media coverage of Hunter Biden's corrupt foreign business dealings recruited Arizonan government workers and activist leaders for its leadership program.  The Aspen Institute, a prominent liberal think tank, runs 65 programs nationwide to shape communities to its standards:  such as the leadership program in Arizona.  An independent reporter uncovered this week how one of the institute's arms, Aspen Digital, coordinated a "tabletop exercise" with social media companies, media outlets, and academia to ensure effective cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop story released by the New York Post a month later.  Twitter's newest CEO, Elon Musk, uncovered this collusion with the release of internal Twitter communications and documents dubbed the "Twitter Files."  [Tweets]

How the FBI Hacked Twitter.  After journalist Matt Taibbi published the first batch of internal Twitter documents known as the Twitter files, he tweeted that the company's deputy general counsel, James Baker, was vetting them.  "The news that Baker was reviewing the 'Twitter files' surprised everyone involved," Taibbi wrote.  That apparently included even Twitter's new boss, Elon Musk, who added that Baker may have deleted some of the files he was supposed to be reviewing.  Baker had been the top lawyer at the FBI when it interfered in the 2016 presidential election.  News that he might have been burying evidence of the spy service's use of a social media company to interfere with the 2020 election, is rightly setting off alarm bells.  In fact, the FBI's penetration of Twitter constituted just one part of a much larger intelligence operation — one in which the bureau offshored the machinery it used to interfere in the 2016 election and embedded it within the private sector.

Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads to Date, With Links and a Glossary.  It's January 4th, 2023, which means Twitter Files stories have been coming out for over a month.  Because these are weedsy tales, and may be hard to follow if you haven't from the beginning, I've written up capsule summaries of each of the threads by all of the Twitter Files reporters, and added links to the threads and accounts of each.  At the end, in response to some readers (especially foreign ones) who've found some of the alphabet-soup government agency names confusing, I've included a brief glossary of terms to help as well.

Twitter Files Prove Evans' Law Of Inadequate Paranoia.  For years Twitter denied that it targeted conservatives, despite piles of evidence to the contrary.  But who could have imagined that Twitter had been working hand-in-glove with leftist officials in the federal government to silence speech they didn't like.  If Twitter was this bad, imagine what true tech giants like Facebook and Google have been up to.  As conservative paragon M. Stanton Evans rightly observed, whatever you think, it will likely turn out to be far worse.  The revelations that have been emerging over the past month from Twitter's once-hidden corners — courtesy of Elon Musk — are being greeted with shrugs by reporters and editors who used to care about free speech.  For everyone else, each layer uncovered by the Twitter files is worse than even its fiercest critics on the right had imagined.

Twitter Bowed To Dem Lawmaker Pressure, Buddied Up With Intel Agencies, Docs Show.  Twitter staff relented to a pressure campaign spearheaded by a Democratic lawmaker in the fall of 2017, changing its advertising policy to allow for a closer relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies, according to internal documents published Tuesday by independent journalist Matt Taibbi.  Twitter executives did not believe that there was significant activity by Russian election interference groups on the platform as of Sept. 6, 2017, and had internally decided to direct concerned reporters to Facebook, who they believed to be facing the brunt of congressional scrutiny, according to Taibbi.  However, Twitter faced renewed pressure after Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia — then the vice chair of the Senate's Intelligence Committee — slammed the company later in the month for producing a "frankly inadequate" report on Russian activity on the platform, in which the company informed the committee that it had suspended just 22 of 2,700 accounts it had suspected of being aligned with Russian influence groups, according to Taibbi.

Twittergate files: Hillary Clinton inspired a Democrat witch hunt against Twitter to look for Russian accounts that simply didn't exist.  The latest documents released from Twitter details how the company was pushed into the arms of the FBI following pressures from Democrats.  In the new installment of the Twitter Files, journalist Matt Taibbi broke down the stress the company was under in 2017 following calls from Democrats for social media companies to crack down on Russian misinformation.  According to emails from Twitter's leadership, the company was initially focusing on passing any blame to Facebook, touting that Twitter had only a few accounts with 'suspected Russian origin.'

Twitter Files: Company Exaggerated Russian Influence to Appease Media, Democrats.  Twitter deliberately exaggerated the extent of Russian influence on its platform in an attempt to appease the media and Democrats, even after internal investigations into the matter proved a "dud," according to journalist Matt Taibbi, who released another batch of the Twitter Files today.  Twitter initially tried to stay out of the spotlight on the Russia issue in 2017, hoping Facebook would remain the main target of scrutiny from the media and Democrats.  Twitter's PR department even agreed on a media strategy to "keep the focus on FB."

The Left Uses Big Tech to Create an Illusion of Scientific Consensus and Stifle Debate, Especially on COVID-19.  The Left has long used the notion of scientific consensus as a tool to silence debate on controversial issues, but the Twitter Files revealed just how far some Big Tech companies have gone to suppress legitimate scientific dissent — particularly on COVID-19 pandemic policy.  Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor of health policy who wound up on a Twitter Trends blacklist after he argued for focused protection of the vulnerable and an end to lockdowns, opened up in an article for The Free Press about the lesson he learned in 2022.  "I learned in a very concrete and painful way the effects of Washington and Silicon Valley working together to marginalize unpopular ideas and people to create an illusion of consensus," Bhattacharya wrote.  The Stanford professor recalled that after he and his allies published the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins dismissed him and his allies as "fringe epidemiologists" and asked Anthony Fauci for "a quick and devastating published takedown" of the declaration.  Collins and Fauci collaborated to delegitimize the declaration, even though it was based in scientific principles and even though it predicted much of the now-acknowledged fallout from the lockdowns.

The FBI's Top Ten Most Dangerous Thought Crimes of 2022:  [Thread reader]
  [#1]   The vaccine does not prevent spread
  [#2]   Natural immunity is real and, in fact, optimal
  [#3]   Ballot harvesting laws were changed in 2020 to give Dems a major electoral advantage
  [#4]   Biological men are naturally stronger than women.
  [#5]   This coronavirus most likely leaked from a gain-of-function research lab in Wuhan, China.
  [#6]   Placing every man, woman and child in lockdown will do more harm than good.
  [#7]   A drag queen reading books to a classroom of 6 year olds is sexually abnormal behavior.
  [#8]   My doctor prescribed me Ivermectin.
  [#9]   Your best protection against COVID is to lose weight, improve your lifestyle.  Get outside, spend time on the beach, walk nature trails, etc.
  [#10]   The mRNA COVID vaccine is still experimental and is potentially dangerous, especially to young people.

The most revolting people of 2022.  [#8]  Social Media Giant Twitter:  Twitter should have been a forum that reflected public opinion.  But Elon Musk's Twitter Files series has revealed collusion between the former Twitter regime and U.S. government agencies to distort and manipulate the public discourse.  They suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 presidential elections.  A poll revealed that 16% of Biden voters said they would have voted differently had they known of Hunter's laptop.  The former Twitter regime also suppressed voices that challenged the COVID-19 vaccine.

Scott Atlas calls Twitter's COVID censorship "criminal".  Elon Musk is steadily revealing how Twitter censored physicians who did not toe the Democrat party line on COVID treatments or vaccines.  Scott Atlas was one of the physicians who tried to speak out and who was censored for doing so.  In an interview with Eva Fu, Atlas explains that this Twitter censorship should be considered criminal because the policy deprived Americans of information that could have saved lives.  Atlas wrote a book [...] describing his epic battle against the federal public health agencies, especially Doctors Fauci and Birx, during his short stint at the Trump White House.  He gives details about the malevolence and mendacity that characterized the deep state and public health community.

'Twitter Files' Put FBI Failures In Full Focus.  Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi joins Gregg guest hosting on 'Hannity' to discuss how the FBI has deflected blame about alleged censorship scheme.  [Video clip]

Why 'liberals' don't care about the Twitter Files.  The latest installment of the Twitter Files came out over the Christmas holiday alleging that the CIA, FBI and White House had been involved in content moderation on the site, and also that the platform had "rigged" the COVID-19 debate.  The ninth report published by Matt Taibbi on Christmas Eve and the latest by David Zweig on Monday have been reported by mainstream outlets, but only barely.  All of the Twitter Files to date, reported by Taibbi along with independent journalists Zweig, Bari Weiss, [and] Michael Shellenberg appear to show massive and widespread cooperation between the federal government and Twitter in regulating basic speech.  One might expect such revelations to spark great controversy and generate top headlines.  One would be wrong:  With the exception of Fox News, among national major news outlets, most have primarily published reports or opinion that seek to undermine the seriousness of these reports.  The 'liberal' mission appears to be to nuke the Twitter Files and defame its reporters.

Ten major revelations exposing [the] extent of government pressure on Big Tech to censor Americans.  Two hundred and thirty-one years ago this month, America's founders enshrined free speech as the first protection in the ratified Bill of Rights with a declaration that the government could not infringe expression.  A series of blockbuster revelations at the end of 2022 show just how imperiled those protections have become in the era of Big Tech.  From Elon Musk's "Twitter files" to an FBI agent's candid testimony, Americans have gotten a glimpse into a once-hidden enterprise where federal agencies pressured social media platforms — directly and through proxies — to censor content under their terms of service.  The goal, it appears, was to preserve the ruling elite's favored narratives on everything from the pandemic to election integrity.  The exposés have undercut claims that the FBI only targeted foreign disinformation, making clear that everyday opinions of Americans were also in the crosshairs.  They also have raised alarm across the political spectrum about the future of free speech in the world's most famous constitutional republic.

Biden's Unopposed Imposition of Stalinism.  While conservatives tend to be more tolerant of different viewpoints, the progressive liberals who have taken over the Democrat Party want to completely eradicate anyone with an incompatible vision.  Censorship of opposing views has become the official modus operandi of the federal government.  "Joe Biden's partisan political enemies," said Tucker Carlson, "are now officially enemies of the state."  The government is collaborating with social media to crack down on private communication when it is critical of Biden's policies.  "The Biden administration considers censorship applicable to private speech," said Tucker Carlson.  "What you say in private, when you're alone with your phone.  You won't be able to say or read what you want because the Democrats intend to control the flow of information.  Nothing that questions official regime policy will reach you."  Soon Biden's minions will be listening to all your phone calls and emails, and monitoring your social media posts as they do in China.  No private communication of prohibited ideas will be allowed.

Twitter Files Show 'Shocking Level of Government Overreach and Abuse': Kash Patel.  A Trump-era Pentagon official believes that the amount the FBI actually paid to Twitter to "censor free speech" is ten times higher than the $3.5 million that was revealed in a recent installment of the Twitter Files and that lawmakers in Congress should "keep digging" to uncover hidden ties between government and Big Tech.  Kash Patel, who served as the Pentagon's chief of staff to Acting Defence Secretary Christopher Miller under the administration of then President Donald Trump, said on a recent episode of Epoch TV's "Kash's Corner" that the latest Twitter Files disclosures paint a picture of a "shocking level of government overreach and abuse."  Patel was referring to the revelations shared by independent journalist Michael Shellenberger, who posted screenshots of internal Twitter messages that showed there was a longstanding influence campaign by the FBI around the time the New York Post released its report on Hunter Biden's laptop.

The Conservative Treehouse was incredibly prescient about Twitter.  The latest Twitter file drop makes it even more explicit than before: the American government was Twitter's secret partner.  That's why Joe Biden felt comfortable ordering an ostensibly private corporation to silence critics.  Readers of The Conservative Treehouse are surprised because the site predicted this partnership months ago.  While his details may be off, his instincts were spot-on.  Before the 10th drop, we learned that the FBI and CIA were constantly demanding information from Twitter and instructing it about which accounts it needed to drop.  The 10th drop shows that this went all the way up to the White House.

#Twitterfiles Vindicate Dr. Andrew Bostom — Wrongly Suspended For Accurate But Politically Inconvenient Science On Covid.  You may remember Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician and researcher with in impressive CV who was suspended on Twitter after tweeting a link to a peer-reviewed article from a reputable science journal about possible negative effects on sperm from the Covid-19 vaccine.

Dr Kulldorff [is] 'Not Surprised' About Being Censored by Twitter.  Martin Kulldorff, a prominent epidemiologist, biostatistician, and former Harvard School of Medicine professor, said he was "not surprised" after seeing concrete evidence that a post he shared on Twitter was flagged and prevented from wider dissemination.  He expressed disapproval and said that the social media giant's overall censorship actions have stifled free debate on COVID-19 topics and undermined trust in science.  In the latest installment of the Elon Musk-endorsed "Twitter Files" published early on Dec. 26, journalist David Zweig shared how posts from Kulldorff and several others about COVID-19, including about vaccines, were flagged and censored in various ways by Twitter.

Twitter File Release #11: The Government Censorship Campaign to Control COVID-19 Information.  Twitter File release #11 hits on the long-anticipated information surrounding how the platform was instructed by various government agencies to remove content adverse to the expressed opinion of CDC, HHS, and DHS officials.  The first installment of the Twitter COVID-19 files comes from David Zweig, a writer for New York Mag, New York Times, The Atlantic and other publications.  Because the U.S. Government COVID-19 information control operation was so extensive, there will likely be several Twitter File releases related to the SARS-CoV2 pandemic issue.  However, in this first release Zweig starts to build the story of how the CDC and HHS set the foundation for the echo-chamber that ended with Twitter executives running amok.

How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate.  I had always thought a primary job of the press was to be skeptical of power — especially the power of the government.  But during the Covid-19 pandemic, I and so many others found that the legacy media had shown itself to largely operate as a messaging platform for our public health institutions.  Those institutions operated in near total lockstep, in part by purging internal dissidents and discrediting outside experts.  Twitter became an essential alternative.  It was a place where those with public health expertise and perspectives at odds with official policy could air their views, and where curious citizens could find such information.  This often included other countries' responses to Covid that differed dramatically from our own.  But it quickly became clear that Twitter also seemed to promote content that reinforced the establishment narrative, and to suppress views and even scientific evidence that ran to the contrary.

The Twitter Files: How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate.  [Thread reader]  So far the Twitter Files have focused on evidence of Twitter's secret blacklists; how the company functioned as a kind of subsidiary of the FBI; and how execs rewrote the platform's rules to accommodate their own political desires.  What we have yet to cover is Covid.  This reporting, for The Free Press, @thefp, is one piece of that important story.  The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19.  Internal files at Twitter that I viewed while on assignment for @thefp showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform's pandemic content according to their wishes.  At the onset of the pandemic, according to meeting notes, the Trump admin was especially concerned about panic buying.  They came looking for "help from the tech companies to combat misinformation" about "runs on grocery stores."  But ... there were runs on grocery stores.  It wasn't just Twitter.  The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.  When the Biden admin took over, one of their first meeting requests with Twitter executives was on Covid.  The focus was on "anti-vaxxer accounts."  Especially Alex Berenson.

New Twitter Files Reveal Troubling Effort to Censor Trump for Encouraging American People About COVID.  There was another Twitter files drop on Monday with a concentration on the suppression of information in regard to COVID including going after anyone who varied from the narrative, even if they were medical professionals with some standing.  Among the surprising messages that were released was a message from Twitter deputy counsel James Baker to Twitter Trust and Saftey head Yoel Roth going after a tweet of President Donald Trump.  Baker, of course, figured prominently in the story that the Democrats were trying to push smearing President Donald Trump with Russia collusion when Baker was the FBI general counsel.  He was the guy to whom Michael Sussmann passed the false allegations about the Alfa Bank that smeared Trump.  More recently, Baker was fired from his Twitter job after he allegedly viewed the Twitter files without the permission of management.  Twitter head Elon Musk even indicated that some of the files might have been deleted.

Did the Twitter Files Just Reveal an Impeachable Offense for Biden?  The latest installment of the Twitter Files dropped on Monday afternoon [12/26/2022], this time showing how the federal government pressured the social media platform to censor information that was contradictory to the government narrative on COVID-19.  The new files show top doctors from the best medical schools in the country were censored.  [Tweets]  But the government pressure on Twitter goes beyond attempting to push a single narrative.  It's a blatant violation of the First Amendment.  [More tweets]  More specifically, President Joe Biden was "angry" Twitter wasn't doing more to crack down on speech that was critical of his office and policies.  [Still more tweets]  Biden's directive to quash free speech critical of his policies is sparking calls for impeachment.  [Even more tweets]

Twitter Files dump shows company Suppressed debate and information from doctors and experts which clashed with White House.  Newly released documents detail how Twitter executives sought to censor 'inconvenient' data about Covid by discrediting doctors and experts who spoke out against vaccines.  In the latest instalment of the Twitter Files, journalist David Zweig laid bare how both the Trump and Biden administrations pressured Twitter executives to censor information that was 'true but inconvenient.'  Using their pull, Zweig writes, the government was able to discredit doctors and experts, and suppress ordinary users' freedom of speech on Twitter — even if they were citing the Center for Disease Control's own data.

Musk: 'To be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory people had about Twitter turned out to be true'.  Given the state of today's media, Elon Musk's contributions to free speech and a more fair and just society in America will largely go unspoken but even a corrupt media cannot put the genie back into the bottle when it comes to what has been learned thus far from the ongoing release of the "Twitter Files."  What we have learned via the Twitter Files is that conservatives were being shadow-banned and otherwise stepped upon, that the FBI and other intelligence agencies were working in partnership with now-former executives at the social media giant to control information and silence accounts deemed to be problematic, and that these actions consistently worked in favor of electing Joe Biden in 2020.

Elon Musk Talks Conspiracy Theories and Absolutely Nails It.  I don't know how many articles I wrote over the years talking about the partisan censorship regime that was taking place on Twitter.  I also don't know how many times I was shouted down on Twitter by mainstream media hacks telling me the sky wasn't blue.  In both cases, it was a lot, and it was a frustrating period because the actions being taken were obvious, but in many cases, they weren't quantifiable without having access to the internals of Twitter.  Musk purchasing the site changed all that, and finally, there's vindication for conservatives who weren't afraid to say that water is indeed wet.  The internal documents released have shown that Twitter did coordinate with the government to quash speech.  It did shadowban conservative accounts, usually for completely unjustifiable reasons, and it did influence an election by making up a reason to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.  As Musk says, essentially every "conspiracy theory" that the right pushed about Twitter in the last several years turned out to be true.

The Valley and the Swamp.  The real value of all those Twitter email dumps so far is that we now have probative evidence for what many already knew — old news for the insightful.  Silicon Valley is a subsidiary of the D.C. political swamp, two ethical wastelands populated by tenured partisans.  The path to electoral victory today has little to do with vote tallies and a lot more to do with how well you "prebunk" (AKA cook) the electorate.  With enough prebunking, you can run for office from your basement and skip the hazards of the debate stage.  Official prebunking is the cyber or internet version of "cutout" operations.  Cutouts are Intelligence Community tools and tactics that allow agencies like the CIA, NSA, and FBI to perform dirty tricks, sordid or criminal operations, at home that might otherwise be illegal or embarrassing.  Using a cutout, like Twitter or Facebook, allows government agencies and dirty cops at agencies like the NSA and FBI to have "plausible deniability."  If the facts surrounding the 2016 "Russiagate" operation ever come to light, Christopher Steele, Fiona Hill, and Alexander Vindman will probably emerge as animate examples of probative contemporary human cutouts.

Twitter Begins Widespread Suspensions of Accounts Critical of U.S. Funding for Ukraine and Zelenskyy Grift.  The basic premise of Jack's Magic Coffee Shop was to use Twitter as a platform built upon a mission to control and influence public opinion.  As a result of the evolution, the growth of the public-private partnership, content moderation flows through DHS.  If the system operators allowed you to see that your opinions were not in the minority, it would be a risk for those in power.  The foundation of the mission would be compromised.  It really is that simple.  Against the backdrop of Twitter triggering suspensions and content removal for any account critical of U.S-Ukraine policy, apparently Elon Musk is perplexed about the system operators of his platform acting to support government and control public opinion.

FBI dismisses 'Twitter Files,' says working with private companies is 'longstanding and ongoing' practice.  The FBI released a statement responding to the revelations in the so-called "Twitter Files," which showed the FBI's involvement in political censorship on Twitter.  [Tweet]  "The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our tradition, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries," the FBI's statement said.  "As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers," the statement claimed.

FBI and Twitter formed a censorship alliance and they can't be allowed to get away with it.  "They are probing & pushing everywhere."  That line sums up an increasingly alarming element in the seventh installment of the so-called "Twitter files."  "They" were the agents of Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they were pushing for the censorship of citizens in an array of stories.  Writer Michael Shellenberger added critical details on how the FBI was directly engaged in censorship at the company.  However, this batch of documents contains a particularly menacing element to the FBI-Twitter censorship alliance.  The documents show what writer Shellenberger described as a concentrated effort "to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published."  Twitter has admitted that it made a mistake in blocking the Hunter laptop story.  After roughly two years, even media that pushed the false "Russian disinformation" claims have acknowledged that the laptop is authentic.

The naked truth on the Hunter Biden laptop coverup.  [Scroll down]  The second Watergate phrase that commands our attention now is "The coverup is worse than the crime."  That's because we are on the cusp of the coverup phase of what the FBI, and perhaps the CIA and others, did to influence the outcome of the 2020 election.  Predictable denials of "Nothing to see here" come despite clear proof that agents interfered with the First Amendment rights of the American public, and not just on Twitter.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said agents warned him about "Russian disinformation" before the election.  Those warnings came in weekly meetings FBI agents had in San Francisco with the Big Tech firms and some reportedly mentioned Hunter Biden.

Most Americans Support Criminal Prosecution For Twitter Censors Who Colluded With Feds.  The vast majority of Americans support criminal prosecution for Twitter employees who worked with the U.S. government to suppress tweets in a possible violation of the First Amendment, a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found.  Elon Musk's ongoing Twitter Files have revealed that the platform engaged in widespread censorship in partnership with the FBI, which pressured the company to share private information with the agency outside of normal legal avenues and to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story implicating President Joe Biden in his son's foreign business dealings.  Among respondents, 74% believed the Twitter employees who worked with the FBI to censor users should be criminally prosecuted, and only 26% thought they shouldn't, according to the poll.

Twitter colluded with Pentagon to run network of fake accounts around the world.  Twitter worked with the Pentagon to promote fake accounts in the Middle East which praised U.S. policy, it has emerged - despite the social media company insisting that it made 'concerted efforts' to 'detect and thwart government-backed platform manipulation'.  The collusion spanned at least four years, from 2017 to 2020, and saw top Twitter executives liaise with military intelligence on 'a covert online PsyOp campaign' - promoting accounts including one that claimed the U.S. drone bombings in Yemen killed only terrorists.  The revelations were made by Lee Fang, who on Tuesday published the eighth installment of what is termed the Twitter Files.

A Twitter data tracker inhabits tens of thousands of websites.  Tens of thousands of websites belonging to government agencies, Fortune 500 companies and other organizations host Twitter computer code that sends visitor information to the social media giant, according to research first reported by The Cybersecurity 202.  And virtually none of them have used a Twitter feature to put restrictions on what the company can do with that data, said digital ad analysis firm Adalytics, which conducted the study.  The presence of Twitter's code — known as the Twitter advertising pixel — has grown more troublesome since Elon Musk purchased the platform.

Musk: The government paid Twitter's previous owners millions to censor Twitter — and it won't happen again.  [Scroll down]  Not only did the FBI use this to suppress an accurate story unfavorable to a candidate in a presidential campaign, they literally hired Twitter to conduct censorship on their behalf.  And previous Twitter ownership enthusiastically participated in this partnership, likely because the "reimbursement" for their deputization as Big Brother partners helped ease the losses that Twitter suffered for years.  And one has to wonder whether Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and Google and its ownership had similar transactional relationships related to FBI's censorship programs.

Good move, but Musk has all the answers, not Schiff.
Musk Demands Answers From Adam Schiff About Bombshell News FBI Paid Twitter to Censor.  As we reported, the latest Twitter files revealed that the FBI pushed Twitter and other social media to squash the Hunter Biden laptop story without any evidence that it was a foreign operation and that they arranged for Top Secret security clearances for executives of Twitter to see some of the information that they wanted them to pursue regarding election "threats."  That was a far cry from the disclaimer the FBI issued last week when the Twitter files started dropping.  They said that they just provided information to Twitter and that whatever Twitter did with it was their own business.  But it gets worse.  The latest Twitter files that were dropped by Michael Shellenberger have yet another bombshell, and now Elon Musk himself is demanding answers about it from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the lame-duck present head of the House Intelligence Committee.

Why Did the FBI Want Joe Biden to Become President?  The FBI has been controlling what you and I have been allowed to say on the Internet.  The Bureau had a bunch of "former" employees on Twitter's payroll actively helping suppress free speech on their platform.  The FBI had secret channels of communication between an agency of them and a privately-owned social media company that were used exclusively to control the public narrative about an election-changing event.  The FBI also paid Twitter millions of taxpayer dollars to suppress our own free speech.  Is this a great country, or what?  Who or what authorized them, a federal agency, to spend my tax dollars on manipulating social media to deliberately advance a false narrative about Hunter's laptop? [...] Only one word accurately describes the crime the FBI has committed, and that word is treason.

FBI Agent Elvis Chan Gave Twitter Execs Top Secret Clearance in Advance of 2020 Election.  New internal documents from Twitter, revealed today as part of Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" series, show FBI Agent Elvis Chan arranged for Top Secret security clearance — the highest level of US national security clearance — to be granted to Twitter executives for the purpose of facilitating the censorship of suspected misinformation in advance of the 2020 election.  [Tweet]  Elvis Chan has long been closely involved in working with social media companies to identify and censor suspected misinformation from sources both foreign and domestic, especially with regard to suspected election interference.  This has included regularly sending lists of social media posts to social media companies for them to take down, as well as the suspension of the New York Post and others for what was subsequently borne out to be a true story about Hunter Biden's laptop.

Are FBI And CIA Agents 'Sheep Dipped' At Twitter And Other Tech Companies?  According to the latest drop of "Twitter Files" from Michael Shellenberger, "As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees — 'Bu alumni' — working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals."  It appears that Twitter still has 14 employees on the payroll who worked at the FBI and CIA.  The problem isn't just confined to Twitter.  My colleague and Federalist contributor Ben Weingarten recently wrote an article for the New York Post, "Inside revolving door between Democrat Deep State and Big Tech."  In addition to covering what was happening at Twitter, Weingarten details a broader number of suspicious links between Silicon Valley and U.S. intelligence agencies.  Given the near-constant string of deep-state scandals and social media censorship we've endured in recent years, a big question we should all be trying to answer right now is, "What exactly are all these spooks doing at tech companies?"

More Twitter Files: Intelligence Community Pressure Campaign against Twitter.  Michael Shellenberger has just published the latest batch of what has come to be known as the Twitter Files.  It's a follow-up to Matt Taibbi's recent Twitter Files release concerning FBI's pressure campaign against Twitter to remove content the agency found objectionable.  Today's release provides more details on the relationship between Twitter and the FBI, the suppression and removal of the Hunter Biden story from Twitter the FBI's desire for Twitter to confirm a "foreign interference" narrative that didn't exist, and how the FBI sought user location information for tweets that weren't remotely criminal.

FBI suppressed Hunter laptop story without any evidence of "disinformation" — before publication.  If Michael Shellenberger's latest tranche from the Twitter Files gets corroborated, the FBI didn't just target speech on social-media platforms in a presidential election.  The files released today suggests that the FBI acted to preemptively suppress an accurate news report even before it got published — with no actual evidence that it was part of an intelligence operation.  [Tweets]  Before we go much further, let's ask ourselves this question:  what [...] is the FBI doing in these transactions at all?  They do have authority over domestic counter-intelligence, but that doesn't give them carte blanche to surveil domestic communications, let alone control them.

Evidence shows FBI, Biden campaign and Twitter worked together to suppress Hunter story.  Members of the intelligence community, and censors at Twitter, stress that they just didn't know the Hunter Biden laptop was real, so they erred on the side of caution.  "It has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation," the infamous letter from 50 former officials said.  Now we know that was a lie.  The FBI already had Hunter's laptop — it was handed over to them by the owner of a Delaware repair shop, the same man who would provide it to The [New York] Post nearly a year later.  It's also increasingly obvious that the FBI had a heads up that the information was about to be published.

FBI, DOJ 'discredited' information about Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings.  Independent writer Michael Shellenberger released part 7 of the "Twitter Files" on Monday, delving into how the FBI and intelligence community "discredited factual information about Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings."  The lengthy Twitter thread reveals what Shellenberger calls an "influence campaign" by the FBI that eventually "worked" when Twitter censored Hunter Biden's scandalous laptop.  Elon Musk had been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter's past and present actions curating content on the platform, including censored content.  The Twitter owner has enlisted independent journalists to slowly release evidence of these actions in a series dubbed the "Twitter Files" that continue to expose once-secret communications.

The FBI Paid Twitter Millions of Dollars For Their "Influence Campaign".  On Monday [12/19/2022], the next round of Twitter Files [was released], proving to be the most [embarrassing] file drop to date.  The drop, which was reported [...] by Michael Shellenberger, showed just how far the FBI went while working with Twitter to influence the 2020 election in Joe Biden's favor.  According to the [files], the FBI paid Twitter $3.4 million dollars of taxpayer money for their "staff time."  "The FBI's influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time," reported Shellenberger.

Latest 'Twitter Files' show FBI repeatedly bullied executives over not reporting 'state propaganda' enough.  The FBI repeatedly grilled Twitter execs about censorship on the social media platform in the summer of 2020 — insisting that the company provide more information about removing "state propaganda" from the site, according to the latest Twitter Files release.  The agency's Foreign Influence Task Force — which deals with cyber threats — interrogated Twitteron itsreportingabout official state media actors' use of the site, according to emails unearthed byindependent journalistMatt Taibbi in what he dubbed the "Twitter Files Supplemental" Sunday night.  San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan pressured former Twitter trust and safety chief Yoel Roth in July 2020 for more information about how they prevented bad actors from using the platform, according to screengrabs of email correspondence posted by Taibbi.

The [worst] Twitter File just dropped, highlighting FBI wrongdoing.  Michael Shellenberger has published the latest expose on Twitter, and this time, it's not Twitter that looks corrupt; it's the FBI, which knowingly lied to social media outlets about the Hunter Biden laptop.  It's impossible to believe that it did so for any other reason than to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by hiding Joe Biden's corruption.  Let's get the most important point out first:  The FBI knew at all relevant times that Hunter Biden's hard drive was the real deal and that every bit of information on it — crooked dealings with foreign governments, money laundering for Joe, sexually obsessive videos, drug usage — was entirely legitimate.  Nevertheless, the FBI aggressively worked with Twitter and other social media outlets to suppress this fact by falsely claiming that the hard drive was "Russian disinformation" or a hack.

The Feds' 'Misinformation' Scam.  The biggest political story of 2022 was not the midterm election.  It was the release of the "Twitter Files" by Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter.  In the sixth installment published last week on Twitter in a thread by journalist Matt Taibbi, the headline was "Twitter, the FBI Subsidiary."  The FBI had its own channel of communication for tipping off Twitter executives as to authors of tweets who needed to be censored, if not banned, for posting "election misinformation" during the 2020 election season.  What was insidious is that some of the offending tweets were satirical in nature and posted by people with relatively few followers.  At least 80 FBI agents were assigned to a social media task force.  The Department of Homeland Security had its own operation.  Both were inspired by the alleged foreign interference in the 2016 election, known now as the "Russian collusion hoax."  However, it was just days before Election Day for the 2022 midterms that we learned that censorship has been a secret project for over two years of the DHS, the FBI, and "Big Tech."  Apart from Twitter, that included Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Wikipedia, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Verizon Media.

Poll: Voters Say Twitter Tilted 2020 Election.  For the past two years, the corporate media have earnestly assured us that, for the first time in history, we were blessed with an immaculate election in 2020.  It was, we are told, unsullied by unsavory practices once thought endemic to politics.  Unaccountably, however, many voters remain uncomfortable with certain curious aspects of that election.  The most recent indication of this can be found in a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll that plumbed public opinion on the so-called Twitter Files.  According to the survey, which was conducted Dec. 14-15, "Nearly two-thirds of [registered] voters [64 percent] think that Twitter employees engaged in political censorship during the 2020 election and the shadow banning of users."  Nor was there any doubt about which candidate benefitted: "Most voters [76 percent] think James Baker's banning of Hunter Biden's laptop tweets was politically motivated, and a plurality [48 percent] think Twitter executives were actively helping the Biden campaign during the last election."

After Learning That Twitter Employs At Least 15 Former FBI Agents, We Searched Facebook — What We Found Is Alarming.  Twitter's top ranks were riddled with ex-FBI agents and executives, stitching the company even closer to the federal agency now under fire for leaning on Twitter to meddle in the 2020 elections.  More than a dozen former feds flocked to the company in the months and years prior to Elon Musk's purchase of the social network in October.  The FBI's influence was considerably more significant than just James Baker, the FBI's former general counsel who later worked in the same role for Twitter.  He was recently fired by Musk for interfering in the billionaire's efforts to come clean about past transgressions at the company.

FBI Used Twitter To Censor, But Emails From The Latest Twitter Files Reveal That They Also Used Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Wikimedia And Reddit.  Another round of Twitter Files has dropped, and this one comes courtesy of Matt Taibbi (who the Washington Post laughably dubbed a "conservative journalist").  This latest round features how deeply the FBI, DHS, state governments, and others were involved in what was and wasn't allowed on the social media platform.  Most of the focus is on the FBI.

FBI Refuses to reveal how many social media firms it is secretly influencing.  The FBI has refused to say how many social media companies it works with, defending their actions after it emerged that agents from the bureau regularly met with Twitter executives and handed over lists of accounts they found questionable.  Officials from the bureau even asked for Twitter to hand over the locations from where the Twitter accounts were being operated, in a disturbing move that many saw as an attack on the First Amendment.

FBI Targeted Right Side Broadcasting Network for Censorship Ahead of Midterms.  The FBI's "National Election Command Post" (NECP) sent an email asking its San Francisco field office to pressure Twitter to censor the Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), a conservative news channel made popular by streaming Trump campaign rallies, two days before the 2022 midterm elections.  In the email, dated November 6, 2022, the NECP gave its San Francisco field office a list of 25 accounts "being utilized to spread misinformation about the upcoming election," a list which included RSBN.

New Twitter Files Show FBI Flagging Accounts for Company to Punish.  Emails from the FBI to Twitter released on Dec. 16 showed bureau officials flagging specific people for Twitter to take action against, the latest tranche of documents that bolster evidence that the government and Big Tech have been colluding to censor Americans.  In one missive dated Nov. 3, FBI officials flagged 25 accounts, including that of the media outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network that had created posts that "may warrant additional action due to the accounts being utilized to spread misinformation about the upcoming election."  The list was sent to Twitter several days later by Elvis Chan, a top official at the FBI's office in San Francisco.

Deep State Suspicions.  As the records of Twitter are being released by the new owner, Elon Musk, the FBI seems to have run that platform, manipulating public discourse, undercutting then President Trump, and affecting the 2020 election outcomes, along with other things like the public health response to COVID.  The most easy-to-read summary of the latest document releases is at Townhall where Matt Vespa puts the evidence in a very readable form.

Former Rolling Stone Editor Perfectly Describes the FBI's Relationship With Twitter.  The endless troves of documents have shredded the claims that the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice operate as impartial entities.  That's no longer the case — these agencies are now geared toward influencing public opinion at the behest of their Democratic Party overlords.  They're the only ones who benefit from this system of state-sponsored censorship.  Taibbi described the FBI-Twitter relationship perfectly as one of "master-canine".

You Were Right About Twitter.  The "Twitter Files" confirm that behind the cloak of the algorithm, liberal employees of the tech giant were turning a nature preserve into their personal petting zoo, hiding the Hunter Biden laptop story, shadowbanning dissenting voices, and kicking a sitting president off the platform contrary to their own protocols.  And, yes, they were up to their neck in government contacts, from the White House to the FBI, who requested and directed the restriction and manipulation of the public square.  Now, of course, we are told by their colleagues in media and politics that these revelations are anticlimactic, that everyone knew Twitter had quality control procedures that, sure, might be described as shadowbanning but aren't technically, since they get to make up the definitions.  This, they insist, was all normal, things working as they were supposed to.

Twitter Files Part 6 reveals FBI's ties to tech giant: 'As if it were a subsidiary'.  Substack writer Matt Taibbi dropped his latest installment of the "Twitter Files" on Friday that detailed the FBI's ties with the tech giant.  "The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.  Twitter's contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary," Taibbi began the thread on Friday.  "Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth... a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts."  In response to the "Twitter Files," a spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News Digital, "The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors' subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities.  Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them."

Twitter, The FBI Subsidiary.  [Thread reader]  The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.  Twitter's contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.  Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. [...] The FBI's social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.  Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.  It's no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts.  The #TwitterFiles show something new:  agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.  What stands out is the sheer quantity of reports from the government.

DHS and FBI Content Removal Requests to Twitter.  Independent journalist Matt Taibbi has released the sixth installment after review of more Twitter File data.  Keep in mind, the research group containing Mr. Taibbi are only seeing the consequences side of the content removal process.  What specifically happened in/around the portal of information flowing into Twitter HQ is a different division.  Taibbi et al are only seeing the consequences from the requests that entered the Twitter system.  The first section of Taibbi's analysis is the most interesting.  Having tracked the issue for several years, I would modify some of the descriptive language Taibbi presents yet agree with the overall context of his presentation.  Taibbi begins by noting, "Twitter's contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary."  I would safely take that a step further, yes there is a subsidiary relationship; however, as years of government involvement continued by 2016 Twitter became the subsidiary of DHS, not vice-versa.

New York Post: Twitter Is 'Riddled' with Ex-FBI Employees.  A recent report from the New York Post claims that Twitter's top ranks are filled with ex-FBI agents and executives.  Many of these employees were swept away by Elon Musk's massive layoffs, but some feds are likely still on the payroll.  The New York Post reports that many of Twitter's top executive roles were staffed with ex-FBI agents, connecting the company even closer to the federal agency which is being criticized for allegedly leaning on Twitter before the 2020 elections.

Twitter's top ranks riddled with ex-FBI employees.  Twitter's top ranks were riddled with ex-FBI agents and executives, stitching the company even closer to the federal agency now under fire for leaning on Twitter to meddle in the 2020 elections.  More than a dozen former feds flocked to the company in the months and years prior to Elon Musk's purchase of the social network in October.  The [New York] Post found FBI influence was considerably more significant than just James Baker, the FBI's former general counsel who later worked in the same role for Twitter.  He was recently fired by Musk for interfering in the billionaire's efforts to come clean about past transgressions at the company.

The Left-Wing Journalists Elon Musk Suspended From Twitter Got What They Deserved.  Elon Musk on Thursday evening temporarily suspended the Twitter accounts of a handful of high-profile journalists who shared real-time location data about him.  Good.  Musk was right to suspend these accounts.  I'm glad it happened, and I hope it keeps happening.  And I say that as someone whose Twitter account has been locked since March simply for saying Rachel Levine is a man.  I have no illusions that Musk is some savior for conservatives, or that under his watch Twitter will become a haven for free speech.  But I do think it's about time the leftist corporate media got a taste of their own medicine, in part so their hypocrisy, mendacity, and craven power-grubbing can be exposed to a watching world.

Twitter Became the Ministry of Truth.  New material [Elon] Musk released over the weekend confirms the very worst.  The banal boys and girls previously ensconced in Twitter's top echelons were not only having a jolly time attempting to steer the nation's news narrative; these executives were actually meeting weekly with FBI, Homeland Security and national intelligence officials to discuss "disinformation" they wanted removed from the site, including the notorious suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.  That's just one step removed from a state-run Ministry of Truth and is perhaps even more insidious.  That's because it didn't even involve unwanted and unconstitutional coercion.  Instead, the executives of this private enterprise were voluntarily neglecting their day jobs (maximizing corporate profits and shareholder value) in order to spend a huge amount of corporate time and resources propagating official narratives and suppressing dissenting views.  It was as if the Washington powers-that-be had nationalized a multi-billion company, drafting it to propagandize in behalf of their own political and policy agenda and continued tenure in power.

A Twitter Files footnote.  The Twitter Files reveal the suppression of the New York Post's reporting on Biden family corruption at the behest of the deep state authorities with whom Twitter was collaborating.  The absurd letter by 51 former intelligence officials reported by Natasha Bertrand and published by Politico was a key piece of the puzzle (to the extent it was a puzzle).

Donald Trump should never have been banned from Twitter.  This week's Twitter Files revelations are the most disturbing yet.  They show how the employees of this private company, not voted for by a single American, conspired to censor the democratically elected president of the United States.  It was nothing short of corporate tyranny, a sinister assault on public life by social media suits most people had never heard of.  It should be front page news. [...] Twitter Safety — the Star Chamber of this social media outfit, which spent years decreeing which ideas are acceptable for Twitter users to express — said "there is no violation of our policies at this time," adding:  "It's a clear no vio."  But then they all lost the plot.  Some Twitter staff agitated for the banning of Trump.  One madly likened him to a "leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to the Christchurch shooter or Hitler."  Before long, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's head of legal, policy and trust, was asking if Trump's tweets could in some way be seen as "coded incitement to further violence."  The internal meltdown continued and eventually Trump was banned, for tweets that Twitter knew, in its heart, did not violate its policies.

Twitter Files fuel suspicions that FBI tipped the scales for Biden in 2020.  The FBI's coordination with social media companies ahead of the 2020 presidential election, revealed in Elon Musk's "Twitter Files," is galvanizing long-held suspicions that the FBI ran defense for then-candidate Joseph R. Biden as his links to son Hunter Biden's potentially illegal business schemes emerged.  Mr. Musk's steady drip of internal documents has exposed the extent to which the FBI worked with company executives to moderate content on the platform.  It included weekly meetings with Twitter executives before the company suppressed the New York Post's October 2020 report exposing emails found on Hunter Biden's now-infamous laptop computer.  The emails refuted Mr. Biden's claims that he didn't know about and wasn't involved in his son's overseas ventures.  During those meetings, which also included officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security, Twitter executives were cued to rumors that Hunter Biden would be the target of a "hack and leak operation."

Keywords: Whitewash, conflict of interest, deep state, swept under the rug.
FBI May Have Violated First Amendment with Twitter Censorship.  Will the FBI Investigate?  For years now, Leftists have waved away freedom of speech concerns over Big Tech's censorship of voices that dissent from the Left's agenda.  Twitter, Facebook, Google and the rest are all private companies, you see, and so they can set any speech policies they want.  Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter, that argument has been consigned to the dustbin of history, as it might suggest that Musk is free to restore the freedom of speech on his platform.  But evidence is piling up that the FBI was actively involved in getting pre-Musk Twitter to censor patriots, and it may be that the bureau really did violate the First Amendment in nudging Twitter to deep-six voices it disliked.  Now the question is: who can investigate the FBI?  Will the FBI investigate itself?

A Handy Cheat Sheet Of The Many Lies Exposed By Musk's Release Of The Twitter Files.  Twitter executives long insisted they never rigged their platform to censor conservatives.  It was a lie.  Former CEO Jack Dorsey was asked point-blank under oath by Congress if his social media company "shadow-banned prominent Republicans."  "No," he replied with a straight face.  Another lie.  He doubled-down when he told Sean Hannity, "We do not shadow-ban according to political ideology or viewpoints."  Not even close to the truth.  In fact, Twitter was operating a giant political censorship machine applied with brute computer force.  Tweets involving Democrats were amplified, derogatory information about Joe Biden was suppressed, and anyone who dared to criticize them found themselves diminished or vanished.

Now we know why we weren't allowed to say "groomer".  [Thread reader]  [Tweet]  So the former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter had a "secret dirty Twitter account."  [Numerous tweets]  It's no wonder that Twitter wasn't doing much about child safety on the platform when their former head of Trust and Safety thought that bearded hairy muscular men were hotter when they held children.  I'm just glad that @elonmusk has made child safety his top priority.

FBI may have violated First Amendment with Twitter moderation requests, experts warn.  The FBI may have may have violated the First Amendment by asking Twitter to moderate certain speech, as revealed in a recent "Twitter Files" release, constitutional experts tell Fox News Digital.  A Twitter Files installment released by Substack journalist Matt Taibbi last week revealed Twitter's former head of safety, Yoel Roth, apparently attended weekly meetings with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence about moderating misinformation ahead of the 2020 election.  In October 2020, just weeks before the election, the FBI prompted Twitter to take action after it flagged two tweets related to alleged voter fraud, according to a screenshot of internal communications posted by Taibbi.  Twitter responded by slapping a label that said "Learn how voting is safe and secure" on one of the tweets from a GOP Indiana politician, according to the screenshot.

The famous syndrome hit Twitter bad.  Remember Trump Derangement Syndrome?  It's still alive and well.  Some people need it like some people use nicotine or other addictions.  After reading some of the batches about Twitter dumping the former president, it was obvious that the syndrome was really rocking and rolling over at Twitter's offices over the last few years. [...] On one hand, I'm not surprised that this crowd of leftists wanted President Trump defeated.  On the other hand, it's hard to believe that not a single adult in the room noticed the hypocrisy of dumping Trump and leaving Iran's Khamenei in.  I guess that's what happens when the syndrome is in you!

The stuff uncovered in the Twitter whistleblower report is crazy.  [Thread reader]  Twitter didn't monitor employee computers at all, it was not uncommon for employees to install spyware on work devices[.]  [Illustration]  Twitter does not have separate development, test, staging, and production environments.  At least 5,000 employees had privileged access to production systems.  [Illustration]  In 2020, Twitter had security incidents serious enough they had to be reported to the federal government on an almost weekly basis.  Meanwhile, Parag Agarwal was lying about how secure Twitter was.  [Illustration]  On 1/6, Mudge (the whistleblower) wanted to take action to prevent potential sabotage by a rogue employee.  He learned it was not possible for Twitter to secure its production environment.  [Illustration]  Mudge realized that a data center failure could potentially cause the permanent loss of all of Twitter's data.  He shared this fact with senior leadership, who instructed him not to put it in writing for the Board.  [Illustration]  A few months later, that exact eventuality almost came true, and only herculean effort by Twitter engineers prevented "permanent, irreparable failure."  [Illustration]  Twitter had no software development lifecycle, and misled both the FTC and its Board about this fact for a decade.  [Illustration]

10 Million Views Of Child Sexual Exploitation Material Allegedly Watched On 'Old Twitter': Report.  An independent cybersecurity data analyst working alongside top officials at Twitter found accounts posting content that allegedly sexually exploited children garnered more than ten million views on the platform under previous ownership.  Andrea Stroppa, founder of cybersecurity group Ghost Data, personally funded research last summer that resulted in the eradication of more than 500 accounts soliciting Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), which led approximately 30 major advertisers to pull or pause their ad services on their Twitter accounts.  A new report from the data analyst released Friday found that more than 95% of several active accounts exploiting CSAM, which allegedly included videos of children and teens involved in sexual activities, "acted with impunity for years."

Maybe he's working on it.  Be patient.
Kash Patel Asks Why Isn't Elon Musk Releasing the FBI Emails and DHS Contact Documents with Twitter?  Former House Intelligence Committee lead investigator Kash Patel appeared on Steve Bannon's podcast to discuss the Twitter Files. {Direct Rumble Link} Within the interview Mr. Patel asks the obvious question: Why are we not seeing the document trail where the FBI is making contact with Twitter?  The contacts are noted within the Twitter File release, but the specific methods, people and documents or email requests from the U.S. government into Twitter are not being released.  Kash Patel asks Elon Musk to release these documents and asks why are we not seeing them?

Twitter Files: Yet It's Still a 50/50 Country.  What's comforting about the Twitter Files is the satisfaction of knowing the exact connections between the wokey useful idiots at Twitter and their Deep State masters.  It's easy to think of the social-media big boys as cunning and malevolent monsters, but if they are anything like the world of SBF and FTX, it seems to me that they are shallow fools — naifs, silly wokey putty in the hands of the regime security police.  I just can't take a woman like Vijaya Gadde seriously.  Or a man like Yoel Roth.  Maybe that's the point of today's woke education system.  To train up weak, conformable non-binary Kates that literally know nothing but doing the bidding of their regime handlers — without question.  The message that I get from all this is that our educated ruling class is in worse shape than we thought.  For instance:  our culture is utterly dominated by our lefty friends in the educated class.  Education is completely Democratic from K to college president.  The media that ordinary people watch is completely Democrat.  The media that educated people read is completely Democrat.  The government administrative bureaucracy — federal, state, and local — is completely Democrat.

Twitter Ends Trust and Safety Council.  Twitter on Monday night [12/12/2022] disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a department that some critics claimed engaged in disproportionate content moderation of certain political ideologies and individuals.  The company announced in an email that it was "reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work.  As part of this process, we have decided that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best structure to do this."  When it was first launched in 2016, the council was composed of mostly left wing industry experts and organizations largely focused on restricting so-called hate speech.  Original members included the Anti-Defamation League, Center for Democracy and Technology, Dangerous Speech Project, Feminist Frequency, Love 146, NetSafe, Samaritans, the Wahid Institute, and others.

Latest 'Twitter files' dump shows change of policy pursuit 'for Trump alone,' execs 'create justification' to ban him.  Released Saturday, the next installment of the "Twitter Files" details how, after years of resisting calls to ban then-President Donald Trump, Twitter purposefully changed its policies after the Jan. 6th riot to justify permanently banning the then-president. [...] However, before signing off completely and returning to his vacation, Dorsey issued a memo reminding employees that temporary Twitter suspensions are temporary — and that any Twitter user who's suspended temporarily is eventually allowed to return.  Displeased over this policy, Roth then — from the sounds of it — persuaded Dorsey to modify the policy to make it so that anyone temporarily suspended for a total of five times is permanently banned for their habitual violations.  This is extremely important because at the time, Trump already had four temporary suspensions on his record, meaning he was just one suspension away from a ban.  Fast-forward to Jan. 8th, when Twitter suspended Trump again due to the "risk of further incitement of violence," thus permanently banning him from the platform.

Twitter Files: Donald Trump Was Blacklisted Despite Being Cleared by 'Trust & Safety' Review Team.  The latest installment of the "Twitter Files," a series of disclosures lifting the curtain on Twitter's internal wrangling ahead of controversial censorship decisions, reveals more details on the decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform in January 2021.  The disclosures, given to former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, reveal that members of Twitter's Trust & Safety department did not believe that the former President violated any rules on the day that he was banned, only for this determination to be overruled following an intervention by arch-progressive Vijaya Gadde.  The disclosures also reveal that CEO Jack Dorsey was involved in the decision to suspend Trump's account, putting an end to longstanding rumors that Gadde had taken the decision herself while Dorsey was on vacation and unreachable.

The United States of Fascist America.  [Scroll down] Executives from Facebook and Twitter, including the recently fired head of Trust & Safety Vijaya Gadde, held regular meetings with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discuss censorship on a wide range of topics, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan, coronavirus, and "racial justice," according to leaked documents.  Further revelations from Twitter Files part two noted, "Teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics — all in secret, without informing users."  This is called "shadow banning", a practice that Twitter executives, under oath before Congress, denied.  Elon Musk, opening the windows at Twitter headquarters, discovered that the social media giant was "visibility filtering," a euphemism for shadow banning.  Will any former Twitter executives be prosecuted for lying to Congress?  Fat chance.  The DOJ practices its own form of shadow banning, only prosecuting Trump supporters and opponents of the ruling class, emulating the "justice" systems of banana republics.

The 'Twitter Files' are the final nail in the media's credibility.  The vicious and coordinated attacks by mainstream news figures against independent journalist Matt Taibbi in recent days reinforce an essential point about the American news media: they think we are all drooling idiots.  Their response to Taibbi's release of the Twitter Files, which details the company's calculated suppression of a major news story in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, underscores this exceedingly low estimation of its audience.  Outlets like MSNBC and the New York Times seem to hope the American public is ignorant of the fact that they got every aspect of the Hunter Biden laptop story wrong from the start.  While real journalists tenaciously reported the facts, such as the New York Post's Miranda Devine , a disinformation machine comprised of Biden campaign officials, intelligence officials, liberal journalists, and Twitter higher-ups (with the omission of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who was strangely left out of the loop) acted in brazen coordination to suppress the story.

The media's silence on the 'Twitter Files' is shameful.  Whatever happened to "All the news that's fit to print," and "Democracy dies in darkness," the respective mottos of the two most influential newspapers in the country, the New York Times and the Washington Post?  Every morning, these august organs set the narrative for newsrooms across the country, and yet, time and again, we see them ignore stories that don't suit their own agenda as propaganda purveyors for the Democratic Party and the security state.  This has been obvious in their non-coverage of Elon Musk's Twitter Files, four batches over 10 days so far, which have revealed a chilling censorship regime at the social media giant, which no doubt is replicated across Big Tech, including at Facebook and Google.  We see evidence of what we long suspected, despite Twitter former CEO Jack Dorsey's lies to Congress:  Conservatives and medical professionals were silenced, as part of a crackdown on effective dissent against the government.  From The Post's Hunter Biden laptop stories and criticism of the Biden administration's botched Afghanistan withdrawal to Dr. Anthony Fauci's bogus edicts on masks, lockdowns and the origins of COVID, censorship has been the order of the day.

Dupe or Designated Defendant?  The Criminal Case Against Jack Dorsey.  The latest Twitter disclosures have raised potential legal liability for Twitter and its executives.  No one appears more at risk than Twitter's former CEO Jack Dorsey.  It is an ironic turn of events since Dorsey supported the takeover by Elon Musk and has called for all files to be released without filtering.  Dorsey has the feel of a "designated defendant," someone who was pushed forward by others to take any legal hit.  On its face, Dorsey has vulnerability after the latest release.  He was repeatedly asked by members of Congress about censoring and shadow-banning, which has now been confirmed in these files.  In September 2018, Dorsey testified under oath and denied what these files appear to now confirm.  Rep. Mike Doyle, D., Pa., asked, "Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives.  Is that true of Twitter?"  Dorsey responded, "No."  Doyle then asked "Are you censoring people?"  "No," Dorsey said.  "Twitter's shadow-banning prominent Republicans... is that true?" Doyle asked.  Dorsey again said no.

#TwitterFiles No. 5 drop paints a [bad] picture of Twitter's Maoist culture.  On January 8, Trump loaded two tweets, one saying that the 75,000,000 Americans who voted for him would be heard and the other saying that he would not attend Biden's "inauguration" (or, as I always think of it, his "installation").  Those Twitter employees in charge of analyzing tweets concluded that Trump's tweets had not violated any policy.  The zealots on Twitter's bloated payroll (most of whom had graduated from America's hard-left colleges), however, were having none of that.  They were adamant that Trump had violated the policy against incitement.  As one employee stated in the company's Slack channel, it was "pretty obvious he's going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules."  In other words, these proud products of America's academic system firmly believed that they had to violate their own rules in order to prevent Trump from continuing not to violate their rules.  Weiss has chapter and verse showing the Maoist employees demanding that Trump be kicked off America's premier political platform, even as those given the task of analyzing his tweets could not twist them into anything approaching conduct that violated Twitter's rules.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.  Elon Musk is an enigma, and his allegiances are a mystery, but one thing's for sure, he's done more for the "celestial article" of freedom than the entire Republican establishment.  In recent days, explosive revelations from the Twitter Files have provided longed-for transparency, and vindicated many conservatives:  communist bureaucrats in Big Government colluded with Democrat activists within the company, suppressing truth and engaging in what some would assert is criminal behavior, all to influence and sway a presidential election in their favor.  Despicable yes, but surprising?  Not really, because that's what communists do.  After all, we already knew all that, because we've been living it — we've been living through it since Obama's rise to power.  We knew about the meeting on the tarmac, we knew about Lois Lerner's targeting of Tea Party groups, and we remember when Edward Snowden blew the whistle.  We knew the "laptop from hell" was real, we knew Joe Biden was the "Big Guy", and we knew we were being shadow-banned.

Twitter Executives 'Met Weekly With the FBI and DHS' and DNI Before 2020 Election.  Before the 2020 election, Twitter executives were "clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content," according to Friday's dump of the "Twitter files," as reported by Matt Taibbi.  According to the information provided by Elon Musk, Twitter executive Yoel Roth "not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

The Banning of President Trump by Bari Weiss: Just a Few Rogue Actors.  The fifth installment of the Twitter Files release drops today courtesy of Ms. Bari Weiss.  The focus of Ms Weiss was on the decision to ban President Donald Trump from the platform, and her outline walks through the events leading up to the decision to remove him.  After a review of internal discussions, slacks and conversations within the social media platform, ultimately the officers within the company decided to protect their view of democracy by removing their biggest ideological opponent.  The Twitter executives justified their actions by echo-chambering a belief that President Trump was tweeting "coded messages," the secret transmission of thoughts that can only be received by those wearing red hats, tuned to a specific psychological frequency.

Before Musk, Twitter Was the Worst-Run Tech Company in the World.  Before the Elon Musk buyout, Twitter looks like the worst-run tech company ever with new revelations about lax security, no oversight, and a corporate culture geared towards hiding the ugly truth from the company's own board of directors and the FTC.  Former CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal have some 'splainin to do.  Almost unnoticed among the more salacious #TwitterFiles reveals from Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger, "the stuff uncovered in the Twitter whistleblower report is much crazier," according to Twitter user Avid Halaby.  Halaby did a deep dive into the newly released insider materials, and his Twitter thread shows a company that was a Rube Goldberg device of bad policies and worse execution.

In other Twitter news...
Elon Musk threatens to sue employees who break their NDAs.  Elon Musk sent out an email to Twitter employees reminding them that violating the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that they signed when they were hired prohibits them from revealing sensitive company information to the media or the public, Fortune has reported.  "As evidenced by the many detailed leaks of confidential Twitter information, a few people at our company continue to act in a manner contrary to the company's interests and in violation of their NDA," Musk said in an email to employees.

Twitter banned Trump when Head of Policy said his term 'American Patriots' could be 'coded' as an incitement of violence.  Twitter decided to indefinitely ban Donald Trump two days after the January 6 Capitol attack when rank-and-file employees compared him to Adolf Hitler and a terrorist leader -- even though senior staff said said he didn't violate policy.  The latest revelations of the platform's actions taken against the former president and conservative voices were detailed in the fifth installment of the Twitter files published on Monday afternoon.  Journalist Bari Weiss shared internal messaging showing some staffers for the social media platform were concerned of the negative repercussions of banning Trump, including allegations of censorship.

Is criticizing Yoel Roth "putting him in danger?".  The MSM is having a conniption fit over Elon Musk's criticisms of former Twitter staff, especially Yoel Roth, Twitter's former Head of Trust and Safety.  Roth, as you probably know, is one of the key figures in the controversies surrounding censorship on Twitter.  Musk initially tried to keep him on board, hoping that he could work with the guy.  This was a mistake because Roth was part of the problem, not part of the solution.  Roth left and has been bashing Musk constantly.  There are many criticisms of Roth that have been made, but the most damaging one is that until Musk took over Twitter was seemingly indifferent to the posting and trading of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) material on the site — kiddie porn.  Ed wrote a bit about this controversy earlier today, and I have written about Twitter's failures in this regard as well.  It really isn't a secret that Twitter did a poor job removing CSE materials prior to Musk's takeover; this was a widely known problem.  Twitter was far more focused on removing conservative speech than removing CSE.

Elon Musk Flat-Out Says Fauci Lied to Congress and Gain-of-Function Research Killed People.  The many ways in which truth was silenced and harmful information was promoted by Twitter obviously had the effect of influencing the 2020 election, but the most damaging effects won't fully be known for years.  Unlike many of the things the left claims lead to death, Twitter's actions did lead to death.  Musk's tweet about his pronouns, predictably, led to a backlash from super upset liberals like Scott Kelly, who replied that Musk was promoting hate and that, by the way, "Dr. Fauci is a dedicated public servant whose sole motivation was saving lives."&n bsp; [Tweet]  If Kelly had read even a fraction of the things Twitter censored regarding Fauci, he would not be singing that tune.

With new Twitter files, Musk forces a free-speech reckoning for politicians and pundits.  "We don't make exceptions for jokes or satire."  That line from a third tranche of company documents released by Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, captures the social media giant's censorship culture.  Its humorless, officious tenor is all too common with state censors throughout history.  Censorship creates an insatiable appetite for more censorship, where even jokes become intolerable.  These latest Twitter files shatter past denials of "shadow banning" and other suppression techniques targeting disfavored viewpoints.  That includes denials by former CEO Jack Dorsey under oath before Congress and public denials by top corporate executives.  The legal ramifications will become clearer as more information emerges.  Yet, a far more significant problem already is confirmed in these files:  the existential threat of corporate censors to free speech.

The Twitter Files That Really Have Leftists Worried.  [Scroll down]  First — and again, forgive me — who cares about what we've seen released so far?  I truly do believe in conservative principles which dictate a private company can do pretty much whatever it wants.  They should, however, be honest about it.  Twitter was not.  At least under the old leadership.  That leadership should be investigated to see if any of them committed perjury.  It's not enough that they lied or misled, it's whether or not they committed perjury.  There's a difference and that difference is important.  That difference, along with this story, is being exploited by some people more interested in promoting themselves than anything else in life.  That's fine, movements always have clowns.  But the big picture here isn't that some people were throttled, it's who lied about it.  [Indeed], I was throttled.  For a year and a half, I haven't gained a single new follower.  My total hasn't increased, people followed me and others disappeared.  That always happened, but no matter how many new followers I gained in a day, I lost the same number the next day.  After one appearance on Sean Hannity's radio show where this topic came up and he encouraged people to follow me, I gained a little over 1,000 new followers[,] which were all gone by the next afternoon.  Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, I've been steadily gaining around 100 per day, even if I don't tweet.  Everyone knew this was happening, I am not unique and neither is anyone else.  But what is unique is how so-called journalists are reacting to it.

Twitter Files dump number 4: How Donald Trump was banned.  The third installment of the "Twitter files" gave us some of what we were looking for in terms of government involvement in censoring free speech, though many questions remain.  Tonight, close on the heels of the last data dump, Michael Shellenberger unleashed the fourth chapter in the story.  This edition also focused on the decision-making process that led to the President of the United States being banned.  At least in the early revelations, Schellenberger winds up offering more cover for Jack Dorsey and focusing the blame on the covert actions of Yoel Roth.  There are also indications that Twitter was paying far more attention to the "big names" in the progressive movement than their own rules.  One of these was found in one of the first tweets from Shellenberger, where input from Michelle Obama and high-profile liberals are cited as reasons to kick the Bad Orange Man off the platform.

Part Four of Musk's 'Twitter Files' reveals decision process post-Jan. 6 protests.  The latest release of the Twitter Files reveals shifting opinions among executives about how to handle the effects of Jan. 6 and the protests.  The fourth edition of the Twitter Files was released by journalist Michael Shellenberger on Saturday and went into detail on Twitter's changes in decision-making on Jan. 7, the day after thousands gathered and rushed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.  Senior executives at Twitter decided to "create justifications to ban Trump," "seek a change of policy for Trump alone distinct from other political leaders," and "express no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban," claimed Shellenberger.

So when will Jack Dorsey be indicted for lying to Congress?  This is a question I've been mulling ever since the Twitter Files started dropping, though I'm not quite as sure about it now as was previously.  The New York Post picked up on something that many of us noticed during Bari Weiss' tweetstorm that delivered the second episode of the on-going series.  As you may recall, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was called in to provide testimony before Congress in 2018 and he was asked at least three times whether or not Twitter was shadow-banning or censoring Republicans and conservatives on his platform.  Each time he responded by saying that wasn't being done and that if their algorithm was doing it, they hadn't intentionally programmed it to be that way.  We now know from the company's internal documents that those claims were false.  So should Dorsey be facing some sort of penalty or legal action for lying under oath?

The Removal of Donald Trump from Twitter.  [Thread reader]  The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th.  We'll show you what hasn't been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies.  This first installment covers the period before the election through January 6th.  Tomorrow, @ShellenbergerMD will detail the chaos inside Twitter on January 7th.  On Sunday, @bariweiss will reveal the secret internal communications from the key date of January 8th.  Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import.  Even Twitter's employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech.

The terrible consequences of stolen elections and government corruption.  Elon Musk was true to his word, as far as we know, with regard to his promise to release Twitter documents, first by Matt Taibbi then by Bari Weiss.  Thus far, he has exposed that social media site's calculated censorship of any and all information that might silence conservative voices, including President Trump as well as reflect badly on the Biden family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, lockdowns, and vaccines.  He has done exactly that, probably not to the fullest extent, but he's released enough to prove how much Twitter, the mainstream media and all the other social media sites interfered with the 2020 election.  Their interference amounts to both fraud and treason.  The Democrats engineered the Biden victory and subsequently bragged about it.  Twitter's big part of the game has finally been revealed for all to see.

Twitter Files: Executives Were Looking for Any Excuse to Ban President Donald Trump.  Elon Musk's Twitter released another batch of internal discussions on Friday night, which revealed that executives at the social media company had established the "framework" for banning Donald Trump's account before the events of January 6, and used the Capitol riots as their excuse to finally blacklist the President.  The goal of the left-wing executives is clear in statements such as, "the narrative that Trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly the last 4+ years must be taken into account."  The documents posted to Twitter by journalist Matt Taibbi is the third release of what are known as "Twitter Files" and the first release of documents pertaining to President Trump's account ban in January 2021.

DHS Partnered Social Media Surveillance Systems Delivering Mutual Benefits.  There are major inconsistencies in the public narrative as it swirls around Elon Musk and Twitter.  How could a businessman, an entrepreneur like Elon Musk, spend $44 billion, that's BILLION, on an enterprise without knowing the basic outline of how that enterprise was operating.  In a world of financial due diligence, on a scale of this size, the contradictions do not make sense.  Yet if we are to take Elon Musk at his word, he had no idea that DHS operated a portal into the network.  He also had no idea about James Baker working as Twitter legal counsel and carrying such a massive conflict of interest.  Additionally, via his announcement last night, Musk had no idea that Perkins Coie was legally representing Twitter.  How does an owner/operator take ownership of an organization and not know these senior executive issues?

Twitter secretly erased conservative voices, and let terrorists and vile vermin tweet freely.  If free speech is a pillar of democracy, then Twitter should be charged with sabotage, because they've taken sledgehammer to it.  And every American has the right to be absolutely outraged.  The latest 'Twitter Files' drop on Thursday night revealed that partisan extremists at one of America's most influential social media platforms wrapped a torniquet around the vein of free thought and wrenched it tight.  And to add insult to injury, the whole time, Twitter was lying about it.

Twitter Files: Censor-Happy Executives Used Tools to Suppress Breitbart News.  The latest installment of the Twitter Files reveals that the censorship-loving leftists running the show before Elon Musk took over the platform used tech tools to suppress content posted by Breitbart News after adding a "bot" to the official Breitbart News Twitter account.  As journalist Matt Taibbi explains, "The bot ends up becoming an automated tool invisibly watching both Trump and, apparently, Breitbart."  Part three of the Twitter Files, released through journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday night, focused on the company's unprecedented decision to blacklist former President Donald Trump's account on January 8, 2021.

Twitter files dump reveal frenzied conversations before Trump was banned after the Capitol riot.  Newly released internal documents suggest that Twitter's former head of safety Yoel Roth was meeting weekly with the FBI and show instances of the FBI flagging tweets related to the 2020 election for deletion.  Journalist Matt Taibbi shared the claims in a new Twitter thread on Friday night, one week after sharing the first tranche of so-called 'Twitter Files' turned over by the company's new owner Elon Musk.  The new thread covered the months and weeks leading up to then-President Donald Trump's ban from Twitter following the Capitol riot, shedding light on the increasingly frenzied internal efforts within the social media site to moderate his baseless claims of election fraud.

The Editor says...
[#1] Trump's claims of election fraud were not baseless, nor was he the only one making such claims.  [#2] If Trump's claims were baseless, why silence him?  If he's digging himself into a hole, why stop him?

Twitter Execs Lied to Congress About Shadow Banning Conservatives.  A bombshell 'Twitter Files' drop on Thursday appears to show former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and other top executives lied about "shadow banning" conservatives in his testimony before Congress in 2018.  "Shadow banning" is essentially the idea that a user's account is being secretly throttled — hidden from other users — without the platform notifying the user that they've done something wrong to deserve it.  The evidence was presented on Twitter by journalist Bari Weiss as part of new owner Elon Musk's attempt to get to the bottom of the censorship that was taking place on the platform.  Internal company files show employees, not algorithms, built blacklists and filtered content without a user's knowledge.  Most notably, Weiss revealed a process behind closed doors utilizing a system known as "Visibility Filtering," which was for all intents and purposes a form of shadow banning.

The Twitter files: leftist censorship revealed.  For years, Twitter's executives promised they would not let their own political or ideological views interfere with Twitter's corporate — and societal — commitment to free speech.  They understood Twitter's importance as a place to break and discuss news.  They understood its value as a free megaphone available to all.  They understood that it had become a global town square and should not be subject to their whims.  So they told the world.  Repeatedly, publicly, and explicitly.  We now have proof they didn't mean a word they said.

Twitter Files: Executives Met with Federal Agencies Amid Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal, Allowed FBI to Report Tweets.  Elon Musk's Twitter released another batch of internal discussions on Friday, which revealed that executives at the social media company had met with federal agencies amid the Hunter Biden laptop story, and that the FBI reported tweets it didn't like to workers at the company.  On Friday night, journalist Matt Taibbi posted a lengthy Twitter thread — the third release of what are known as "Twitter Files," which include revelations that federal agencies meddled with posts on the platform, among other notable issues.

Latest installment of "Twitter Files" show Trump was being censored long before his Jan. 6th ban.  Released late Friday through journalist Matt Taibbi, the first installment of part three of the "Twitter Files" delves into the events preceding the infamous Jan. 8th, 2021 de-platforming of former President Donald Trump.  As previously reported, on the 8th the president was permanently suspended from Twitter because of "the risk of further incitement of violence."  According to Taibbi, the ban was precipitated by "the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies."

'Twitter Files' part 3 details 'internal debate' over Trump's ban after Jan. 6 riot.  Twitter executives decided to ban then-President Donald Trump from their social media platform after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, while maintaining regular check-ins with the FBI and other federal authorities as they decided what postings should be targeted for censorship, the latest report from new company CEO Elon Musk reveals.  In one of a series of tweets Friday evening, independent journalist Matt Taibbi said internal company messages showed how Twitter's internal standards eroded during the months leading up to Jan. 6, with high-ranking executives violating their own policies while interacting with various federal agencies.  Taibbi posted messages that he said "show Twitter executives getting a kick out of intensified relationships with federal agencies."  In one, Yoel Roth, then Twitter's head of trust and safety, appears to describe how he struggled to disguise the purpose of weekly meetings with FBI and other government officials that helped guide the company's decisions on policing posts on its platform.

Twitter Files: Staff Favored Biden's Tweets While Suppressing Trump's.  Elon Musk's Twitter exposé keeps getting crazier and even more infuriating as his team continues to divulge the inner workings of the company before he took over.  On Friday, the third chapter of the Twitter Files dropped.  It detailed how the previous leadership decided to suppress and later ban former President Donald Trump.  But one of the revelations that was particularly intriguing was how the company handled tweets coming from Joe Biden in contrast to its treatment of Trump.  According to journalist Matt Taibbi, the difference was pretty stark.  He noted that "there are multiple instances of involving pro-Biden tweets warning Trump 'may try to steal the election' that got surfaced, only to be approved by senior executives."

Twitter — and Democrats — lied, lied and lied again about censorship.  "1984" author George Orwell warned that "if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."  That line has never been more relevant than in the aftermath of the second release of Twitter documents this week.  Many liberals had denied the social media giant was engaging in censorship by using the more pleasant term "content modification."  Now documents show Twitter executives burying "disfavored" views as "visibility filtering" and "amplification" limits.  Calling executives the "head of legal, policy, and trust" (Vijaya Gadde) and the "global head of trust & safety" (Yoel Roth) doesn't alter their status as some of the greatest censors in history.  Yet the license for this massive system clearly came from Twitter's very top.

Can Elon Musk break the news?  Elon Musk's release of the "Twitter Files," showing behind the scenes efforts to suppress the New York Post's bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story didn't just break news, it was also an attempt to break the legacy media's grip on news itself.  Instead of appearing on 60 minutes, as most CEO's would, or giving the internal materials to the New York Times or Washington Post, Musk handed the story to independent journalists Matt Taiibi and Bari Weiss and then broke the story on his own platform.  Not only that, he teased the release to create a kind of appointment viewing for the document dump.  The billionaire tycoon behind Tesla and SpaceX has not been shy about his desire to make his latest toy, Twitter, a platform on which a new kind of journalism can emerge and thrive.  He has spoken up recently about the value of citizen journalism and criticized the "media elite," calling their control of the news an "oligopoly on information".

Elon Drops Tantalizing Tidbits About Election Interference.  Bari Weiss released the Twitter Files Part II on Thursday, which revealed "secret blacklists" and the shadow banning of conservatives including Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, and Libs of TikTok.  The blacklisting also included people who were saying things against the liberal narrative on things like COVID, including Stanford professor of medicine, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, because he criticized things like school closures.  Elon dropped another tantalizing tidbit about election interference and who else might have been blacklisted.  He was asked if any candidate running for election had been shadowbanned.  [Tweet]  That's a big answer and raises a lot of questions including who was shadowbanned, why, and if it was done at the behest of the Democrats or anyone in government.  This just keeps getting worse.  We already know that they were interfering on issues such as with the Hunter Biden laptop story, but if they were also putting down candidates — or pumping others up for that matter — that's directly interfering.

These 7 Trump-Critical GOP Senators Have No Plan To Deal With Unconstitutional, Election-Altering Censorship.  Seven Republican U.S. senators who slammed former President Trump for suggesting that new censorship revelations warranted a reconsideration of the 2020 presidential election results have no plan to address the First Amendment-violating censorship Trump was reacting to in "The Twitter Files."  More and more evidence is exposing how our corrupt FBI brazenly violated the Constitution by dictating to social media monopolies what speech to censor from public and private discourse ahead of the 2020 election.  Yet GOP senators are more preoccupied with Trump talking about altering the Constitution than they are with the deep state committing actual violations of it.

Head Of Twitter's Censorship Operation Was A Former FBI, CIA Operative.  The head of Twitter's censorship scheme to shadowban conservative accounts and posts across the platform previously worked as an operative for the FBI and CIA.  According to a now-unavailable LinkedIn profile discovered by journalist Andy Ngo, Jeff Carlton, whose prior work included serving as a federal intelligence officer, became the leading member of Twitter's Strategic Response Team (SRT) last month.  As revealed in a batch of "Twitter Files" released by reporter Bari Weiss on Thursday, SRT is one of the main groups at Twitter tasked with shadowbanning conservative accounts and tweets on the platform.

A Monopoly on Speech.  The question is who should get to decide?  On the heels of the Warren exchange, Senator Josh Hawley released [condemnatory] evidence demonstrating that Biden's "Disinformation Governance Board" had been interfacing with leftist eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar's network.  Warren objects to one billionaire member of the PayPal mafia, but not another making those decisions because they share a common set of political views that include censorship.  While Musk put billions on the line to buy Twitter to protect free speech, Omidyar committed $100 million to fight "disinformation", "fake news" and "hate speech".  That includes funding for leftist "fact checkers" who have been used by Big Tech monopolies to censor opposing views.  Warren, despite her rhetoric, is quite happy to have one human being go into a dark room and decide who gets heard from and who doesn't, as long as he's running the censorship machine to suit her.  The leftist politician and her political allies in the Senate and House repeatedly pressured tech companies, especially Facebook, to censor their political opponents.

Conservatives Blast the Twitter Blacklisting, Elon Promises Big Changes.  As journalist Bari Weiss detailed, conservative personalities like Charlie Kirk and Dan Bongino were "blacklisted," with the visibility of what they were saying suppressed.  Other people who said things against the narrative, such as for COVID, were also blacklisted, even if they were prominent scientists, such as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.  All this was going on, even as Twitter denied it was happening.  They claimed they didn't shadowban, and they certainly didn't do it based on political ideology.  Yet, the files confirm it was going on.

Latest 'Twitter Files' reveal secret suppression of right-wing commentators.  The second installment of Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" dropped Thursday night and reveals how the social media giant was secretly "blacklisting" conservative tweets and users.  Independent journalist Bari Weiss detailed in a series of posts how Twitter used so-called "shadow banning" to limit the visibility of tweets coming from far-right users.  Conservative talk show host Dan Bongino, Stanford University's anti-COVID lockdown advocate Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk were among the users targeted for suppression by Twitter, according to Weiss.  The former New York Times and Wall Street Journal writer said that the blacklists were built "in secret" and "without informing users."

Twitter's secret 'blacklist': Second tranche of bombshell internal files.  Twitter kept a 'secret blacklist' of topics and accounts to prevent them from trending, according to data obtained by journalist Bari Weiss — with conservative commentators deliberately downplayed in what one called 'Soviet-style bulls***',' while another said he was treated 'with more censorship than Hamas'.  Specialist teams were put to work dealing with 200 cases a day.  Conservative commentators, including Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, were deliberately put on a 'search blacklist' in Bongino's case or tabbed 'do not amplify,' in the case of Kirk.

Elon Musk's second installment of 'Twitter Files' reveals 'secret blacklists,' Bari Weiss reports.  The second installment of Elon Musk's so-called "Twitter Files" shed light on the company's practices of secretly "blacklisting" certain tweets and users.  "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 — all in secret, without informing users," journalist Bari Weiss began her thread on Thursday [12/8/2022].  "Twitter once had a mission 'to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.'  Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected," Weiss wrote.

Former NYT columnist Bari Weiss releases 'Twitter Files Part Two'.  Former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss released the second installment of the "Twitter Files" on Thursday night, sharing images of accounts that Twitter allegedly placed on various types of "blacklists."  Weiss posted several images of what appears to be an internal Twitter system that marked certain accounts as being under various kinds of "blacklists," in addition to flagging other information about the accounts.  Jay Bhattacharya, a health policy professor from Stanford University who opposed COVID-19 lockdowns, appeared to have been placed on a "Trends Blacklist," as was the right-wing Libs of TikTok account, according to the photos.  The account of conservative commentator Dan Bongino was apparently placed on a "Search Blacklist," while the photos seemed to show Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk had his account marked as "Do Not Amplify."

Elon Musk's Big Mistake.  Making Teslas was one thing, but Twitter, well, that's another thing entirely.  Twitter operated with mediocre functionality — nothing detonated when Twitter went down except blue check's heads.  It operated while run by a bunch of spoiled brats living in San Francisco presuming to decide what the rest of us can see and hear.  And they worked, sort of, three-hour days, often in their footie PJs, often at home or sometimes at an office that seems more like a playground for awkwardly adulting 20-somethings.  But Elon did not get that reality.  He thought Twitter was a business instead of a framework of sinecures for the sons, daughters, and non-binary otherkin of the ruling caste to act as cultural curators.  Disgorged from overpriced colleges, these unaccomplished yet smug twits imagined their worthless credentials gave them some sort of divine right to rule, and also a free pass from actually working hard.  When Elon took over, he saw them lolling about on bean bags drinking subsidized kombucha and fired a whole bunch of them.  And you know what?  Twitter was just fine without them.

Twitter, the FBI, and the First Amendment.  New Twitter owner Elon Musk made a lot of news in the conservative world on Friday when he released information about Twitter's infamous suppression of the October 2020 New York Post story about Joe Biden and influence peddling, a story based on evidence from Biden's son Hunter's laptop.  The article, published in the last three weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, noted that Hunter Biden was engaged in shady business dealings in Ukraine and reported that one of his Ukrainian associates thanked him for arranging for the associate to meet Hunter's father, then the vice president of the United States.  One reasonable inference to draw from the story was that Hunter and Joe Biden worked together to reward the people who were paying Hunter Biden at least $50,000 a month to do nothing in particular.

The Deep Twitter State?  Former FBI General Counsel Fired at Twitter.  On Tuesday, Elon Musk surprised many by firing former FBI General Counsel James Baker as legal counsel for Twitter.  For many of us, the most surprising thing was that Baker was still at Twitter.  I had assumed that Baker had left the company with Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's former chief legal officer who was the key figure behind the company's notorious censorship system.  I cannot imagine a less compatible figure to remain at the company to implement the new transparency and free speech policies of Musk.

Obama-Biden Government in Exile Ran Hunter Laptop Suppression Operation.  They got the band back together — to the extent the original members ever broke up in the first place.  Recent disclosures by independent journalist Matt Taibbi confirmed what other reporters have been covering for the better part of two years:  According to files obtained by Elon Musk, the new owner and CEO of Twitter, the social media platform protected Joe Biden and his family from a major and potentially election-altering scandal as millions of Americans were voting early for president in October 2020.  Years of denials and dismissals related to Hunter Biden's lucrative shakedown of hostile nations, including Russia and China, were set to explode just a few weeks before Election Day.  Big Tech — and the government — was ready.  Immediately after the New York Post published damning material retrieved from Hunter Biden's laptop contradicting Joe Biden's longtime protestations that he had nothing to do with his son's profiteering gigs, Twitter claimed the reporting was based on "hacked material" and in violation of the company's terms of service. [...] Amid internal confusion as to the company's shaky explanation for censoring the coverage of Biden's laptop, Twitter's general counsel defended the move.  James Baker told employees that "caution was warranted" and claimed "some facts ... indicate that the materials may have been hacked."  If Baker's name sounds familiar — and not in a good way — it should.  Baker served as former FBI Director James Comey's top lawyer during Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI's attempt to sabotage Trump's campaign and presidency with claims he had been in cahoots with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton.

Elon Musk fires Twitter's general counsel James Baker for his 'possible role in suppression of Hunter Biden laptop scandal'.  Chief Twit Elon Musk has fired Twitter's general counsel James A. Baker, citing his alleged involvement in suppressing the release of internal documents regarding Twitter's censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.  'In light of concerns about Baker's possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,' Musk wrote in a tweet on Tuesday.  Musk added that Baker's explanation of the events surrounding the laptop saga was 'unconvincing.'

Khanna: Twitter's viewpoint suppression may be good for fellow Democrats, but it's bad for democracy, and needs to stop.  Three cheers for a California Democrat?  You bet, and Ro Khanna had already earned one in Elon Musk's Twitter dump last Friday.  The internal debate at Twitter over the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story never even considered the First Amendment implications — except when Khanna brought it up.  Matt Taibbi reported that Khanna e-mailed now-former VP Vijaya Gadde that Twitter's suppression of the story had generated "a huge backlash" on Capitol Hill, and that free-speech concerns were rising fast.

Twittergate — The Fix Was In.  After years of denial and deplatforming of those who dared question the collusion of Big Tech with Leftist deep state officials to influence the 2020 presidential election and make sure that Donald Trump was not reelected, the facts have been revealed.  Elon Musk on Friday night revealed through Matt Taibbi (who though he is a Leftist seems actually to be a genuine journalist), how Twitter spiked the story of Hunter Biden's laptop and prevent the sordid details of his influence-peddling for The Big Guy to get out to the public, and possibly tip the election in Trump's favor.  Since the revelation, the establishment media and leading Democrats have been in furious damage control mode, insisting that the revelations don't reveal what everyone can see they reveal, and even if they do, they don't matter.  But it's undeniable now:  the fix was in.

Elon Musk's Twitter Reckoning Exposes a Nation Dying of Autoimmune Disease.  We all owe a debt of gratitude to Elon Musk.  That brave and civic-minded innovator actually believes in the founding creed of his adopted nation, America.  He proved that with his purchase of Twitter and his insistence just this Friday on exposing that platform's filthy secrets.  Musk showed us that, by 2020, Twitter had gone from a free speech space to a prime tool for coercion and thought control, in coordination with our country's degenerate ruling class and corrupt secret police.  Social media in America are no freer than the newspapers in North Korea, or the Internet in Iran.  Musk released Twitter's internal records to left-wing whistleblower journalist (and First Amendment purist) Matt Taibbi.

While Twitter Was Busy Silencing Conservatives, It Let Child Porn Fester.  Since Elon Musk took over, Twitter has been kicking more people off its network.  Except this time around it isn't conservatives getting the boot.  It's those trafficking in child porn.  This is what the left and woke companies are freaking out about?  Cybersecurity firm Ghost Data reported over the weekend that Twitter had nearly doubled the number of accounts it's suspending each day that were sharing child pornography.  "In the past 24 hours, Twitter started to step up its efforts and took down 44,000 suspicious accounts, including over 1,300 profiles that tried to bypass detection using codewords and text in images to communicate.  Zero tolerance," said Ghost Data founder Andrea Stoppa, who has been monitoring this, in a tweet.

Media Slow To Yet Another Story That Doesn't Look Good For Their Side.  The media delayed its coverage of the "Twitter Files" and the FBI's "hack-and-leak" reports over the weekend that suggest the agency helped censor the story on Hunter Biden's laptop.  Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi detailed how the former executives at Twitter intentionally suppressed the New York Post's report on Hunter Biden's laptop.  Taibbi reported that former head of legal, policy and trust Viyaja Gadde led the effort to squash the story without the knowledge of former CEO Jack Dorsey.  The liberal and corporate media has been slow to cover the content detailing the lead up to Twitter's days-long censorship of the New York Post for posting the article.  On Sunday, The New York Times published "Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, and a Very Modern Media Maelstrom" that detailed the "Twitter Files" from Friday after receiving backlash for their initial lack of coverage.

More Federal Issues for Twitter as FEC Commissioner Reveals Filing Denying It Worked With Democrats.  While our brave firemen in the media class continue to work diligently to justify not doing their jobs regarding Elon Musk's internal document release from Twitter, more details are coming to light on the severity of the activity engaged in by the prior management.  Earlier today, Bonchie delivered the connection of the FBI with framing the Hunter Biden laptop story.  (This echoes Mark Zuckerberg making a similar revelation a few months ago.)  Now comes another angle to the document release.  Sean Cooksey, the current head of the Federal Elections Commission, looked over some of those exposed communications and he noted some items of interest.  In particular, the internal communications showing how the Biden campaign and DNC officials had a direct line of communication within Twitter and that actions were being taken on the platform at the request/command of the Biden handlers sparked the interest of Cooksey.

'Twitter Files' Fallout Rains Down On Arizona.  Elon Musk's release of information detailing how Twitter suppressed speech during the 2020 presidential election is only the beginning of the story, according to one Texas congressman.  "Investigations are coming," Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas tweeted Friday [12/2/2022].

We Can Reasonably Blame Former Twitter Executives' Censorship for at Least Five Major Consequences.  Let's begin with the premise that suppressing the content of Hunter Biden's laptop affected the outcome of the 2020 Election.  The Media Research Center (MRC) conducted one of the only polls about how the information on the computer would have affected the way people voted.  MRC's analysis found that full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate.  This would have flipped all six of the swing states Biden won to Trump, giving the former President 311 electoral votes.  By that analysis, if not for the fateful decision to censor the laptop story, which Gadde and Baker had a hand in, at least five major things would be different.  First and foremost, it is almost certain there would not be a war in Ukraine right now.  President Trump placed sanctions on the Nord 2 pipeline during his term, despite German objections.  All Biden had to do was stand up to outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  After all, the entire purpose of NATO is to protect the European continent from Russian aggression.  Letting Germany and other western powers become dependent on Russian energy goes directly against the mission.

A quick shift from bully to victim:
Ex-Twitter Executive: Elon Musk Is Putting Us 'In Harm's Way' By Showing How We Censored Content.  Twitter's former head of trust and safety claimed Friday night that Twitter CEO Elon Musk was putting people's lives in danger by revealing internal company documents showing how employees censored conservatives and a negative news story about then-presidential candidate Joe Biden's son.  Yoel Roth, Twitter's former Sr. Director, Head of Trust & Safety, complained about Musk's decision to release internal company communications through journalist Matt Taibbi about the company's censorship of the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election.  Taibbi tweeted out screenshots showing that company officials were in regular contact with Democrats and censored content that Democrats wanted removed.

The Editor says...
Any repercussions from your misbehavior (when it is finally discovered) are entirely your own responsibility.

Censorship by surrogate: Why Musk's document dump could be a game changer.  "Handled."  That one word, responding to a 2020 demand to censor a list of Twitter users, speaks volumes about the thousands of documents released by Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, on Friday night.  As many of us have long suspected, there were back channels between Twitter and the Biden 2020 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to ban critics or remove negative stories.  Those seeking to discuss the scandal were simply "handled," and nothing else had to be said.  Ultimately, the New York Post was suspended from Twitter for reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.  Twitter even blocked users from sharing the Post's story by using a tool designed for child pornography.  Even Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was suspended for linking to the scandal.

Comer: Every Twitter Employee Involved in Squelching Hunter Laptop Story Will Testify Before Congress.  On Friday's broadcast of the Fox News Channel's "Hannity," House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. James Comer (R-KY) reacted to disclosures on Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story by vowing that when he assumes the chairmanship of the Oversight Committee, every Twitter employee who was involved in the handling of the story will be in front of the committee.

Rep. Jim Jordan: Big Tech Censorship Proves The Left No Longer Believes In The First Amendment.  Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan joins Fox Across America With Jimmy Failla to share his reaction to ex-Twitter safety chief Yoel Roth admitting the social media giant's decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story in October of 2020 was a mistake.  [Partial transcript, audio clip.]

Elon Musk Says More Smoking Guns Are on the Way.  Elon Musk set the leftwing mob ablaze on Friday evening after he released internal documents detailing Twitter's collusion with various entities, including the Biden campaign, to censor the Hunter Biden story.  Supposedly unbiased reporters gnashed their teeth, apparently horrified at the practice of such transparency.  Well, those people better get fitted for a mouthguard, because there's more fun to be had.  According to Musk, who spoke during a Twitter Spaces session on Saturday evening, more smoking guns are on the way.

The Armageddon of Free Speech.  According to the critics of Elon Musk, the "rhetoric of free speech absolutists" fails to understand that "for some speech to be free, other speech has to be limited."  It's curious that most of the time, their arguments are self-referential and self-assertive statements and propositions: "Like Trump, Musk has become the tribune of fascists and racists by way of adolescent contrarianism, an insatiable need to flaunt his control and a radicalising inability to cope with being told he's wrong on the internet.

Somebody's Lying: Remember Why the Federal Election Commission Rejected Complaints About Twitter Censorship?  After the "Twitter Files" dropped on Friday evening, it's become clear that someone is fibbing when it comes to the Hunter Biden laptop story — because the details are not adding up.  Let's go back to the beginning.  When the New York Post first dropped its bombshell about Hunter Biden back in October 2020, the story obviously wielded the power to do some real harm to Joe Biden's chances in the general election.  Of course, controversy ensued when Twitter took action to prevent the story from being disseminated on its platform.  As Matt Taibbi, the journalist who brought the "Twitter Files" to light, noted, Twitter essentially threw the laptop story into the same category as child pornography:  [Tweet]  The non-profit group Tea Party Patriots, seeing a blatant attempt to influence the election, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Committee shortly after the story was all but squelched.  That complaint was unanimously dismissed by the FEC in September 2021 when it found "no reason to believe" that Twitter had done anything wrong.

Tweets deleted by Twitter at request of 'Biden team' DO appear to be photos of Hunter smoking crack from laptop.  Images of Hunter Biden naked, smoking crack appear to be in the tweets that staffers from Joe Biden's 2020 campaign instructed Twitter to delete.  The revelation came after the company's new CEO, Elon Musk, published a slew of tweets containing emails from Twitter executives involved in censoring Hunter Biden's laptop.  In one of these emails, sent ten days after The New York Post first broke the laptop story on October 14 of that year, Twitter staffers were asked to 'review' five tweets deemed problematic by 'the Biden team.'

Elon Musk Drops Explosive Hunter Biden Files.  Elon Musk has done it again.  He's managed to make all the right people mad, this time by releasing the internal files detailing Twitter's censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.  As RedState reported, though, things go even further than that, with the Biden administration directly colluding with Twitter to do its bidding for political purposes.  That follows another recent revelation that the FBI was also working with social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden bombshell.  As expected, instead of reacting with horror at the corruption (and collusion) that existed on social media during the 2020 election, "journalists" are trashing Musk for daring to expose all this.  Transparency is bad again.  [Tweet] [...] NBC News' supposed disinformation reporter is not mad that something that was true was suppressed.  Instead, he's mad that the details of how that happened are being revealed.

A deep dive into Elon Musk's 2020-busting 'Twitter Files'.  Just yesterday, Elon Musk revealed devastating internal Twitter emails that prove what conservatives already knew: that the social media giant was actively working with the Democrats to control the flow of information during the 2020 presidential election.  Musk, Twitter's new head, tweeted a link to the account of journalist Matt Taibbi, who posted a thread of tweets including screenshots of emails from Twitter employees.  [Tweet]  Taibbi's tweets refer to an email sent on Oct. 24, 2020, showing Biden's team asking Twitter to "review certain tweets."  There is a reply to a previous email that the Tweets had been "handled."  It is hard to tell what "handled" means.  Perhaps tweets or the accounts were suppressed, or perhaps disclaimers were added.  [Mpre tweets]

Who is Vijaya Gadde, the Twitter exec involved in censoring Post's Hunter Biden laptop bombshell?  One of the high-level Twitter executives who reportedly played "a key role" in the company's decision to censor The Post's bombshell story on Hunter Biden's laptop has a long history of being accused of suppressing conservative voices.  Twitter's former top lawyer Vijaya Gadde was singled out in an explosive Twitter thread on Friday by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who purportedly obtained communications between top officials at the social media company in the wake of The Post's October 2020 story on Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop.  "The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role," Taibbi wrote after reviewing internal company communications for a report he dubbed "The Twitter Files."  Gadde has long been derided by conservatives as the company's "chief censor."

How Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story.  For weeks now, Twitter's new chief Elon Musk has been promising to reveal what really happened behind the scenes at the social media platform in the run up to the 2020 presidential election.  Well, yesterday, Musk did — through the journalist Matt Taibbi.  It's a big story, one that free speech supporters everywhere should take seriously, especially in the United Kingdom where we are on the verge of passing the Online Safety Bill.  What happened at Twitter in 2020 shows how easily concern about 'safety' can, under political pressure, morph into corruption and censorship.  Taibbi, apparently directed by Musk, has released a long Twitter 'thread' citing company emails which show how the website colluded with political actors to censor sensitive information in the run up to the 2020 election.

Hunter Biden laptop bombshell: Elon Musk's Twitter drops Post censorship details.  Twitter "just freelanced" its baseless decision to censor The [New York] Post's bombshell Hunter Biden laptop scoop in the run up to the 2020 election — with top-level workers at the social media giant agreeing that controversial decision was "[bad]," [embarrasssing] insider communications released by CEO Elon Musk Friday [12/2/2022] reveal.  The chaos and confusion behind closed doors at Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the October 2020 Hunter Biden expose show that a small group of top-level execs decided to label the Post's story as "hacked material" without any evidence — behind the back of then-CEO and founder Jack Dorsey.  Musk tweeted a link to the account of independent journalist Matt Taibbi shortly after 6 p.m., who shed light on Twitter's shady censorship decision by posting what appeared to be redacted emails between Twitter employees.  The decision to censor The Post's story was made "at the highest levels of the company," according to Taibbi, but without Dorsey's involvement.

'Biden Team' Requested Twitter Scrub Scandalous Hunter Biden Info Days before 2020 Election.  In an email dated October 24, just days before the 2020 presidential election, the "Biden team" reportedly demanded that Twitter scrub information critical of Hunter Biden from the site, according to a jaw dropping release of "The Twitter Files" by new CEO Elon Musk.  Twitter staff forwarded a request from what seemed to be the Biden campaign to delete five tweets in particular.  "More to review from the Biden team," the message, from the first installment of the documents analyzed by journalist Matt Taibbi, read. "Handled," was the reply.  Three of the tweets, from since-suspended accounts, featured scandalous graphic images of the president's son posing with his genitalia exposed, according to archives, which were leaked from the laptop that the New York Post first uncovered.  In one image, Hunter Biden's nudity is blotted out by red digital paint.  Also on October 24, the Democratic National Committee requested two tweets related to Hunter Biden be removed.  One, from James Wood, was a parody Biden presidential ad displaying his son smoking what appears to be a crack pipe.  [Tweet]

How Twitter Helped Elect Joe Biden.  As Elon Musk promised, Twitter is releasing internal documents about how and why they suppressed information about Joe Biden's corruption, as documented on his son's laptop, in the last weeks of the 2020 campaign.  Twitter apparently outsourced the task to liberal (but not crazy) commentator Matt Taibbi. [...] So far, I would say it tells us pretty much what we already knew.  Liberal Twitter employees seized on a flimsy pretext to suppress a story that would hurt the Biden campaign in the closing days before the election.  Taibbi comments that one striking feature is that the censorship was carried out without the involvement of Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, who later apologized for it.  Perhaps the partisans at Twitter thought Dorsey may not be on board with their censorship.  It is also interesting to read the many replies by liberals who think that what Twitter did was A-OK.

Democrat Staffers Wanted Twitter to Censor More.  House Democrat staffers wanted Twitter to censor more, arguing the "First Amendment isn't absolute," according to internal Twitter emails released by Twitter CEO Elon Musk via Matt Taibbi on Friday evening [12/2/2022].  The emails related to Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which broke in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election.  [Annoying advertisement]  According to the emails, Carl Szabo of research firm Net Choice,had emailed Twitter's head of Public Polic, Lauren Culbertson, a report after polling 12 congressional staffers — nine Republicans and three Democrats.  [Another advertisement]  Szabo reporoted [sic] to Culbertson that the Democrat staffers complained that Twitter "let conservatives muddy the water and make the Biden campaign look corrupt."  [Another advertisement]  They also compared the Hunter Biden laptop story to the Hillary Clinton email scandal, wherein the then-secretary of state set up an unsecured private server in her home basement that contained work and classified emails.  Despite being required to hand over the material, tens of thousands of emails were deleted.

The Editor says...
Breitbart specializes in reporting about other people's reporting, illustrating the reports with other people's tweets, monetizing it all with pop-up ads interspersed throughout, and following up with an assortment of click-bait ads at the bottom of each page.  I doubt if this is the legacy that Andrew Breitbart had in mind.  Somebody is cashing in on Andrew Breitbart's good name, and it isn't Andrew Breitbart.

As Elon Musk fights censorship, states take aim at Anthony Fauci, Big Tech.  While we await Elon Musk's promised release of the "Twitter Files," detailing the 2020 censorship of the New York Post, he has been busy fending off threats to destroy his new $44 billion acquisition unless he drops his commitment to free speech.  He tweeted a video Wednesday afternoon of Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, where he was strolling around the HQ pond in conversation with Apple CEO Tim Cook, whom he has accused of threatening to drop Twitter from the App Store.  A few hours later, Musk declared that he and Cook had "resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store.  Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so."  That will be a big disappointment to the Biden administration, which has been relentlessly attacking Musk ever since he started dismantling Twitter's left-wing censorship regime — euphemistically termed "moderation" — that, among other abuses, suppressed The Post's accurate Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election.

Europe Tries Desperately To Rein In Elon Musk Because Free Speech Threatens The Regime's Grip On Groupthink.  The European Union (EU) reportedly threatened to ban Twitter from the continent on Wednesday if the company's new owner, Elon Musk, doesn't adhere to strict content moderation guidelines.  This warning shot was fired by EU industry chief Thierry Breton, who indicated that the guidelines Musk's Twitter must follow were detailed in the European Commission's Digital Services Act (DSA).  These guidelines include surrendering the platform to "independent audits" conducted by "independent" third parties and the implementation of "mechanisms to adapt swiftly and efficiently in reaction to crises affecting public security or public health," among other things.  Breton indicated that in order to prevent Twitter from being banned in Europe, the tech entrepreneur will have to part ways with his "arbitrary" approach to reinstating the accounts of people previously banned from the platform.  Musk must also surrender the platform to an "extensive independent audit" by 2023. Reportedly, Breton told Musk that the platform must "reinforce content moderation" and "aggressively" root out disinformation.

Elon Musk Keeps Dishing Dirt on Twitter, This Time About Election Interference.  Elon Musk continues to dish dirt on Twitter, and on Wednesday he confirmed something many have been saying for years.  Namely, the social media company has been purposely interfering in elections, attempting to push a specific outcome.  If you were following politics way back in early 2021, you may remember a story that broke describing a "secret cabal" that colluded to rig the outcome of the 2020 election.  [Tweet]  The key phrase there in regard to Twitter is the attempt to "steer media coverage and control the flow of information."  That's exactly what was happening until Musk's takeover, and he seems keen to expose everything the old regime did.

Elon Musk: Twitter Has 'Interfered in Elections'.  Elon Musk claimed in a recent tweet that Twitter has "failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections."  Musk, the new owner of the platform, has promised to release internal documents to restore public trust in the company.  In a recent tweet, Twitter owner Elon Musk responded to a tweet from another user in which he stated that Twitter has "interfered in elections.  The comment was sparked after Reuters tweeted an interview with the extreme leftist former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, in which he stated that the platform has not been made "safer" under Musk.

Ex-Twitter safety chief Finally admits censoring Hunter Biden's laptop story was a huge error.  The former head of trust and safety at Twitter admitted that the company made a mistake when censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story.  Yoel Roth, who resigned earlier in November following Musk's $44 billion takeover, said the authenticity of the New York Post's laptop story was difficult for the social media company to verify, and it was quickly censored in October 2020.  Twitter deliberately prevented users from sharing links to a front-page newspaper article about Hunter Biden's private life and his controversial business ties to Ukraine in the run-up to the 2020 election between Biden's father and Donald Trump.

Elon Musk Drops Data on Banned Accounts, Makes Massive Policy Change.  Elon Musk recently said he would release data related to past banned accounts, and he's done just that.  On Tuesday, Musk released publicly a report that explains how many accounts were banned due to supposed COVID-19 "misinformation."  He then dropped a bomb of a policy change, making it official that Twitter will no longer ban anyone for expressing varying opinions on the coronavirus. [...] This feels like a victory over two years in the making because it is.  So many accounts on Twitter were banned over that period because they dared to break leftwing orthodoxy on COVID-19.  That most commonly took the form of suggesting the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China, a theory that now has more evidence for it than against it.  Many were also banned for questioning the necessity of things like vaccine mandates and passports, since proven pointless, with suggestions about the vaccine's efficacy becoming the third rail no one was allowed to touch.  It's astonishing to think back on just how many things weren't allowed to be said that have now been shown to be probable, if not true.

Musk confirms Twitter censors only targeted conservatives.  Twitter owner Elon Musk confirmed this week that the social media platform's prior operators had used its censorship policies as a vehicle to de-platform only conservative viewpoints.  Conservative activist Dinesh D'Souza had addressed recent headlines announcing the return of prominent right-wing accounts to the platform.  He asserted that the absence of comparable stories involving left-wing figures being reinstated confirmed that the platform had disfavored conservative positions.  "We don't hear much about Democrats and leftists being let back on Twitter.  Why?" he asked.  "Because they were never kicked off in the first place.  Their lies and misinformation simply escaped all scrutiny.  Censorship has been deployed as a one-way operation against conservatives."  D'Souza tagged Musk in the post, prompting him to succinctly reply "correct."  Prior to his purchase of the platform, Musk had vowed to curtail Twitter's censorship of conservative viewpoints and to reinstate the accounts of banned individuals, including former President Donald Trump.  The 45th president's personal account was reinstated earlier this month.

Elon Musk Agrees Twitter Censorship Targeted Conservatives, Not Leftists.  Twitter CEO Elon Musk agreed that it's been conservatives, not leftists, who overwhelmingly bore the brunt of Twitter's Orwellian censorship operation.  Filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza tweeted Nov. 21, "We don't hear much about Democrats and leftists being let back on Twitter.  Why?  Because they were never kicked off in the first place.  Their lies and misinformation simply escaped all scrutiny.  Censorship has been deployed as a one-way operation against conservatives @elonmusk."  The new owner of Twitter agreed with that assessment, responding the next day, "Correct."  D'Souza then tweeted, "Nice to get validated here by Twitter's senior fact checker."  Musk has been slowly reinstating some of the high profile conservatives banned by Twitter.

Elon Musk says he will reveal all secret documents about Twitter's decision to ban Hunter Biden laptop story.  Elon Musk has promised to fully disclose what led to Twitter's decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, 20 months after DailyMail.com authenticated its contents with top experts.  Billionaire Musk responded to a user who demanded the social media giant get to the bottom of why the laptop was blacklisted from the site — which occurred before he bought Twitter.  In an act of 'politically motivated censorship', Twitter deliberately prevented users from sharing a link to a front-page newspaper article about Hunter Biden's private life and his controversial business ties to Ukraine in the run-up to the 2020 Election between Biden's father and Trump.

Will Elon Musk Save the First Amendment?  Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter was finalized last Friday, and the world's richest man confirmed his reason for doing so: "I acquired Twitter because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence."  Musk is reacting to Twitter's blatantly politicized censorship and bullying of conservatives and others who publicize opinions that challenge or expose progressive Democrats' orthodoxy.

'Head of censorship' who quashed Hunter Biden laptop story seen Glaring at Musk before being fired.  A photo has surfaced of Twitter lawyer and "head of censorship" Vijaya Gadde allegedly giving the new "Chief Twit" Elon Musk the evil eye during an awkward meeting with nervous employees at HQ just a day before he officially fired her.  This is the same woman who was behind quashing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election and banning former President Trump from the social media platform.  She permanently suspended Trump from the platform on January 8, 2021, citing "the risk of further incitement of violence" after the Capitol riot.  Gadde has been very vocal in her criticism of Musk.  She literally wept at a meeting in April when she found out he planned to buy the company, Politico reported.  The leftist is a well-known Democratic donor.  She earned $17 million in 2021 via Twitter and was with the company for more than 11 years.

Elon Musk Strikes Gold: 'Twitter Board Deliberately Hid This Evidence from the Court'.  Elon Musk says he's caught Twitter's sacked former leadership team in a lie.  Musk shared what are purportedly internal Twitter communications originating from Yoel Roth, the head of Safety and Integrity at the company.  In a Sunday Twitter post, the Tesla mega billionaire points to the communication as proof that Twitter's former executives and the company's lawyers hid evidence before the court that dealt with Musk's attempt to void his acquisition of Twitter.

Elon Musk Tweets that Twitter Board and Law Firm Deliberately Hid Evidence from the Court.  It looks like Twitter's Board and Law firm may be in very big trouble.  Elon Musk tweeted that the Twitter Board and the law firm that worked for Twitter, Wachtell, may have withheld information from him and the court.  This is big news for Twitter and its law firm if it is true. [...] Not only might the Twitter Board and Attorney be in trouble for lying with the court, but the these entities would be in trouble with the SEC as well for filing false statements as we reported earlier as well.

ABC [is] worried that Twitter censorship will decline.  The Left is schizophrenic when it comes to Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter.  First they hated it.  Then they wanted to force him to buy it.  Now they are scared that the deal will go through.  This week we learned that the Biden Administration is actually considering scotching the deal because it threatens national security, meaning Democrat control over the Narrative™.  No kidding.  They actually are floating the notion that Elon Musk is such a threat to National Security that the Biden Administration should be able to control his business activities.

Lots of FBI Officials Work at Jack's Magic Coffee Shop.  The suspicions surrounding Jack's Magic Coffee shop are not new.  Indeed, the recent whistleblower claims of data insecurity seem to align with the overall theme that U.S. government interest are more than a little deeply involved in the domestic surveillance system known as Twitter specifically, and big social media in general.  In the latest datapoint assembly, a solid dive by MintPressNews into the number of former FBI officials working at Twitter, shows just how enmeshed the federal police are with the social media platform.  The scale is really quite remarkable.  Big picture — the number of FBI officials working for Twitter indicates some strong connective tissue behind both enterprises.

FBI Colluded With Big Tech To Prevent Voters From Learning About Hunter Biden's Laptop.  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook algorithmically suppressed stories about Hunter Biden's laptop during the 2020 election at the request of the FBI weeks before the November contest.  Speaking on Joe Rogan's podcast on Thursday, Zuckerberg said the FBI approached employees at the tech giant to warn that the laptop was a vehicle of Russian interference.  "The FBI basically came to us and spoke to some folks on our team and was like, 'Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert.  We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda on the 2016 election.  We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump similar to that,'" Zuckerberg said.  The CEO did not say precisely when the discussion took place.

FBI: No, we would never have told Zuckerberg to bury the Hunter laptop story.  When Facebook/Meta honcho Mark Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan show recently, he created some waves by confirming something most of us were pretty sure of already.  In the weeks before the 2020 election, the FBI directly contacted Facebook and told them that the Hunter Biden laptop story was going to drop and that it was "probably Russian disinformation."  Of course, the story was 100% real and not disinformation of any sort, but Facebook went ahead and suppressed the New York Post story about it anyway until Joe Biden was safely past the general election.  Twitter similarly shut down the story and banned the Post from their platform for weeks.  Last night, the FBI finally responded to Zuckerberg's revelation, saying that they would never (perish the thought) engage in any sort of election interference and they "routinely provide foreign threat indicators" to social media platforms.

Twitter Restores Account of UK Doctor Skeptical of COVID-19 Vaccines After Permanently Suspending It.  Twitter on Tuesday restored the account of a British doctor known for questioning the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines after telling her the account had been "permanently suspended due to multiple or repeat" rule violations.  Dr. Clare Craig, a diagnostic pathologist who has more than 145,000 followers on Twitter, had her account suspended on Sunday without getting an explanation.  After she appealed the suspension, Twitter told her on Tuesday that the account had been permanently suspended, hours before restoring it, blaming the incident on a system that "find[s] and remove[s] multiple automated spam accounts in bulk."  Speaking to The Epoch Times on Tuesday afternoon, Craig said she realised on Monday that her account had been suspended, but believes it happened on Sunday.

Paul Sperry's Suspension — What You Are Not Allowed to Know.  Paul Sperry is an investigative reporter who was permanently suspended from Twitter earlier this week.  He was suspended before, in February 2021.  He uses anonymous sources like the legacy media, and sometimes he is wrong.  But, we know that many want to hear what his sources are telling him.  Twitter won't allow it, but he's getting his information out despite them.  With Sperry's permanent suspension, Twitter continues to crack down on dissenting political views this week.  The suspension came after Sperry tweeted about the FBI's raid on Mar-a-Lago.  Sperry said that Twitter gave "No warning, no explanation, reason given."

The 2024 Election Is Being Rigged Right Now In Plain Sight.  This week, Twitter announced it would begin enforcing its Civics Integrity Project for the 2022 midterms:  "This means we'll take action against misleading claims about the voting process, misleading content intended to intimidate or dissuade people from participating in the election, or misleading claims that may undermine public confidence in elections outcomes."  And what that means, in light of Twitter's past behavior around election time, is that anyone who questions the voting processes or outcomes, however justifiably and no matter what irregularities are afoot, will be shut down by Twitter.  The targets here are painstakingly clear:  Trump voters who believe, rightly, that the 2020 election was riddled with irregularities, last-minute changes to voting rules, and absentee ballot fraud.  The best way to understand Twitter's midterm elections policy, which is itself a preview of its 2024 policy, is that anyone who complains about universal absentee voting, ballot harvesting, remote ballot drop boxes, loose voter ID rules, or any other Democrat-favored policies that are known to make elections less secure will be silenced on Twitter.

White House asked Twitter why Alex Berenson wasn't banned from the platform, lawsuit reveals.  Substack writer Alex Berenson shared internal communications from Twitter that revealed the White House inquired about why his account had not been banned, according to findings from his lawsuit with the tech giant.  Berenson announced last month that he and Twitter reached a "mutually acceptable resolution" that prompted his Twitter account to be reinstated.  After previously hinting that the Biden administration may have played a role in his deplatforming from Twitter, Berenson published screenshots of an April 2021 exchange between Twitter employees regarding a meeting it had with White House officials.

Twitter Announces Plan to Combat "Misleading Narrative" Just in Time for Midterms.  The Silicon Valley Thought Police are hot on the trail of political thoughtcrime ahead of this year's midterm elections in the United States.  On Thursday, the San Francisco-based microblogging service Twitter announced that it was dusting off its Civic Integrity Policy, which the tech giant claims is meant to prohibit "manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes."  "Today, we're announcing steps we're taking ahead of the US midterms to protect civic conversation on Twitter," the company announced.  The company has had a version of the policy since 2018 and has touted its use in the Philippines, Kenya, Australia, Brazil, and India this year.

Twitter Suspends Paul Sperry Over MAL Raid Coverage.  The interesting thing about Sperry's latest suspension by Twitter is that it may have been caused by a release of information rather than opinion.  Here, via Zerohedge, is a screen grab of the tweet that I suspect was the real reason for the suspension:  [Tweet]  To me, that looks like legitimate reporting — unless Twitter has some good reason for believing that it contains knowing falsehoods.  But if that were the case, I would have expected Twitter to have banned Sperry.  Therefore, I'd say that speculation on this account is quite legitimate.  It seems to me that the June meeting — presumably with the government archive folks? — regarding "docs" in Trump's possession is an event that would be eminently confirmable, or falsifiable.  The parties to such a meeting would have documented it and there would also be travel records and digital records to confirm it.  If true, the fact of such a meeting is deeply interesting because it could have a direct bearing on statement that the FBI and DoJ may have made in the affidavit in support of its search warrant application.

Social media appear to be planning to censor the truth about the Democrats prior to the November election.  Social media apparently are planning on turbo-charging the censoring of conservative voices — particularly ones who criticize Democrats — leading up to the midterm elections.  How do I know this?  What happened to me on Twitter last weekend cannot be an accident and is enough evidence for me.  That's how.  What I am about to report is anecdotal.  But from little anecdotes, great forests of fake news and censorship can grow.  Last weekend, I read an article at Yahoo News that was originally published at the certifiably left-wing site The Daily Beast.  The article's title was "'Shocking' Monkeypox Screw-Up Means We Need to Admit We Now Face Two Pandemics."  The message was clear:  another major pandemic is imminent, and the federal government and the tail wagging the dog — the medical establishment — will soon be unveiling draconian plans to combat it, similar to what went down for two years with COVID-19.

Twitter Is Suppressing Hunter Information to Protect 'The Big Guy'.  In 2019, when The New York Post broke the Hunter Biden story, Twitter dutifully turned into the information KGB.  The second any news of Hunter appeared, it disappeared like a dissident with a sign in Red Square.  For information distribution Twitter was Pravda.  It amplified propaganda disparaging the Hunter news as "classic Russian disinformation."  So did MSNBC and CNN and their cadre of faithful DNC mouthpieces.  The irony was not lost on anyone.  Twitter hid the story and the DNC hid Joe in a basement.

Twitter re-instates account of COVID critic Alex Berenson.  lex Berenson, the writer and outspoken critic of much of the world's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, had his Twitter account reinstated Wednesday after nearly a year of being barred from the platform.  Berenson announced his return to Twitter on the platform, in a post the directed readers to a Substack post in which he explains his reinstatement.  "The parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution.  I have been reinstated," Berenson wrote on the Substack post.  "Twitter has acknowledged that my tweets should have not led to my suspension at that time."  The tweet that resulted in Berenson's suspension, from late August of 2021, criticized COVID vaccine mandates with a harsh assessment of how the vaccine itself works.

13 People, Outlets Censored by Twitter for Questioning Gender Ideology.  Of the many topics the radical left has tried to make verboten, there is none more contentious than gender ideology.  At the mere suggestion that a man cannot become a woman or that there are only two genders, the Twitter harpies take flight to seek and destroy their target.  Twitter is all too happy to support the mob in its quest for domination.

Twitter Is Just Fine With Calls to Assassinate Justice Thomas.  Shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned, a Twitter user with the handle @redfrnn, who has since deleted his or her or xis account, tweeted: "i'm going to assassinate supreme court justice Clarence Thomas."  The same Twitter user had just before that tweeted a photo of a gun, saying: "im considering buying a mac mini."  Twitter, however, did not find this murderous psychopath to be in violation of their rules, despite the fact that those rules say, "You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people."  Well, sure.  You can't threaten violence against an individual, but Clarence Thomas, he's a conservative.  And not only does Thomas dare to dissent from the Left's agenda, but he is one of the most powerful individuals in the country who is actively working against it.  So would the Twitter fascists mind if @redfrnn or someone else actually did kill him?  It's unlikely that they'd shed a tear, even for the fallen rule of law in our staggering republic.

The Federal Bureau of Tweets:  Twitter Is Hiring an Alarming Number of FBI Agents.  Twitter has been on a recruitment drive of late, hiring a host of former feds and spies.  Studying a number of employment and recruitment websites, MintPress has ascertained that the social media giant has, in recent years, recruited dozens of individuals from the national security state to work in the fields of security, trust, safety and content.  Chief amongst these is the Federal Bureau of Investigations.  The FBI is generally known as a domestic security and intelligence force.  However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace.  "The FBI's investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies," the "About" section of its website informs readers.  "The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence [and] cyber crime," it adds.  For example, in 2019, Dawn Burton (the former director of Washington operations for Lockheed Martin) was poached from her job as senior innovation advisor to the director at the FBI to become senior director of strategy and operations for legal, public policy, trust and safety at Twitter.

Twitter Repeatedly Claims 'Error' To Disguise Deliberate Censorship Of Conservatives.  Twitter repeatedly locks the accounts of conservatives who criticize the left's narrative.  When outrage about the Big Tech company's knack for political censorship bubbles, Twitter occasionally claims it made a mistake.  This week, it happened again.  Citing an "error," Twitter reinstated the account of "Relatable" podcast host Allie Beth Stuckey on Monday night.  But that was only after it received backlash for locking the Christian conservative's account because she criticized Fox News for celebrating a California couple who forced radical transgender ideology on their 14-year-old daughter when she was an infant.  "I'm stunned that Fox News ran a segment celebrating a girl whose parents 'transitioned' her into a boy when she was 5 because she apparently told them she was a boy 'before [she] could talk.'  Absolutely maddening & heartbreaking," Stuckey's original tweet stated.

Meet the Conspiracy Theorist Behind Twitter's 'Crisis Misinformation Policy'.  Twitter's pick to stop the spread of misinformation in times of crisis has a history of pushing falsehoods.  Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter's safety and integrity unit, unveiled the site's "crisis misinformation policy" on Thursday [5/19/2022].  In a blog post, Roth outlined how Twitter will place warning labels on tweets deemed to contain misinformation and prevent them from being "amplified or recommended" in times of armed conflict, natural disasters, or public health emergencies.  Roth is a questionable pick to launch the policy, given his own track record with misinformation.  Roth oversaw Twitter's decision to block the sharing of an October 2020 New York Post report on emails from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop.  Roth told the Federal Election Commission he made the decision based on "rumors" shared by the United States government's intelligence community that the Russian government might release materials hacked from Hunter Biden.

The Editor says...
Consider for a moment that "times of armed conflict, natural disasters, or public health emergencies" includes almost 100 percent of the foreseeable future.

Project Veritas Catches Vicious Twitter Executive Dismissing Free Speech and Mocking People with Asperger's.  It did not take Elon Musk long to react to the second explosive undercover video of Twitter executives disparaging free speech and even mocking Musk for Asperger's.  This will not end well for Mr. Alex Martinez, Lead Client Partner for Twitter advertising.  [Video clip]

Undercover Project Veritas recording reveals Twitter engineer saying platform censors the right but NOT the left.  A senior engineer at Twitter has admitted the social media giant has a strong left-wing bias and they routinely censor conservatives.  Siru Murugesan was recorded saying the company culture is extremely far left where workers are 'commie as [...] ' and they 'hate, hate, hate' Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover.  In a shockingly frank conversation, filmed over several encounters, he said the firm 'does not believe in free speech' and even started to turn him left-wing when he joined.

'Twitter does not believe in free speech.'  Every conservative knows that Twitter does not believe in free speech.  However, just because one knows something, that doesn't mean it's not tremendously satisfying to hear that admission from the horse's mouth — and in this case, the horse is Siru Murugesan, a senior engineer caught on hidden camera in a Project Veritas video.  Murugesan is an interesting man because he concedes two important things:  (1) working at Twitter has turned him into a leftist because that's the mindset of the entire company, and (2) he's beginning to think Elon Musk is making sense when he says free speech is important.  Murugesan's open-mindedness may flow from the fact that he's been experiencing some cognitive dissonance.  According to Murugesan, it's unquestionable that "Twitter does not believe in free speech."  However, he hasn't quite grasped that this hostility to free speech is about power and control.

'90% Bots': Elon Musk Reveals Twitter Is a Military Grade Psy-Op To Brainwash the Masses.  Elon Musk's plan to buy Twitter might be on hold for now after the world's richest man came to the conclusion that artificial intelligence (AI) bots posing as human users account for the vast majority of users on the platform.  Based on his assessment, Musk alleges that up to 90 percent of Twitter's entire user base is fake.  This situation has obvious implications for the valuation of the company.  If most of the users are fake, advertisers will be far less interested in spending money to place ads on the platform.  But the implications of the bot count don't stop there and reveal much about the true, inner workings of Big Tech.

Elon Musk Terminates Twitter Purchase Deal, Citing Material Breach of Agreement by Company Refusing to Provide Access to Data.  Elon Musk has notified Twitter and the SEC that he is exercising his "right to terminate the merger agreement and abandon the transaction contemplated" due to the social media company not providing transparent access to background data that would allow authentication of "monetized daily active users" (mDAUs).  It appears that Twitter Inc did not want to reveal how Jack's Magic Coffee Shop was able to sustain operations, at an extremely high cost, without making money.  That's the essential source of the issue.  The social media company did not want anyone looking at the data stream inside the communication platform.  Musk was not allowed to authenticate the number of real users and identify the number of 'spam' or 'bot' accounts within the platform.

Musk Suggests Slashing Twitter Takeover Offer Based on Bot Numbers.  Elon Musk has suggested he wants to slash his initial $44 billion takeover bid for social media platform Twitter after accounting for the proportion of bots present on the microblogging site.  "I'm worried that Twitter has a disincentive to reduce spam, as it reduces perceived daily users," Musk said in a series of tweets on May 21.  "They still refuse to explain how they calculate that 5% of daily users are fake/spam!  Very suspicious."  When someone on Twitter pointed out that if 25 percent of users on Twitter are bots, then the acquisition deal should cost 25 percent less, Musk responded, "Absolutely."  On May 13, Musk wrote on Twitter that the deal is "temporarily on hold" pending details supporting the company's claim that fake or spam accounts only make up 5 percent of total users.  According to a joint Twitter analysis conducted by SparkToro and Followerwonk that looked at 44,058 public Twitter accounts randomly selected from 130 million-plus accounts, 19.42 percent of them were spam or fake accounts — four times that of Twitter's claim.

Elon Musk says $44 billion Twitter deal can't proceed until CEO proves the platform has fewer than 5% fake accounts.  Elon Musk said Tuesday his proposed $44 billion Twitter buyout can't move forward until Twitter's CEO provides proof the platform has fewer than 5% fake accounts.  "My offer was based on Twitter's SEC filings being accurate," Musk tweeted.  Musk announced Friday he was putting his Twitter deal "on hold" while assessing how the company calculates the proportion of fake accounts it harbors.  In a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, Twitter says that fewer than 5% of accounts on its platform are fake.

It's OK to incite violence on Twitter — as long as it's against the right.  In the wake of an unprecedented leak from the Supreme Court of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, national Democrats have taken to social media appearing to encourage violence.  Earlier this week, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot issued a tweet calling on "friends in the LGBTQ+ community" to recognize this moment as "a call to arms," stating in a second tweet that "we will not surrender our rights without a fight."  Multiple verified Twitter accounts, including a senior correspondent at Vox, have tweeted calls to "burn it down," referring to both the country and the Supreme Court itself.  Notably, this rhetoric is taking place on a platform that purports to ban the "glorification of violence" and that infamously issued a permanent ban against a sitting president of the United States for, according to Twitter employees, doing just that — though with far less specific and anodyne tweets.

Free Speech Failure Jack Dorsey:  Twitter Blacklisting Donald Trump Was a 'Business Decision'.  Twitter co-founder and free speech failure Jack Dorsey recently agreed with Elon Musk after the Tesla CEO said that the platform's decision to ban former President Donald Trump permanently was "morally wrong and flat out stupid."  According to Dorsey, he blacklisted Trump after making a "business decision."  Business Insider reports that Twitter founder Jack Dorsey recently agreed with Tesla CEO Elon Musk's statement that banning former President Donald Trump from Twitter was a mistake.  Musk plans to acquire Twitter for $44 billion and confirmed this week that he would reinstate Trump's account if the deal goes ahead.

Coming soon: a defamation suit against Twitter.  In Ireland.  Defamation, per Oxford Languages:  "the action of damaging the good reputation of someone; slander or libel."  In banning me from the platform for supposedly violating "our COVID-19 misinformation rules," a statement it made to multiple news outlets last year, Twitter did not merely severely damage my reputation as a journalist.  It tarred me as a menace to public health.  I am not exaggerating.

Elon Musk Puts Twitter Acquisition on Hold Pending Verification of 95 Percent Authentic Users.  Earlier today Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted, "Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users."  He also said, "still committed to acquisition."  While tech stocks have been collapsing over the past 15 days, from a big picture perspective this approach by Musk looks like a potential negotiation strategy to lower the offer.  The actual number of spam/bot accounts on the platform is unknown.

Elon Musk attempts to take SEC to Supreme Court over gag order he claims is unconstitutional.  Just days after taking over control of Twitter, Elon Musk has now set his sights on going after federal regulators the SEC.  The Tesla founder has quietly signed onto an amicus brief filed last week that could prevent the Securities and Exchange Commission from issuing gag orders which prevent people who settle with the SEC without admitting fault from discussing their cases.  He signed a supporting petition filed by Barry Romeril, a former chief financial officer for Xerox, asking the Supreme Court to negate a 2003 deal in which he agreed to always stay silent about the fraud case against him, the New York Times reports.

The Ministry of Truth Is Real.  Things got pretty weird, pretty quickly in the wake of Elon Musk's trial balloon about buying Twitter[.] [...] The Biden administration and progressive activists (including former President Obama) sprang into action following Monday's [4/25/2022] announcement and — quite literally — began the process of defining disinformation and calling for its regulation to make sure bad speech was addressed and eliminated from the collective safe space. [...] But the Biden administration, feeble as it is, was just doing the hard job laid out for it by former president Barack Obama[,] who was just doing the job laid out for him by the Aspen Institute's disinformation commission.  Obama gave a speech at Stanford University on April 21st outlining the threats of disinformation online and how unfettered speech is a threat to democracy (Musk was already well in the throes of figuring out how to convince Twitter to sell by this point, of course).  And the former president painted a very frightening picture, indeed.  One that ultimately pointed a finger back at "companies that have come to dominate the internet generally, and social media platforms in particular."

Top Twitter lawyer who banned Trump and hid Hunter Biden laptop scandal donated $18,000 to the Democrats.  Twitter's top lawyer Vijaya Gadde is in the spotlight after Elon Musk criticized her in a string of scathing tweets, leading a former company executive to accuse the billionaire of 'bullying' and spearheading a harassment campaign.  Gadde, 47, has been a low-key Silicon Valley power player for years, and at Twitter played a key role in the contentious decisions to ban Donald Trump and suppress news articles about Hunter Biden's laptop.  After moving to the US from India with her family as a toddler, Gadde and her family faced racism as she grew up in Beaumont, Texas, where she has said her father had to seek approval from the Ku Klux Klan to sell insurance door-to-door.

The Editor says...
I lived in Beaumont at about the time Ms. Gadde was born, and her anecdote about getting permission from the KKK seems highly dubious.  The KKK kept a very low profile.  Also I don't think I ever saw a door-to-door salesman when I lived there.

Tucker Carlson's Twitter account is reinstated just hours after Elon Musk purchased the platform:  TV host.  Fox News host Tucker Carlson returned to Twitter just hours after it was announced that billionaire Elon Musk bought the social media platform for $44 billion.  'We're back,' the @TuckerCarlson account tweeted Monday night, shortly after the Tesla CEO successfully completed his takeover of the social media platform.  Carlson was suspended from the platform last month after Twitter determined he violated its rules by referring to Assistant Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine, who is a transgender woman, as a man.

The Editor says...
Dr. Levine is a transvestite.  Wearing a wig and a dress does not turn him into a woman.

Twitter Board of Directors Own Almost No Shares of Stock in Company.  In the ongoing public battle over Twitter as a speech platform, one actual user of Twitter, Chris Bakke, wanted to see who exactly these Board of Directors are, who are attempting to stop Elon Musk from purchasing it.  Chris Bakke then noted how little of the actual stock is owned by the company's Board of Directors.  Sans Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey, the combined ownership of the entire board equates to 77 shares of stock, worth around $3,200 bucks.  The Board of Directors consists of academics, tech executives, business and policy wonks, and a random baroness who doesn't even use the service.  These are the people who are making fiduciary decisions for all Twitter stock owners without any financial stake in the decisions they make for the company.

Value Of Jack Dorsey's First Tweet Plummets 99% As NFT Market Craters.  A man who paid $2.9 million last March for an NFT of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet is set to lose almost everything on the digital investment.  Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi made headlines last year after snapping up Dorsey's tweet, which reads: "just setting up my twttr."  The Iranian-born Estavi expected to make more than 15x on the investment, listing it on popular NFT marketplace OpenSea last week for $48 million.  He vowed to send 50% of the proceeds to charity.

Even Jack Dorsey Is Slamming Twitter's Board and Pointing out Their Corruption.  Twitter creator and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, hasn't been America's favorite person, nor should he be.  He is one of the architects of Twitter's hard-left, speech-silencing ways, after all.  In what many would consider a strange turn of events, Dorsey seems to have found his voice about the problems going on behind the scenes at Twitter.

Twitter bans ads that contradict science on climate change.  Twitter says it will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny the scientific consensus on climate change, echoing a policy already in place at Google.  "Ads shouldn't detract from important conversations about the climate crisis," the company said in a statement outlining its new policy Friday [4/22/2022].  There was no indication that the change would affect what users post on the social media site, which along with Facebook has been targeted by groups seeking to promote misleading claims about climate change.  The announcement coinciding with Earth Day came hours before the European Union agreed upon a deal requiring big tech companies to vet their sites more closely for hate speech, disinformation and other harmful content.

The Editor says...
If I raise doubts about flawed computer models, failed predictions of doom, and a wide variety of events blamed on global warming, am I making "misleading claims about climate change?"

Is Hunter Biden's Laptop Killing Twitter as We Know It?  [Scroll down]  Which is to say, it can be reasonably assumed that had Elon Musk been running Twitter in October of 2020 he would never have blocked the transmission of the New York Post story on Hunter's laptop because — drumroll — Musk believes that "free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy."  The reaction from Twitter employees was swift.  "I may have to rethink my employment if that actually happens" tweeted one, tellingly revealing exactly the mindset that resulted in shutting down the Post Twitter account and the Post laptop scoop. [...] The Twitter board would use a "poison pill" defense to kill the Musk bid to take the company.  And why?  For the very same reason that anonymous Twitter employee said he would want out of his Twitter job if Musk took over:  because he would be forced to stop censoring conservative speech.  And if there's anything Twitter executives, board members and employees value more than earning money for employees and shareholders it would be silencing conservative speech.

Twitter Suspends LibsofTikTok For Featuring Liberals Talking About Themselves?  Twitter has continued its ever-widening censorship of social media this week with the suspension of the popular site, The @LibsofTikTok.  What is interesting about this latest move is that it lacks even the pretense of neutrality.  The liberal group Media Matters had targeted the site due to its use by Fox News and conservatives to run embarrassing stories for the left.  So Twitter suspended a site that entirely features liberals talking about themselves.  Twitter suspended the site for "hateful conduct."  It warned the site "You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease."  However, the site highlights liberals speaking about themselves and their values in their own voices.  There is no explanation, which is common for the company.  It simply suspended the site and told it to reform itself.

Twitter faces the 'nightmare' of being forced into free speech.  Twitter's board of directors gathered this week to sign what sounds like a suicide pact.  It unanimously voted to swallow a "poison pill" to tank the value of the social media giant's shares rather than allow billionaire Elon Musk to buy the company.  The move is one way to fend off hostile takeovers, but what is different in this case is the added source of the hostility:  Twitter and many liberals are apoplectic over Musk's call for free speech protections on the site.  Company boards have a fiduciary duty to do what is best for shareholders, which usually is measured in share values.  Twitter has long done the opposite.  It has virtually written off many conservatives — and a large portion of its prospective market — with years of arbitrary censorship of dissenting views on everything from gender identity to global warming, election fraud and the pandemic.  Most recently, Twitter suspended a group, Libs of Tik Tok, for "hateful conduct." The conduct?  Reposting what liberals have said about themselves.

Musk Makes the Mask Slip.  Though he has just offered to buy Twitter for around $40 billion, it's far from clear that Elon Musk knows how to run a social media platform.  Speaking about his bid at an event last week, Musk mused that people should be "able to speak freely within the bounds of the law."  But a social media product that came to be dominated by anti-Semitism, porn, coordinated abuse, virulent racial animus, and bot-generated foreign propaganda — all forms of speech "within the bounds of the law" — would soon have little value.  During the same interview, Musk announced that his "top priority" is to eliminate spam — perfectly lawful communication.  Musk does not seem to have thought this through yet.  Twitter is not necessarily a well-run business.  Mark Zuckerberg once described it as a clown car driven into a goldmine.  It has drawn scrutiny from activist investors before — a fact that likely played a role in Jack Dorsey's recent departure — and is thus in a poor position to reject Musk's offer on grounds that the company's stock is undervalued.

One Industry Insider Suggests The U.S. Government Plays A HUGE Role In Twitter.  There aren't a lot of new insights I come across where I sit dumbfounded, but this was one of them.  A huge kudos to Sundance over at Conservative Treehouse for shedding some light on the mostly-unknown world of Big Tech.  As bad as Twitter and the entire tech oligarchy is, it would appear that the situation is worse than even imagned.  Shadow banning of conservatives isn't fair — or legal, if Twitter is indeed the new public square — but things are about to really heat up if Sundance's insights and Elon's recent actions prove meaningful.  In short, Musk either intentionally or unintentionally stumbled upon the fact that Twitter's servers might be, or probably are, owned by several world governments and almost assuredly our own.  The next time you consider the fact that the sitting President of the United States was banned, just imagine THOSE ramifications.

Twitter bans Bill Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick over COVID-19 vaccine tweet.  Juanita Broaddrick has been banned from Twitter after the platform flagged her most recent tweet challenging the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccines.  Broaddrick, the former nursing administrator who accused former President Bill Clinton of raping her, provided to Fox News Digital an email from Twitter announcing the suspension of her account.  The company said her account has been locked for "violating the policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19."

Twitter IS 'State-Affiliated Media'.  British politician and broadcaster George Galloway has made headlines in the U.K. with his threat to press legal action against Twitter for designating his account "Russia state-affiliated media," a label which will now show up under his name every time he posts anything on the platform.  "Dear @TwitterSupport I am not 'Russian State Affiliated media'," reads a viral tweet by Galloway.  "I work for NO Russian media.  I have 400,000 followers.  I'm the leader of a British political party and spent nearly 30 years in the British parliament.  If you do not remove this designation I will take legal action."  Galloway argues that while his broadcasts have previously been aired by Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik, because those outlets have been shut down in the U.K. by Ofcom and by European Union sanctions he can no longer be platformed by them even if he wants to.  If you accept this argument, then it looks like Twitter is essentially using the "state-affiliated media" designation as a marker of who Galloway is as a person, rather than as a marker of what he actually does.

Twitter Suspends Former U.N. Weapons Inspector for Questioning Ukrainian Government Claims of War Crimes.  A quote attributed to George Orwell states, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act."  It appears that quote was considerably prescient as Big Tech and the U.S. intelligence apparatus collaborate to retain their narrative.  Former U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter has been suspended from Twitter for questioning the transparently sketchy circumstances around Bucha, Ukraine.  [Twitter warning]  Regardless of your position on the Ukraine -vs- Russia conflict, the larger concern is the manipulation of information in an increasingly totalitarian era.  The entire premise of democracy, speech and open debate is being undermined by the collaboration of tech platforms and the U.S. intelligence apparatus.  In this era of new "democratic norms", trust in the institutions of government has collapsed.

If Congress Doesn't Rein In Big Tech, Censors Will Eliminate The Right From Public Discourse.  Something both convoluted and disturbing happened on Twitter this week that illustrates why it's not enough for lawmakers in Washington to haul Big Tech executives before congressional committees every now and then and give them a good talking to.  Congress actually has to do something about this.  Regulating social media giants like Twitter and Facebook as common carriers, prohibiting them from censoring under the absurd pretext that speech they don't like is "harmful" or "abusive," would be a good place to start.  If that doesn't happen, Twitter will eventually ban every conservative voice and every media outlet that dares to challenge left-wing pieties about race, gender, and a host of other issues.

Tucker Carlson [was] Censored By Twitter After Agreeing With Censored Tweets.  Twitter removed a post by Tucker Carlson Tuesday after the Fox News host dared to point out that content recently banned by the social media company contained factual information.  [Tweet]  Carlson's offending post highlighted screenshots from Twitter telling satire site The Babylon Bee and conservative activist Charlie Kirk to remove tweets regarding transgender Biden HHS appointee Rachel Levine deemed "hateful conduct."

Twitter is Punishing Another Account Over Rachel Levine.  On Sunday night, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon shared over Twitter that the social media platform informed him that the account for the satirical news site "has been locked for violating the Twitter rules," when it comes to "hateful conduct."  The problematic tweet in question is from March 15, and links to a post from that same day proclaiming "The Babylon Bee's Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine."  [Tweet]  Despite such a warning, the tweet in question is still available. [...] Levine was narrowly confirmed by the Senate last March as the assistant secretary to Health & Human Services, and was also promoted to four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which The Washington Post predictably celebrated as the "organization's first-ever female four-star admiral."  Not only did were there celebrations about a so-called accomplishment, but those who dared to take issue were censored.

Tulsi Gabbard 'censored': Google, YouTube deem[s] Fox News interview 'inappropriate or offensive'.  Google and YouTube have declared former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to be inappropriate viewing.  Ms. Gabbard posted a three-minute clip on Twitter on Wednesday evening, most of which was of an appearance by her on Fox News Channel's "The Ingraham Angle."  [Tweet]  But she labeled the clip "this is what Google/YouTube doesn't want you to say," based on the first several seconds.

Twitter suffers a devastating 9th Circuit defeat.  In January 2021, after the lil bird kicked off Donald Trump, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton said he would investigate Twitter's "content moderation" (aka censorship) policies.  Twitter didn't like this idea.  So it went running to its home courts in California to try to get them to quash Paxton's investigation before his office had tried to enforce a single subpoena.  Because First Amendment, which Twitter appeared to think protects it from any and all legal and governmental scrutiny.  Things have not gone as planned for the lil bird.  On Wednesday [3/2/2022], following some back-and-forth, three 9th Circuit judges blew Twitter out of the water.  They found that Twitter's effort to block the investigation was not "ripe," because Texas hadn't actually gone to court to enforce its requests.  By itself, that portion of the ruling was more procedural than substantive.  But the judges didn't stop there.

Twitter Sues Texas AG Ken Paxton for Investigating Their Censorship Practices.  CTH spidey senses are on maximum alert on the background to this story.  On its face Twitter is suing Texas AG Ken Paxton for targeting them with inquiries into their practice of censorship and deplatforming.  The lawsuit baseline is essentially (and ironically) because Paxton is a government official, Twitter is claiming their 'first amendment' right to control speech on their private platform is under attack.  However, you might ask yourself why Twitter chose Paxton and not Florida Governor DeSantis or any other government official who is doing essentially the same thing as AG Paxton with their efforts against Big Tech.  This is where suspicious cat comes into play because there's always another angle with these tech leftists... you just need to know how to spot it.  Ken Paxton is under investigation by the FBI for an unrelated securities fraud case, and there has been a long-standing court battle underway.

Twitter suspends John Solomon's account for story on peer-reviewed COVID study.  Twitter on Thursday [3/3/2022] suspended the account of Just the News CEO and Editor John Solomon for tweeting a story about a peer-reviewed study on COVID vaccines published in a respected medical journal by a research university that has worked with the both National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization.  The platform claimed the story was "violating the policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19" even though the story quoted federal agencies' context for the issue raised by the story.

Twitter Suspends Kassam AGAIN After Mocking Biden YouTube Audience Size.  Twitter suspended the account of National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam for mocking the size of President Biden's YouTube audience.  The latest in a recent string of temporary suspensions of his account, Kassam's offending tweet focused on the small audience watching the event "President Biden delivers remarks on the American Rescue Plan."  [Tweet]  Kassam later added to the thread:  "Remember, they claim he got 81 MILLION votes.  Honeslty I'm starting to believe he didn't get 18 MILLION."

Twitter Verifies, Suspends Tiny Left-Wing Fact-Check Account.  Twitter appeared to bend over backwards to verify a new left-wing fact-checker soon after the account's creation.  But now, the account has been suspended.  Twitter had awarded a blue-check "verified" badge to an account called the Trusted Report Team, "@trteam_official."  The account had been verified despite not reaching even 200 followers, and it had just "Joined February 2021," according to the account bio.  The account's few tweets were swimming with leftist propaganda.  One tweet claimed that Dr. Seuss drew "racist cartoons," along with an article from Snopes.  Snopes claimed that Seuss "had a history of creating cartoons featuring racist propaganda, and offensive caricatures of Black people, Asians, and Arabs.

Rep. Vicky Hartzler's account locked for tweet criticizing transgender athletes in women's sports.  Rep. Vicky Hartzler, Missouri Republican, was locked out of her Senate campaign account for a tweet declaring that "men pretending to be women" don't belong in female sports.  Hartzler campaign manager Michael Hafner posted a shot Monday of the Twitter message saying that his boss' account had been "locked for violating the Twitter Rules," specifically for violating prohibitions on "hateful conduct."  Her tweet said:  "Women's Sports are for Women, not men pretending to be women."

Pfizer is Funding Facebook's Fact-Checking Partner.  Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. is sponsoring journalism training programs utilized by Facebook to train its "fact-checking" partners and censor stories and posts critical of COVID-19 vaccines.  The International Center For Journalists (ICFJ) — itself funded by the Open Society Foundations amongst others — is partnered with Meta, Facebook's parent company, on its "Journalism Project" initiative.  In turn, Facebook relies on the journalists funded and trained by ICFJ to "combat misinformation" on its platform through its controversial fact-checking operation.  Together, Facebook and the ICFJ have funded news outlets based in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East with a focus on COVID-19 reporting.  Facebook's fact-checking partner ICFJ, however, also receives financial backing from Pfizer, with its recently announced 2022 Arthur F. Burns Fellowship — named after a former Federal Reserve chairman — lists the pharmaceutical giant as one of the program's sponsors.

Twitter Says It Accidentally Removed Ukrainian Accounts Tracking Russian Troop Movements.  Twitter admitted Wednesday [2/23/2022] it had accidentally suspended several accounts from Ukraine and elsewhere that were reporting on Russian troop movements and military operations.  "We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error," a Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.  "We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts."  Many of the suspended accounts were using satellite imagery to track Russian military operations near Russia's border with Ukraine, according NBC News, which first reported the accounts' suspensions.

The Editor says...
Twitter seems to do a lot of things "accidentally," and the "accidents" always favor the same types of people.

NY Doctor Proved Everyone Wrong About Hydroxychloroquine.  Many doctors around the world started using the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) early on in the COVID-19 pandemic.  Among them is Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a practicing physician in a Jewish community in Monroe, New York.  He garnered national attention in March 2020 when he told radio host Sean Hannity that he'd had a near-100% success rate treating COVID-19 patients with HCQ, azithromycin and zinc sulfate for five days.  "I've seen remarkable results; it really prevents progression of disease, and patients get better," he said at the time.  In response, county health officials said Zelenko's claims were "unsubstantiated" and urged residents to listen to public health officials.  In this interview, he explains how HCQ works against COVID-19, and discusses the lies spun about the drug to suppress its widespread use.  Zelenko had a very active Twitter account and would get millions of views on his tweets, and like many other truth tellers in this crazy pandemic, he was censored and recently removed from Twitter.  [Video clip]

Jim Banks finally speaks out regarding Twitter transgender censorship.  A top Republican who was censored and temporarily suspended by Twitter for controversial statements about a transgender government official said the platform dealt with him in a contradictory manner and unfairly targeted him as a conservative.  Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana had his official Twitter account temporarily suspended for a few weeks in October for allegedly misgendering Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, who is a transgender woman.  According to a screenshot posted of the censored tweet, Banks said, "The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man," a reference to Levine, whom the Biden administration touted as the nation's first openly transgender and first female four-star officer in the uniformed services late last year.  Levine, who was born and identified as a male until age 54, transitioned in 2011.

The Editor says...
It is impossible to "transition" from a man to a woman or vice versa.  The DNA in every cell in your body shows you're male or you're female — permanently.

Twitter Suspends Free Speech Group's Account.  The Twitter account for a national free speech organization has been suspended for allegedly violating Twitter's rules, but the group's president says she has no idea why the account would be suspended.  "I looked at all the tweets that I had approved for the couple of days before, and nothing is like doxxing anybody," Nicole Neily, Speech First's president, told The Daily Signal in an interview Tuesday.  Doxxing is the publishing of private or identifying information about an individual on the internet, usually with malicious intent.  The national organization, which works to promote free speech on campuses, in the media, and in the courts, had its Twitter account suspended on Feb. 8.  "I've read the terms of service and why you might be suspended, and literally nothing lines up," Neily said.

One Man Banned.  Twitter, like Facebook, is one of the lucky winners in the Network Effect Economy.  It's the opposite of Yogi Berra's restaurant where nobody goes anymore because it got too crowded:  Everybody goes to Twitter because everybody goes to Twitter.  But besides a lack of ability to publicize my writings, other downsides of having my account disappeared by Twitter quickly emerged:  I couldn't easily see other people's tweets.  Other people couldn't see my old tweets.  I pretty much vanished from Google's search engine.

Twitter suspends accounts of Project Veritas, James O'Keefe.  The account of Project Veritas has been suspended from Twitter as of Thursday, and the investigative outlet's founder, James O'Keefe, also had his account restricted. [...] There is conflicting information on social media right as to whether it is a suspension or a ban.  O'Keefe and Project Veritas have appealed the decision.

It's just the cost of doing business:
Twitter Reports 1.14 Billion Net Loss for 2020 After Censoring Conservative Voices.  Twitter announced that they officially took a beating financially in 2020 after silencing and banning dozens of conservative influencers including censoring the President of the United States Donald J. Trump.  American social-networking company Twitter announced on Wednesday [2/10/2021] its financial results for the fiscal year 2020, saying it recorded a net loss of $1.136 billion against net income a year earlier.

Twitter Confirms Ban of Donald Trump Is Permanent; They May Not Have Thought This Through.  At the end of an interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box" Wednesday [2/10/2021] in which he talked in part about the big tech company's plans to roll out new revenue streams, Twitter chief financial officer Ned Segal was asked, in what was almost an aside, about the possibility of President Donald Trump returning to the social media platform, if he wins re-election in 2024. [...] It seems hard to believe, but it was a year ago this week, when Democrats demanded both Facebook and Twitter remove a video Trump shared of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ripping up a copy of his State of the Union speech.  She justified her unprofessional actions with the excuse that it was full of lies.  And the reason the leftists gave for pulling the video was that it was "inaccurate."

Twitter Allows Iranian Threats To Assassinate Former President Trump.  Twitter is allowing official Iranian government accounts to issue death threats against former president Donald Trump and other Trump administration officials.  Twitter's refusal to remove these ongoing threats is renewing congressional scrutiny on the social media platform.  Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime's paramilitary fighting force that engages in terrorism and assassination plots, tweeted during the weekend that it will take revenge for the death of terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani, who two years ago was killed in Iraq in a drone strike ordered by Trump.

Trump Will Never Be Allowed Back On Twitter, CFO Confirms.  As a reminder, Twitter permanently suspended Trump's account on January 9, in the aftermath of the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill, for inciting violence.  Which leaves with a question:  if the Senate finds Trump not-guilty of the impeachable offense of "inciting insurrection", then will Twitter abide by that ruling and allow Trump back on?  (We know the answer, obviously).  Additionally, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said last night, during the first earnings call since Trump's ban that the social media giant is "bigger than any one account."

One Year Ago, Big Tech Declared Open War On America.  Here's What's Next.  President Donald Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter one year ago this day.  In the ensuing turmoil, it's easy to forget why.  Ask near-any self-declared politico around Washington, D.C., and you'll hear an unsure and uncertain allusion to the Capitol riot.  It's important to understand their reasons, however, to understand what's in store for the rest of our country.  Fortunately, we don't need to wonder; Twitter was open and upfront on the issue — at least as much as they ever are:  The sitting president of the United States, they declared, had sent two terrible and unpardonable tweets.

Twitter Suspends Matt Walsh Over Transgender Tweets.  Twitter suspended Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh Friday for his posts that counter-argued the gender identity of transgender people.  The platform suspended Walsh for 12 hours for tweets containing statements refuting transgenderism by pointing to biological facts rather than "gender identity."  The suspension could be extended if the censored tweets are not removed from the podcast host's account.  "The greatest female Jeopardy champion of all time is a man," Walsh said in a Dec. 30 tweet, according to the Daily Wire.  "The top female college swimmer is a man.  The first female four star admiral in the Public Health Service is a man.  Men have dominated female high school track and the female MMA circuit.  The patriarchy wins in the end."  "I am not referring to an individual person as if she is two people," a separate tweet stated.  "Everyone else can run around sounding like maniacs if they want but I will not be participating.  No thank you."

When Government Uses The Private Sector As Agents Of Censorship.  Over the weekend, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene got the Donald Trump treatment from Twitter:  The social media platform permanently banned her personal account.  If this were simply a private group deciding who can and can't participate in its forums, then there's no problem.  That would be Twitter's right.  But we know Democrats are using private companies to censor speech they don't like, and any discussion that threatens their plans to accumulate ever more political power. [...] Twitter booted Greene due to her "repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy," which is another way to say she's tweeting messages contrary to the narrative constructed by the Faucists:  There is no solution to the pandemic outside of vaccines, lockdowns, and masks.  Twitter, which regularly sends users to "Twitter jail" when their tweets challenge and offend left-wing orthodoxy, permanently banned Trump a year ago "due to the risk of further incitement of violence."  It has also permanently suspended a Newsmax reporter "for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy," which means his tweets didn't meet the Twitter mob's demand for conformity.  Dr. Robert Malone, an mRNA vaccine researcher, has also been suspended from Twitter.  The official word is he disobeyed the platform's COVID-19 misinformation policy — he said something the Twitter hall monitors didn't like.

Trump Responds to Marjorie Taylor Greene Ban: 'Twitter is a Disgrace to Democracy'.  Former President Donald Trump responded to Twitter banning Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene by calling the platform a "disgrace to democracy."  Trump himself was banned from the social media platform nearly one year ago.  "Twitter is a disgrace to democracy.  They shouldn't be allowed to do business in this Country," Trump asserted.  The statement continued, "Marjorie Taylor Greene has a huge constituency of honest, patriotic, hard-working people.  They don't deserve what's happened to them on places like low-life Twitter and Facebook."

Twitter just permanently banned Marjorie Taylor Greene.  The megalomaniacs at Twitter are at it again!  This time they've vaporized firebrand Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene:  [Tweet]  A Twitter spokesperson said they banhammered her for "Covid misinformation".

Twitter Bans Marjorie Taylor Greene's Personal Account over Covid Remarks.  Twitter permanently closed Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R., Ga.) personal account on Sunday over repeated violations of the company's Covid misinformation policy, a company spokesperson told CNN.  The congresswoman's official account, @RepMTG, remains functional.  It wasn't immediately clear what comments on the personal account prompted the suspension.  "We permanently suspended [Greene's personal account] for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy," the spokesperson said.  "We've been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy."

Marjorie Taylor Greene permanently BANNED from Twitter.  Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was permanently suspended from Twitter on January 2 over alleged "misinformation" regarding COVID-19 vaccines.  Greene's personal account was suspended, while her professional account remains.  Twitter said that the suspension was enacted after "repeated violations" of their policies. [...] Greene responded to the ban on her Gettr account.  She wrote that "When Maxine Waters can go to the streets and threaten violence on Twitter," which she did, telling supporters to go harass Trump supporters wherever they saw them and to "get in their face."  "Kamala and Ilhan can bail out rioters on Twitter," which they did, touting their contributions to bail funds that set out to free BLM and Antifa rioters from jail during the summer of 2020.  "And Chief spokesman for terrorist IRGC can tweet mourning Soleimani," which yes, also happened, "but I can get suspended for tweeting VAERS statistics, Twitter is an enemy to America and can't handle the truth."

Twitter Suspends mRNA Inventor Dr. Robert Malone.  After months of providing valuable Covid-19 information that runs counter to the official narrative, Twitter has finally banned Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA technology.  Malone, who will appear on the Joe Rogan show Thursday according to associate Ed Dowd (one of four contributors to the Malone doctrine), had more than 520,000 followers.  He has been an outspoken critic of both mRNA vaccines, as well as the abysmal failures of policymakers worldwide in responding to the pandemic.

Who decides if his claims are true or false?
Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft is permanently banned from Twitter after false election fraud claims.  Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft has been permanently banned from Twitter after posting false election fraud claims to the site.  Conservative radio host Wayne Allyn Root's account was also suspended Sunday [2/7/2021] after both men were accused of 'violating Twitter's civic integrity policy'.  Following the storming of the U.S. Capitol [last] month, Twitter has banned over 70,000 accounts for sharing misinformation.

The Editor says...
Twitter will decide what's information and what's misinformation.  In other words, Twitter will suppress any opinions that do not conform to the opinions of Twitter's left-wing managers.

Twitter Indefinitely Suspends Gateway Pundit Account After We Announce More Video of TCF Center Fraud Will Be Released in Coming Days.  Earlier today [2/6/2021] we tweeted out an update on our ongoing investigation of the Detroit TCF Center on November 4, 2020.  On Friday The Gateway Pundit released exclusive video from the TCF Center showing late-night deliveries of tens of thousands of votes to the TCF Center HOURS AFTER the deadline to turn in absentee ballots.  The absentee ballots were counted before election day.  The only absentee ballots they had left to count came in from the Zuckerberg boxes that were checked hourly.  We have much more on this incident to report on in the coming days.

Twitter Locks Down Family Group's Account Over Man-Lady Levine, Biden's No. 2 At HHS.  Twitter's top biologists have spoken again.  All skeptical discussion about "transgender" ideology is hate speech and will be deleted.  Last week, the social-media site shut down Focus on the Family's Daily Citizen account because it stated an objective truth about President Joe Biden's new assistant secretary of health.  Rachel (Richard) Levine, it tweeted, is a biological man.  Saying so, Twitter says, is "hateful."  The lockdown, which Twitter did not apply to the group's main account, is just the latest in the website's campaign to silence dissent from leftist orthodoxy on sexual matters.  Agree with us, or be censored and driven from the public square.

Twitter Suspends Christian Group for Accurately Describing Biden's Transgendered Health Official Dr. Levine's Biological Sex.  A Christian organization has been suspended from the Twitter social media platform for stating Dr. Rachel Levine's, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), biological sex.  In recent weeks tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Google have been censuring mostly conservative voices on social media platforms, including former President Donald Trump and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.  "You can now add Focus on the Family's The Daily Citizen to the list," Jim Daly, president of the organization, wrote in a blog last week.

Twitter admits 'error' in suspending Just the News founder's account over COVID facts.  Twitter late Thursday acknowledged that Just the News founder and Editor-in-Chief John Solomon's account was "suspended in error" this week over a post about a COVID-19 vaccine.  The respond follows an appeal earlier in the day by Solomon after his account was suspended Tuesday for his tweet linking to the article "Pfizer to continue distributing version of COVID-19 vaccine not fully approved by FDA."  Eric Zuckerman, who leads the social media giant's U.S. News Partnerships division, responded in one sentence to Solomon, saying:  "Twitter Support has reviewed your appeal and determined that your account was suspended in error."  Twitter users who clicked on Solomon's tweet Monday to try to read the story were first directed to a warning page, asserting the link was "potentially spammy or unsafe" and contained "violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm."

Twitter suspends virologist Robert Malone.  The account of Dr. Robert Malone, a veteran vaccine researcher and a prominent voice of skepticism on the issue of universal inoculation against Covid-19, has been suspended by Twitter.  Malone's account had over 516,000 followers when the platform silenced him on Wednesday.  It remains unclear if the suspension was automatic or done by a human.  Twitter gave no immediate comment.  Malone reacted to the news on his other social media, saying it meant that he "must have been on the mark, so to speak."  "It also means we lost a critical component in our fight to stop these vaccines being mandated for children and to stop the corruption in our governments, as well as the medical-industrial complex and pharmaceutical industries," he wrote, encouraging people to tune in to his interview on the Joe Rogan podcast later on Thursday.

The Inventor Of mRNA Tech, Dr. Robert Malone, Banned Permanently From Twitter For Sharing This Video Proving Pfizer Vax Does More Harm Than Good.  The inventor of mRNA technology and internationally known and loved, Dr. Robert Malone, has been banned for life from Twitter for sharing an earth-shaking video from the Canadian Covid Care Alliance.  According to CCCA, Pfizer's own 6-month report data on its COVID-19 inoculation shows that greater illness and death in the inoculation arm than the placebo arm.  Plus, poor trial design, missing data, underpowered studies, passive surveillance and more.  The Twitter suspension of Dr. Malone also comes a day before he is to appear on the Joe Rogan Podcast.  Kill your Twitter accounts.  If the most important voice in vaccinology is not allowed to speak, then the entire platform is one big fraud and gaslighting project.  [Video clip]

Twitter Gets Hit with the Censorship Lawsuit America Has Been Waiting For.  Social media giant Twitter is being sued by former New York Times journalist and best-selling author on Covid-19 issues Alex Berenson.  Berenson is best known for his heterodox views on the Covid-19 pandemic, which has assailed the mainstream media for putting out demonstrable misinformation and untruths about the virus and the vaccines.  Now, he is suing Twitter for selectively banning him from the platform and for tarnishing his reputation in the process.  "Mr. Berenson also has a uniquely viable claim that Twitter acted on behalf of the federal government in censoring and barring him from to its platform," the lawsuit said.

Berenson v Twitter.  [Full text of Berenson's lawsuit.]

Project Veritas-affiliated Twitter account suspended after exposing CNN producer involved in pedophilia scandal.  Following last week's exposing of a CNN producer embroiled in a pedophilia scandal, the investigateCNN twitter account that the story was posted from has been suspended.  On Wednesday, Project Veritas published explicit texts and videos of a CNN producer, later revealed to be Rick Saleeby, a producer on "The Lead with Jake Tapper."  [Tweet]  Project Veritas published the story on a Twitter account called investigateCNN, which was soon after banned by the platform, according to Robby Starbuck.

Twitter will now ban users that repeatedly claim vaccinated people can spread Covid.  Twitter has quietly updated its "COVID-19 misleading information policy" to impose new sanctions on tweets about vaccines, PCR tests, and health authorities.  These sanctions include removing and labeling tweets.  Both types of sanctions also result in Twitter users accruing strikes on their account which can lead to a permanent suspension.  While the top of Twitter's COVID-19 misleading information policy pagecurrently states "Overview November 2021," a December 2 archive of the page shows that the page was updated and the "Overview November 2021" text was added after December 2.  One of the most notable changes to this "COVID-19 misleading information policy" we noticed is related to claims about whether vaccinated people can spread the coronavirus.

Twitter Blacklists Account Providing Updates on Ghislaine Maxwell Trial.  Twitter has blacklisted an account posting courtroom updates from the trial of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of sex trafficking minors.  The popular account's suspension comes amid a wide-ranging purge of anonymous accounts from new CEO Parag Agrawal's platform.  An account set up to monitor the investment portfolio of house speaker Nancy Pelosi following insider trading allegations was also taken down.

Proof:  COVID vaccines cause prion diseases.  There is no doubt the mRNA vaccines are causing prion diseases.  People didn't have these diseases before the shot and suddenly they develop them after the shot.  There is no other explanation for this.  None of the "fact checkers" can explain the cause of the excess rates.  Prion diseases are incurable and always fatal.  You can die as soon as 6 weeks after COVID vaccination (see within 6 weeks and within 6 months examples).  However, Twitter believes this is not true, but they refuse to tell anyone why they think that.  Other fact checkers who have checked this out never did a VAERS query and are unable to explain away the "excess" number of reports other than doing a blanket dismissal that everything in VAERS is fraudulent without providing any evidence of that claim (other than one report out of 1.6M reports).  None of the fact checkers will debate on this to set the record straight.

My Twitter Ban Proves Twitter Manipulates Its Platform to Silence Conservatives.  If you had any hope Jack Dorsey leaving Twitter might help the platform navigate back toward enabling an open exchange of ideas, the big update his successor announced on his first day at the helm should nip that optimism in the bud.  "Beginning today," Twitter warned, "we will not allow the sharing of private media, such as images or videos of private individuals without their consent.  Publishing people's private info is also prohibited under the policy, as is threatening or incentivizing others to do so."  What will this mean in practice?  While Twitter says "context matters" and that some "newsworthy events" will be exempted, the move is obviously aimed at the kind of undercover reporting Project Veritas is using effectively. (Otherwise they would have explicitly excepted anything of public concern.)

Twitter Censors American Heart Association Article on mRNA Vaccines and Cardiac Health.  On Nov. 8, 2021, the American Heart Association (AHA) journals published the abstracts that researchers and clinicians would present during online scientific sessions beginning on Nov. 13.  The scientific sessions are rigorous events, and content must be submitted and selected.  One of the abstracts published in the journal Circulation dealt with mRNA vaccines and cardiac health.  When Twitter users tried to share the information in the abstract, people interested in reading it encountered a warning that it could be an unsafe link.

An FDA official demanded Google censor a YouTube video the agency didn't like.  Federal efforts to censor social media extend past discussions with companies like YouTube over broad guidelines about Covid-19 "misinformation" to specific demands for suppression of individual posts, an email from an FDA official reveals.  In the April 30 email, the Food and Drug Administration director of social media, Brad Kimberly, told a Google lobbyist about that the agency expected YouTube to pull a video touting the potential of a new monoclonal antibody treatment for Covid.  (Google owns YouTube.)  "Overall, the video is very problematic when it comes to COVID misinformation," Kimberly wrote to the lobbyist, Jan Fowler Antonaros.  "This video should [emphasis added] be pulled."  YouTube initially declined to remove the video.  However, it has since been taken offline.

New Twitter media sharing policy [is] expected to yield unwarranted takedowns.  Twitter's new policy banning photographs and videos of private citizens posted without their consent is likely to be abused by powerful users to remove content they don't like and create confusion regarding Twitter's censorship rules.  Twitter's new private information policy, which it updated Tuesday, provides for the removal of content if a private citizen or their authorized representative wants a photo or video taken down.  Conservatives say the new rule could be taken advantage of by powerful organizations, groups, and individuals who can claim to be an "authorized representative" of a private citizen in order to try and censor content they don't like.

Pete Hegseth argues New Twitter Policy is Meant to Protect Far-Left Orgs like BLM, Antifa.  Appearing on Fox News, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley says private citizens should be able to sue Twitter after the social media giant announced a new privacy policy prohibiting images shared without the consent of the person depicted.  [Video clip]

Twitter Suspended Me For Saying Kyle Rittenhouse Did Nothing Wrong — After His Acquittal.  Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.  So said a jury of his peers after weeks of witness testimony, a careful review of the video evidence, and Rittenhouse's own dramatic appearance on the stand.  Twitter, however, reached a different verdict.  In the exuberant hours after Rittenhouse's acquittal, I tweeted the phrase "Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong" to my 10,000 followers.  The tweet went viral, generating hundreds of retweets and thousands of likes.  Included was a photo of my suspension, from a few days earlier, for saying the exact same phrase.  I felt vindicated.  Twitter, however, got the last laugh.  On Sunday morning, I woke up to another suspension for insisting that Rittenhouse was in the right.  The first had been for 12 hours.  This one is for seven days.

Newsmax Reporter Permanently Suspended From Twitter for 'Spreading COVID-19 Misinformation.  Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson has been permanently suspended from Twitter for repeatedly violating the platform's policy against spreading COVID-19 misinformation, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to The Hill on Tuesday [11/9/2021].  After regaining access to her account, Robinson received her fifth violation, resulting in a permanent ban, the Twitter spokesperson said.  The permanent suspension comes just hours after Robinson returned to Twitter following a temporary seven-day suspension she received last week after claiming the COVID-19 vaccines contain a tracking substance.  Robinson took to the social media platform last Monday to warn that, "the vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked."  "Read the last book of the New Testament to see how this ends," she said.  The post was later removed by Twitter and replaced with a note stating that the original content violated its rules.

Twitter bans conservatives for 'misgendering' Rachel Levine.  Congressman Jim Banks (R-IN) was suspended on Twitter last week for "misgendering" Rachel Levine who is the HHS Deputy Secretary.  Levine was recently named "First Openly Transgender Four-Star Officer and First Female Four-Star Admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps on October 19, 2021" according to a release from the U.S. Department of Human Health and Services.  Rep. Banks tweeted "The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man" which resulted in his account being locked until he deleted the tweets.  Not The Bee, which is a satire site, reacted to Bank's suspension which resulted in its own suspension as well.  PJ Media, a center-right organization, tweeted against Levine's award and title.  Twitter banned it too.  Twitter and Big Tech in general take action against individual opinions based on personal beliefs, morals, and convictions whenever they disagree with what the left supports.

Perception Is Not Reality, No Matter What the Liberal Media Say.  [Scroll down]  Medical data that contradict or even question Washington's COVID pronouncements are tagged as "misinformation" and banned from social media such as Facebook and YouTube.  If you can't see it, it can't be real.  And when Twitter permanently suspended President Trump's account, the people in charge hoped for "out of sight, out of mind."  If they stopped him from tweeting, then he did not exist, at least in the Twitterverse, and could not rally his 15.6 million Twitter followers.

My Week In Twitter Jail Shows How Jack Dorsey Lies To Protect Leftist Propaganda.  I just returned from a one-week Twitter suspension for telling a joke, but even as I didn't break any Twitter rules, I'm actually glad this happened.  My sentence to Twitter to jail proves that everything Twitter tells the public, the government, and its investors is a lie.  First, let me explain what (ostensibly) led Twitter to suspend me.  Last Monday I saw a former Biden COVID adviser, Andy Slavitt, commenting on that day's passing of Colin Powell.  He said the lesson of his death was that everyone should get vaccinated.  I replied joking, "Get vaccinated, then you too can die of Covid."  Incidentally, I've told this story IRL several times and whenever I get to the part about what I tweeted, the people I'm talking to start laughing.  Seems only Twitter's humorless scolds can't take a joke.  Within minutes, Twitter locked me out of my account and told me to delete the tweet.

Big Mother's Smothering Protection of Little Joseph.  [Scroll down]  Soon, Rapper Bryson Gray produced a wildly viral video repeating the ["Let's go Brandon!"] chant.  The artist also claimed that "they" use the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to censor and oppress.  YouTube, an arm of "Big Mother," deleted the video to control "misinformation."  Nothing like censorship to reassure the public that we're still free.  Don't badmouth little Joseph.  Big Mother is watching.  The censorship follows shortly on the heels of a decision from Big Mother's election "fairness" arm, the Federal Elections Commission.  In that case, the FEC ruled that Twitter and Facebook did not interfere in the election by censoring accurate and truthful reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story which revealed solid evidence of Biden family influence peddling in Ukraine, China, and other countries.  Big Mother also told the public that the evidence was just Russian disinformation — a complete lie.  No matter, Big Mother's FEC dutifully protected little Joseph.  According to the New York Times, "The election commission determined that Twitter's actions regarding the Hunter Biden article had been undertaken for a valid commercial reason, not a political purpose, and were thus allowable."

Twitter suspends GOP congressman for calling Biden health adviser Rachel Levine a man.  Republican Reps.  Jim Banks and Marjorie Taylor Greene were dinged by Twitter this week for saying that Rachel Levine, a transgender Biden administration official, was a man.  Mr. Banks of Indiana said Saturday that his official account was suspended after he tweeted, "The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man," referring to Dr. Levine's promotion to four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.  Meanwhile, Twitter placed a "hateful conduct" warning on — but did not remove — a tweet by Ms. Greene, Georgia Republican, that said, "A dude who lived the first 50 years of his life as a man isn't the first female anything."

The Editor says...
I've never been on Twitter or Facebook; but apparently, I wouldn't last a day on either one.

Internal Twitter Study Says Platform 'Amplifies' The Right.  An internal study published by Twitter on its algorithms indicated that the platform actually amplifies right-of-center voices over left-leaning ones.  The reality, however, is more complicated.  Rumman Chowdhury, the head of Twitter's machine learning, ethics, transparency and accountability (META) team, told Protocol that the study only showed results based on bias in amplification — not what caused it.  The content could be amplified for any reason.  In short, the study was unable to determine whether Twitter's home feed algorithms are biased towards conservative content.  Interestingly, Twitter did not specify which outlets or politicians are considered "right-wing" by the platform.

They banned the Post, but Twitter didn't take these tweets down.  When Twitter banned the New York Post one year ago, it was clear from the start that the decision was arbitrary, hypocritical — and political.  The Post asked our friends at Twitchy.com, a site dedicated to chronicling the worst of Twitter, to help collect some examples of things the service didn't ban.  Go after a Democratic politician and you're flagged.  But call for a Republican to die, and everything's fine:  [Tweets shown as examples.]

A eulogy is not an affidavit.
Twitter Slammed for Fact-Checking Obituary of Woman Whose Death Has Been Linked to COVID Vaccine.  Twitter fact-checked an obituary of a young mother whose death is being attributed to a blood disorder induced by COVID-19, prompting backlash from Republican lawmakers and members of conservative media.  The social media giant put a since-removed "misleading" label on a tweet that included a link to the obituary along with the caption:  "Seattle, WA — Jessica Berg Wilson, an 'exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions,' passed away from COVID Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia.  She did not want to get vaccinated."  Twitter's "misleading" label also included information on "why health officials consider COVID-19 vaccines safe for most people."  The obituary posted to Oregon Live asserts that Wilson died last month "from COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT)," a blood-clotting syndrome.

Donald Trump asks federal judge in Florida to force Twitter to reinstate his account.  Former U.S. President Donald Trump asked a federal judge in Florida to force Twitter to reinstate his account on Friday [10/1/2021].  In July Trump sued Twitter, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints.  Trump's request for a preliminary injunction against Twitter was filed late on Friday in Miami, Bloomberg News reports.

Twitter Censors Daily Signal Video About Border Patrol on Horseback.  Twitter suppressed a 2017 video by The Daily Signal about Border Patrol horses amid continuing false news reports that mounted agents whipped Haitian refugees in Del Rio, Texas.  Twitter did not allow users to see the 4-minute video sometime after The Daily Signal and its audience began promoting the story again Thursday evening in response to the debunked reports.  The social media giant restored access to the video Monday afternoon without explaining the three days of censorship.

Twitter censored Hunter Biden laptop stories after 'rumors' from US intelligence warned of 'a hack-and-leak operation' that would 'involve' him.  An executive with Twitter told the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that the social media company blocked New York Post's reporting on leaked emails from Hunter Biden's laptop after hearing rumors from US intelligence officials that it would result in Biden getting hacked.  The head of Twitter's Site Integrity Team, Yoel Roth, said the company's decision to block access to New York Post's reporting in October of 2020 was justified because of the information they allegedly received from US intelligence officials, according to the Washington Free Beacon.  In a complaint filed with the FEC by a conservative group, Twitter was accused of giving an illegal campaign contribution to Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign by blocking the public access to the articles and withholding information from voters in a way that supported Biden's bid for the presidency.

The Federal Election Commission is just fine with social media suppressing the story of Hunter Biden's laptop.  The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency whose function is to enforce federal campaign finance laws, including monitoring donation prohibitions, and limits and oversees public funding for presidential campaigns.  Just yesterday [9/13/2021], the FEC ruled that Twitter did not violate any election laws last year when it prevented users from sharing links to the New York Post news story about Hunter Biden.  Back in October 2020, the Post had carried an article covering Hunter Biden's questionable business dealings in Ukraine while his father Joe Biden was vice president.  Biden had even bragged about using his influence and that of President Obama to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the matter and getting closer to the truth.  At best this was a matter of conflict of interest, at worse it was a case of high-scale corruption and abuse of power.

RNC mulls appeal of FEC ruling for Twitter in Hunter Biden laptop censorship.  The Republican National Committee was "weighing its options" Monday [9/13/2021] after a report said the Federal Election Commission has tossed its complaint that Twitter illegally suppressed The [New York] Post's expose about Hunter Biden's emails.  "As Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said recently, it was a 'total mistake' for Twitter to suppress this important story," RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said.  "Worse, it was also illegal and our complaint persuasively explains why."  Vaughn added:  "The RNC is weighing its options for appealing this disappointing decision from the FEC."  US Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) tweeted, "Big Tech and the Mainstream Media blocked the Hunter Biden story to affect the outcome of the election in violation of election law.  They are now lying about it and facing zero consequences!"

America's high-tech tyranny is far more sophisticated than Putin's crude autocracy.  [Scroll down]  On Monday, the US Federal Election Commission decreed that there was nothing untoward about Twitter's decision to censor a story in this newspaper in October detailing Hunter Biden's corrupt dealings, including his arranging a 2015 meeting between his father, then the second-most powerful man in the world and the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine, and Burisma, a shady Ukrainian energy firm that was paying the illustrious vice-presidential son some $83,000 a month for, umm, his expertise in Eastern-European energy affairs, no doubt.  The FEC, it seems, has concluded that Twitter's decision was a purely "commercial" one, having to do with the tech giant's policy against publishing "hacked materials," according to an outline of its ruling obtained by The New York Times (most likely thanks to a leak by a left-leaning member of the FEC staff).

Big Tech, woke finance crack down on Flynn, Gateway Pundit, Berenson in cancel culture purge.  With national attention riveted over the weekend on two major stories — the frantic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan amid its fall to the Taliban and category 4 Hurricane Ida slamming into the Louisiana coast — Big Tech and woke finance dramatically extended the reach of cancel culture with brazen moves to silence and harass three high-profile voices of political and scientific dissent:  independent journalist Alex Berenson, popular conservative news and opinion website The Gateway Pundit, and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.  On Saturday, Twitter permanently banned Alex Berenson, who has built a large social media following challenging public health establishment orthodoxy on COVID issues ranging from lockdown to vaccine mandates.  "The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules," a Twitter spokesperson responded to an inquiry from Fox News.

COVID vaccine doubter Alex Berenson permanently banned from Twitter.  Conservative commentator and vaccine doubter Alex Berenson has reportedly been permanently suspended from Twitter for violating the social media platform's COVID-19 misinformation rules.  Berenson's account was banned Saturday [8/28/2021] after "repeated violations" of the rules, a Twitter spokesperson told NBC News in a statement.  Berenson, a one-time New York Times reporter, addressed the suspension in a Saturday night post to his Substack page, blaming his removal from Twitter on a recent post where he was critical of the coronavirus vaccine.  "It doesn't stop infection.  Or transmission.  Don't think of it as a vaccine," the tweet read.

Goodbye Twitter:  I am officially suspended.  This was the tweet that did it.  Entirely accurate.  I can't wait to hear what a jury will make of this.  [Tweet]

Twitter Shows Its Colors With Its Latest Move Against DeSantis' Press Sec Christina Pushaw.  How many times have we seen Twitter pull the trigger against someone on the right now?  But they're not at all biased, right?  They just went after another one.  This time, it's Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' press secretary, Christina Pushaw.  As we reported earlier, the AP did a flawed hit piece on DeSantis (how many of those have we seen at this point?), falsely suggesting a pay for play scheme on the part of DeSantis for promoting a Regeneron COVID-19 antibody treatment.  His press secretary and other outlets debunked the claims.  But the AP then claimed that because Pushaw defended DeSantis, somehow she was activating an online mob against their reporter.

WaPo: Taliban gets a voice on Twitter because they 'play by the rules', unlike Trump.  The same mainstream media outlet that faced backlash for lamenting the death of "austere religious scholar" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is now facing backlash for drawing attention to the Taliban's "sophisticated" use of social media.  In a news report published Wednesday [8/18/2021], The Washington Post claimed via "analysts" that the Taliban remains online and active on social media networks because they haven't broken any of the rules.  The piece might have possibly been able to evade backlash had the Post stuck to just reporting on the Taliban's social media strategies.  Instead, the Post chose to add a political twist by contrasting the Taliban's online behavior with that of former President Donald Trump.  "U.S. conservatives have been demanding to know why former president Donald Trump has been banned from Twitter while various Taliban figures have not," the Post reported.

Taliban will be allowed to stay on Twitter — as long as they don't 'glorify violence' — while ex-president Trump is still banned.  Twitter has refused to join its social media counterparts in banning the Taliban from its platform, saying it'll monitor content to ensure there aren't messages 'glorifying violence'.  The move is in stark contrast to the company's Big Tech rivals.  Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram (both owned by Facebook), TikTok and YouTube have all banned and terminated accounts that are related to, promote or praise the Taliban.  Twitter said in a statement that it will 'continue to proactively enforce our rules and review content that may violate Twitter rules, specifically policies against glorification of violence, platform manipulation and spam.'

Twitter says Taliban can stay on platform if they obey rules.  Unlike former President Donald Trump, the faces and voices of the reconstituted Taliban regime in Afghanistan can apparently tweet to their hearts' content.  In a statement obtained by Mediaite Tuesday, Twitter ducked the question of whether it would bar representatives of the Islamic fundamentalist government from getting their message out 280 characters at a time — saying only that it would "continue to proactively enforce" its rules outlawing the "glorification of violence, platform manipulation and spam."  "Twitter's top priority is keeping people safe, and we remain vigilant," the statement added.  Both official Taliban spokesmen have unverified accounts on Twitter.  One, Zabihullah Mujahid, has more than 310,000 followers.  His most recent tweet as of Tuesday afternoon promoted a press conference by Taliban leaders and drew hundreds of responses, many of them from well-wishers.

Trump remains barred from Twitter but Taliban spokesperson still using platform for propaganda.  Social media giant Twitter was taken to task on Sunday [8/15/2021] by users who noticed that a spokesman for the Taliban remains free to use the platform unfettered to spout whatever messages he wants, sans fact-checks or warnings, while former President Donald Trump remains banned.  The observations were made as Taliban fighters have now completely overrun Afghanistan and have taken control of the presidential palace amid deadly, chaotic scenes at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, including three Afghans who attempted to stowaway on a U.S. military jet falling to their deaths.  The account of Zabihullah Mujahid is not blue-check verified, but he has some 280,000 followers and is often quoted by major news agencies.  Recently, he posted an update about the group's "military units" as they entered the capital of Kabul while U.S. troops were assisting the evacuation of American embassy diplomats and staff.

Res Ipsa Blog Hit By Targeted Cyber Attack.  Today [8/17/2021] Res Ipsa was targeted for a second time in a cyber attack to prevent access to the site.  While access for some was restored by WordPress technical support, I could not post or even gain access to the site for much of the day.  WordPress confirmed that this was an intentional attack to freeze the site and my ability to post.  We do not know when a third attack will occur.  What was particularly sad is that, when I disclosed this criminal act on Twitter, some on social media and even this blog celebrated or condoned the hack because they disagree with my viewpoints.

Taliban Spokesman Has Active Twitter Account, Trump Still Suspended.  A Taliban spokesman still has an active Twitter account, despite the platform's suspension of former President Donald Trump for "hateful" and "violent" content.  The Taliban is actively moving to retake Afghanistan after U.S. withdrawal, with countless men, women, and children in danger for their lives. [...] In the past two weeks, notable conservative commentators Erick Erickson and Allie Beth Stuckey were both suspended from Twitter after they said that transgender olympian Laurel Hubbard was "still a man."  Liz Harrington, Trump's chief spokeswoman, was also suspended after she questioned the integrity of the 2020 election.

Sounds like a joke, but apparently it's not.
AP, Reuters Sign Deal To Help Twitter Decide What's True.  The Associated Press and Reuters signed a deal with Twitter to help them "elevate credible information," the social media site and the outlets announced Monday [8/1/2021].  Twitter said in a blog post that the outlets would help in providing context to trending content and identifying potentially misleading information.  The outlets will help expand Twitter's efforts to explain trends or other popular information, "especially where facts are in dispute."  The outlets will also help when Twitter's team does not have "specific expertise or access to a high enough volume of reputable reporting."

Twitter Suspends Science Writer After He Posts Results Of Pfizer Clinical Test.  Just yesterday [7/30/2021], we discussed the censoring of a commentator by Twitter for merely expressing an opinion over the need for a "pause" on any federal mandates on Covid-19 as new research is studied.  Now, a former New York Times science reporter, Alex Berenson, has been suspended for simply citing the results from a clinical trial by Pfizer and raising questions over any vaccine mandate.  In the meantime, the White House accused both the Washington Post and New York Times of irresponsible reporting on Covid, but surprisingly Twitter has not suspended those accounts.  It is the license of the censor.  Twitter is unwilling to let people read or discuss viewpoints that it disagrees with as a corporation.  Many on the left, however, have embraced the concept of corporate speech and censorship.  It turns out that the problem with censorship for many was the failure to censor views that they opposed.  With the "right" censors at work, the free speech concerns have been set aside.

The Shadow State:  Twitter Suspends Commentator for Criticizing Vaccine Policies.  I recently discussed how the Biden Administration was actively encouraging corporations to limit speech and impose vaccine mandates as a type of shadow state.  Rather than take such actions directly (and face both legal and political challenges), the Administration is relying on its close alliance with Big Tech and other companies to carry out such tasks.  That surrogate relationship is particularly clear in the expanding censorship program carried out by Twitter, Facebook and other companies.  Twitter's action against political commentator Dave Rubin is an example of how these companies are now dispensing with any pretense in actively barring criticism of government policies and viewpoints.

Twitter suspends Dave Rubin after tweet critical of Democrats, vaccine mandates.  Twitter suspended liberal commentator Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report on Thursday after he publicly criticized the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Marjorie Taylor Greene compares Twitter to the Chinese Communist Party in her her first tweet after 12-hour suspension.  Marjorie Taylor Greene broke her 12-hour Twitter suspension on Tuesday by comparing the social media giant to the Chinese Communist Party, claiming they are stifling free speech.  'American social media company Twitter banned me for 12 hrs, censoring me, & violating my freedom of speech,' the Georgia representative posted.  'You know who else silences, censors, and bans people they don't like and want heard.  Communist China,' she continued, along with an emoji of the Chinese flag.

Wounded Army vet, GOP candidate outraged when Twitter censors picture of his scarred face 'sensitive content'.  A former U.S. Army captain who was burned and disfigured by an IED explosion in Afghanistan in 2008 is railing at Twitter for marking a photo he posted to celebrate Independence Day last weekend as "sensitive content."  Sam Brown, who is running as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada next year challenging Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, posted a photo of himself saluting in a combat uniform along with the phrase, "Freedom isn't free."

Trump files a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter and Google for censoring him, demands an end to Big Tech's 'silencing and blacklisting' of conservative voices.  Former President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday [7/7/2021] he was launching a class action law suit against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on behalf of victims of 'cancel culture.'  He demanded the end of 'shadow banning,' and 'blacklisting' as he stood in the blazing sun, using his Bedminster golf course clubhouse as a backdrop.  'In addition, we are asking the court to impose punitive damages on these social media giants,' he said.  'We're going to hold big tech very accountable.'

James O'Keefe Has Twitter on the Backfoot After Massive Legal Victory Against Them.  Back in April, Project Veritas CEO James O'Keefe brought a lawsuit against Twitter after the social media giant terminated his account over the excuse — without evidence — that he was running multiple fake accounts.  Perhaps not so surprisingly, they did this as Project Veritas was exposing CNN's technical director Charlie Chester.  The lawsuit was filed in a New York state court, which Twitter immediately attempted to have transferred to a California federal court where the chances that the lawsuit would be dismissed are rather high... too high, in fact.  In order to make that happen, Twitter's lawyer, Amer Ahmed, attempted to make the case that O'Keefe would seek legal damages, which would guarantee the move to the California court, but O'Keefe had a different idea in mind according to Project Veritas: [...]

Trump to sue Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter's Jack Dorsey: report.  Former President Donald Trump filed suits Wednesday against Big Tech titans Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for shuttering his accounts and taking similar actions against other conservatives in what he called the "illegal and shameful censorship of the American people."  The class-action filings seek unspecified damages for alleged First Amendment violations that Trump said could total "trillions" of dollars.  Trump is also asking federal judges to overturn the controversial immunity protections granted to internet companies in 1996 by declaring Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional.  "We're asking the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida to order an immediate halt to stop social media companies' illegal and shameful censorship of the American people.  That's exactly what they're doing," he said.

LinkedIn Reinstates Account of mRNA Vaccine Inventor Who Questions COVID-19 Vaccine Benefit for Children.  LinkedIn has reinstated the account of mRNA vaccine technology inventor Dr. Robert Malone, who said his page was deleted last week after he made comments about mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and questioned whether they're appropriate to give to certain groups of people.  In a Twitter post on Monday evening, Malone said he'd received a "very kind and personal note from a senior executive of LinkedIn," and shared, with permission, an anonymized version of the message.  "Dr. Malone's account has been fixed as of this morning," the note from the LinkedIn official read.  "I'd like to apologize on behalf of LinkedIn — we're just not good enough at detangling complicated, subtle scientific claims concurrent with similar (but different) misinformation coming from others."  Malone said he is "truly grateful for his kind gesture."

Twitter, California Sued for Cooperating on Censorship.  A conservative influencer filed a lawsuit against Twitter and the California secretary of state on June 17, alleging they colluded to censor election-related content, violating the plaintiff's rights to free speech, equal protection, and due process.  The lawsuit cites emails and documents from the California Office of Elections Cybersecurity, which show state employees flagging tweets to Twitter because they purportedly contained misinformation.  Twitter subsequently removed many of the flagged tweets, including those written by Rogan O'Handley, the plaintiff.  Twitter went on to permanently suspend O'Handley for a tweet that said "most votes in American history," alongside a photo of the U.S. Capitol surrounded by barbed wire in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot.

Nigeria announces Twitter ban — in statement on Twitter.  The Nigerian government announced Friday it had indefinitely suspended Twitter's operations in the West African country — but drew mockery for posting its statement about the ban on Twitter.  Minister for Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said that the country had "suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria."  The statement, posted on the ministry's official Twitter account, cited "the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria's corporate existence."  The suspension came two days after the social media giant deleted a post from President Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists.

Twitter declares access to its platform a 'human right' despite banning Trump and conservatives for their views.  Twitter declared access to its platform a 'human right' on Saturday, prompting conservatives to accuse the firm of hypocrisy after it banned former President Donald Trump and others for violating its terms of service.  The social media giant's statement came as a response to Nigeria's decision to ban Twitter over the deletion of a tweet from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari that was seen as threatening separatist movements.  'We are deeply concerned by the blocking of Twitter in Nigeria.  Access to the free and #OpenInternet is an essential human right in modern society,' the company said in a statement.

Putin gets Twitter to treat his opponents like it did Trump.  The New York Times is boo-hooing that Putin is putting pressure on Twitter to ban his critics.  That complaint is rich.  The NYT and the rest of the anti-American media pressed Twitter to ban President Donald John Trump and his supporters.  NYT sobbed, "Russia is increasingly pressuring Google, Twitter and Facebook to fall in line with Kremlin internet crackdown orders or risk restrictions inside the country, as more governments around the world challenge the companies' principles on online freedom."  The companies oppose online freedom.  If not, Google's YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook would not be censoring conservatives.  They would adopt the old AOL chatroom policy of banning swear words but not ideas.

17,000 tweet 'Hitler was right,' and Big Tech barely reacts.  Yesterday afternoon [5/23/2021], the phrase #FireMeghanMcCain was trending on Twitter.  What terrible, awful thing had she said to warrant trending on Twitter?  The co-host of "The View" had done something few others have:  decried an alarming spike in anti-Semitism.  It's not surprising, if you're familiar with Twitter, to see how an outspoken defender of the Jewish people may find herself in its cross hairs.  This is a place where variations of the phrase "Hitler was right" were posted more than 17,000 times (according to the Anti-Defamation League) in just a one-week span in May.  As in-person violence against Jews has spiked, so too has hatred against Jews online.  They are not disconnected phenomena, but part of the same ecosystem of hate that has blossomed along with the increase in tensions in the Middle East.

Spanish politician temporarily suspended by Twitter after saying 'a man cannot get pregnant'.  Francisco José Contreras, deputy to Spain's far-right Vox Party, was locked out of his Twitter account for 12 hours last week after saying "a man cannot get pregnant" because they have "no uterus or eggs."  Contreras' comments were in response to an article he shared on the social media platform about a transgender male who announced they were a father after giving birth to a baby girl.  Contreras said in a Facebook post on May 11 that he had received a message from Twitter which informed him that he had violated its policies on "hate speech" for the remarks.

VIMEO Cancels Mike Lindell's My Pillow Account:  "This is worse than what Twitter did to me and my company!".  Big box stores like Costco, Sam's Club, Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl's, Wayfair, and Kroger have all stopped carrying "My Pillow" products.  Christian, patriot, and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell will lose over $68 million+ this year alone, thanks to decisions by these big box stores to punish him for fighting to expose the election fraud in the November 2020 election.  Mike Lindell has been permanently suspended on Twitter, and his Absolute Proof video has been removed from Vimeo and Google-owned YouTube.  Why are social media bullies allowed to decide what Americans can or cannot see?  Who made them the ultimate judge and jury about which news is acceptable and which news is unacceptable?

Joe Rogan Reveals How Twitter Banned Him From Sharing A Video In A Direct Message On Ivermectin.  Twitter is blocking messages about the drug ivermectin.  Ivermectin, which scores of studies have shown to be effective against Covid-19 at any stage in the disease.  Joe Rogan, who hosts the most popular podcast on Spotify, shared his experience recently:  "I tried to send a friend of mine a direct message yesterday on Twitter, and it was blocked," Rogan said.  "I couldn't send a direct message.  I was asking him if this was accurate," about ivermectin.  [Video clip]

Twitter Blocks Account Sharing Trump's Posts.  Twitter took action against an account that was sharing tweets with content that was copied from former President Donald Trump's new social media tool.  The account named "The Desk of Donald J. Trump" was sharing posts from the former president's new website, "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump," on Twitter.  The bio included a note that stated it was "Not Donald J. Trump Tweeting."  However, according to NBC News' Brandy Zadrozny, a Twitter spokesperson said the company suspended the account because, "As stated in our ban evasion policy, we'll take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account."

Twitter bans Trump's new media platform account.  Twitter suspended the new account for former President Donald Trump's recently launched communications platform that the 45th president uses to communicate directly with his followers.  Trump's account for his new platform, @DJTDesk, was introduced this week, then suspended by Wednesday evening [5/5/2021].

Twitter [is] reportedly suspending accounts that are sharing posts from Trump's blog.  Twitter has reportedly suspended the accounts of several users who were tweeting the exact wordage found on former President Donald Trump's new website, "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump."  According to senior NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny, who shared a screenshot of one of the accounts, @DJTDesk, the social media platform removed the account.

Florida Passes Bill Prohibiting Social Media Giants Deplatforming Politicians.  The Florida legislature on April 29 passed a bill to prohibit social media platforms with huge user bases from knowingly deplatforming politicians and other Floridians.  If a social media company deplatforms a user they know to be a political candidate they face penalties of up to $250,000 per day for statewide officials and $25,000 per day for a candidate for other offices, the bill states.  This applies to platforms with over $100 million in annual revenue and over 100 million monthly users, eliminating many but the giants like Facebook and Twitter.  The move comes amid significant criticism from all over the world that social media platforms Facebook and Twitter have de-platformed users for merely expressing differing political viewpoints.

[Nonsense] that Twitter permits, truth that Twitter bans.  To say the media have a double-standard in how they treat conservatives and progressives is akin to saying the Third Reich treated Jews and Aryans unequally.  Nowhere is this more obvious more frequently than on the giant social media cesspool called Twitter.  Conservatives get banned for questioning election results or vaccination mandates, whereas progressives routinely — literally — get away with calling for the death of conservatives or even white people in general.  Suggest that hydroxychloroquine with zinc may be effective in treating COVID-19, as former president Trump did, and you get banned from the Twitterverse.  No matter that the American Journal of Medicine and numerous physicians now recommend taking HCQ and zinc to help prevent or alleviate the effects of the coronavirus.  [Indeed], I got put in Twitter jail — on two separate occasions — for breaking community standards and Twitter's rules of conduct for...well, I don't even know, honestly.

Fake Chicago Police tweet about Derek Chauvin not being removed by Twitter, CPD says.  Twitter is refusing to remove or attach a warning to a doctored image that purports to show a Chicago Police Department tweet that states, "We are all Derek Chauvin" — despite that the post is not real and the agency has made several attempts to have it taken down, CPD officials tell Fox News.  The altered image began circulating on Twitter at the beginning of the weekend and features a picture of Chauvin, the recently convicted Minneapolis Police officer, underneath the five-word sentence, which appears in bigger font than is customarily used on the social media platform.  By Saturday, the post had garnered approximately 38,600 retweets and 175,000 likes, according to local news site CWBChicago.

James O'Keefe suing CNN following permanent ban from Twitter:  We've 'never lost' a lawsuit.  Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe is taking action after being permanently banned from Twitter, with plans to go after CNN with a defamation lawsuit expected Monday, he told "Sunday Morning Futures."  "There are people on Twitter who are impersonating me who still remain on Twitter," he said.  "I will depose [Jack Dorsey] under oath... And tomorrow I will sue CNN."  Project Veritas has already launched a lawsuit against Twitter for defamation in New York after the social media giant removed the founder for exposing CNN for manipulating political events.  Twitter claimed O'Keefe was removed from the platform for operating fake accounts, which he denied.

The Truth about Project Veritas and Media's Skewed Narrative.  James O'Keefe, founder and CEO of Project Veritas, explains his defamation lawsuit against Twitter following the social media company banning his accounts from their website, "I think that this is the only recourse that we have, is to use the country's libel laws against these Goliaths who act with malice and a reckless disregard for the truth."  [Podcast]

Trump Got Banned from Twitter Over False Claims of Inciting Violence — Maxine Waters Incites Violence Captured on Video and Keeps Her Account.  On January 8, 2021, Twitter banned the Leader of the Free World and President of the United States over false claims of inciting violence on January 6.  Of course, it was later proven that President Trump did not incite a riot and instead told his supporters to "peacefully" protest at the US Capitol on January 6.  President Trump's account is still banned by Twitter along with several of his top supporters.  Twitter banned The Gateway Pundit account after posting exclusive video of Democrats dropping off 61 boxes of ballots at the TCF Center at 3:30 AM on election night.  On Saturday night Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) flew to Minnesota Saturday to stir up the hate on the streets. [...] Waters urged violent leftists to "get more confrontational" with authorities.  But Mad Maxine still has her Twitter account?

Twitter Bans James O'Keefe After Latest Round of Hidden Videos Exposing CNN — O'Keefe to Sue Twitter for Defamation.  Twitter banned Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe after he posted multiple videos exposing CNN's left-wing bias.  Project Veritas on Thursday [4/15/2021] released a third bombshell undercover video of CNN Director Charlie Chester admitting that the network is "trying to help" Black Lives Matter by protecting their narrative on race.  Chester admits that they have only been pushing stories that implicate white people, during a conversation with a Tinder date that ended up being a Project Veritas reporter.  Chester admitted that while researching Asian hate, they found that it is mostly black men attacking them — so they did not dig in deeper.

Twitter Permanently Blacklists James O'Keefe After CNN Expose.  James O'Keefe, the founder of the investigative journalism organization Project Veritas, has been permanently blacklisted by Twitter, just as his organization releases bombshell undercover footage showing senior CNN employees admitting to using "propaganda." @Project_Veritas, the organization's official account, has also been suspended.  In a comment to Breitbart News, a Twitter spokeswoman said the suspension was permanent.  This comes directly after O'Keefe and Project Veritas publicly embarrassed the far-left news network CNN.

Twitter bans James O'Keefe, O'Keefe says he plans to sue.  This week James O'Keefe has been releasing a series of undercover sting videos involving CNN.  Suddenly today [4/15/2021], Twitter suspended his account:  [Tweet]  The Project Veritas account is also suspended at this moment.  Fox News is reporting that a Twitter spokesperson said O'Keefe was permanently suspended for violating its rules against platform manipulation.  Specifically, the company accused O'Keefe of operating fake and/or multiple accounts.  O'Keefe denied that and said he would sue Twitter for defamation.

Today's blacklisted American:  A congresswoman because she speaks her mind.  They're coming for you next:  Since her election in November 2020 Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) has repeatedly irritated many people for her strong and very outright conservative opinions on everything from election fraud to religion to Donald Trump and Joe Biden.  As a result she has become the target by many on the left, resulting in her Twitter account being suspended more than once.  In one case it was because she had said posted a tweet celebrating Easter and glorifying the resurrection of Jesus.  In another case it as because she called for the supporters of Trump to rally against election fraud and the possibility that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.  In both cases her account was reinstated by Twitter within twelve hours, with the social media platform claiming the first suspension was a mistake while the second was not (having violated Twitter's partisan rules that forbid anyone from suggesting that there might have been election tampering that led to Biden's victory).  These Twitter attacks are ugly and illustrate that platform's anti-Republican and leftist agenda, but it is still a private company.  More important have been the efforts to muzzle Greene in Congress, led by the Democrats.

Twitter does not want you to know that the co-founder of BLM just bought a $1.4 million house in an exclusive lily-white neighborhood.  Social media censorship is escalating and ever more blatant.  Unfettered knowledge is dangerous to the phony narratives that progressives wish to brainwash the public into accepting, and with social media, the blockade imposed by mainstream media potentially can be breached by people posting otherwise obscure media sources to their social media accounts.  The latest prominent victim is Jason Whitlock, originally a sportswriter but now a social critic who brings insightful commentary on many issues, including race.  (For the record, Whitlock is Black, a fact that seems to make a difference to most people on the left.)  Yesterday [4/9/2021], Jason Whitlock posted a link to a story about Patrice Cullors and her apparent spouse Janaya Khan (who self-identifies as "black, queer, and gender-nonconforming") buying a $1.4-million compound in the Topanga Canyon area of Greater Los Angeles. [...] When Jason Whitlock noted the purchase on his widely followed Twitter account, Jack Dorsey's minions decided this was too much information.

Justice Thomas argues for making Facebook, Twitter and Google utilities.  Last fall, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that it was time to rein in Section 230 immunity.  Now, Justice Thomas is laying out an argument for why companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google should be regulated as utilities.  On Monday [4/5/2021], the Supreme Court vacated a lower court ruling in finding that President Trump had acted unconstitutionally by blocking people on Twitter.  That case, which the justices deemed moot, hinged on the idea that the @realdonaldtrump account was a public forum run by the president of the United States, and therefore, was constitutionally prohibited from stifling private speech.  In his concurrence, Justice Thomas agrees with the decision, but argues that, in fact, Twitter's recent ban of the @realdonaldtrump account suggests that it's platforms themselves, not the government officials on them, that hold all the power.

Twitter confirms it suspended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's account 'in error'.  Twitter confirmed Monday [4/5/2021] that it suspended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's account "in error" because she tweeted on Easter, "He is risen" — the second time the social media giant has sidelined the Georgia Republican in a month.  Greene announced that she was back online in a post.  "@Twitter suspended me again by 'mistake' yesterday after I tweeted, 'He is risen.'  Everyone knows that's a LIE, and it was no mistake," she wrote on Twitter.  In a statement, Twitter insisted it happened "in error."  "We use a combination of technology and human review to enforce the Twitter Rules across the service.  In this case, our automated systems took enforcement action on the account referenced in error.  This action has been reversed, and access to the account has been reinstated," the statement said.

Twitter reverses another ban on Marjorie Taylor Greene after she claims she was suspended for tweeting 'He is risen!  Happy Easter!'  Twitter suspended the account of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene 'in error' on Sunday [4/4/2021] for the second time in weeks.  The Congresswoman questioned whether her Twitter account was suspended after she wished her followers happy Easter.  But the social media platform explained the suspension as a result of the site's algorithm.  'We use a combination of technology and human review to enforce the Twitter Rules across the service.  In this case, our automated systems took enforcement action on the account referenced in error.  This action has been reversed, and access to the account has been reinstated,' Twitter explained in a statement.  Greene's account was suspended for about 12 hours before Twitter had it reinstated.

Facebook Scrubs Trump Interview With Daughter-In-Law, Threatens New Restrictions.  Shares of Twitter are paring earlier gains on Wednesday following a Fox News report that President Trump is moving ahead with his plans to launch a rival social media network. [...] Trump was banned from Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots.

Twitter's Jack Dorsey declares that disrespecting the quran is forbidden.  And if you rip up or otherwise destroy a quran and post it on Twitter, you will get banned for life.  But the people (Muslims) who call for your execution and threaten your life on Twitter because you disrespected the quran do NOT get banned.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admits it was a mistake to block New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story — but REFUSES to say who authorized it.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Thursday [3/25/2021] it was a 'total mistake' for The New York Post to be locked out of its Twitter account for tweets sharing the newspaper's report on Hunter Biden's emails.  'We made a total mistake with the New York Post, we corrected that within 24 hours,' Dorsey told House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, who had asked about that example.  'It was not to do with the content, it had to do with a hacked materials policy, we had an incorrect interpretation,' Dorsey added.  Scalise had probed the Twitter boss on The New York Post's treatment, versus that of The Washington Post, which had to run a correction recently on a report of a conversation between former President Donald Trump and a top Georgia election official[.]

Bernie Sanders says he's not 'comfortable' with Trump Twitter ban.  Senator Bernie Sanders said recently that he's not "comfortable" with former President Trump's Twitter ban, arguing it could lead suppression of users across the political spectrum.  The Vermont Independent found common ground with many Republicans who accused the social media network of left-leaning bias and political censorship after they banned Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack US Capitol riot.  Sanders made the comments to New York Times columnist Ezra Klein Tuesday, after Trump aides announced the former president would soon return to social media with his own platform.

Twitter suspends me for criticizing Cardi B.  Politicians such as Maxine Waters can praise and encourage BLM/Antifa violence via Twitter, and they still have access.  Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamanei can send anti-Jewish and anti-Israel tweets, and he's still on the platform.  But dare criticize rapper Cardi B over her depraved 2021 Grammy Awards "performance" featuring her song, "WAP," which itself would have been censored pre-Sexual Devolution, and that's a suspension for you. [...] Anyway, Twitter wants me to be a "good boy" and delete the tweet.  This will never, ever happen.  Given the filth and insult they allow (mainly from the left) on their platform, it's almost satirical to take issue with my message.  I won't yield to the double standard.

Twitter just scored several own goals in their lawsuit against Ken Paxton.  [Thread reader] Here's Twitter openly admitting that they make editorial decisions, that these decisions have to be made in secret and that Twitter is actually no different from a newspaper. [...] And here's Twitter admitting that they are relying on First Amendment rights meant for the press. [...] Twitter says it can't share information on their moderation process because that would undermine the moderation process.  Here's the problem.  Section 230 protection only applies to those acting in good faith.  By hiding their process, we can't know if they're acting in good faith. [...] Whoever wrote this is twisting themselves into pretzels because they know Twitter acted in bad faith to get rid of people they don't like.

The Children's Table.  If as a conservative you feel like a second-class citizen in your own country, congratulations.  You get it.  The Internet Oligarchs have sentenced us to the children's table while they dine like swine in the main ballroom.  All my friends got kicked off Twitter.  I am still there [...].  But it is awfully lonely.  They all went to Gab but nobody is gabbing it seems.  Its CEO boasts of adding 30 million users in a short time, and indeed it has.  Missing though are the non-political discussions that made Twitter fun.  We are exiled because of our political beliefs even though that is a small part of who we are.  While others are living their normal lives and discussing movies and sports and cars, we are isolated.  We are not allowed to converse.  We are locked out.

My Pillow guy Mike Lindell permanently banned from Twitter.  Twitter banned My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell from the platform after he used his account to spread baseless claims about fraud in the presidential election.  Twitter said Tuesday that it permanently suspended Lindell — a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump — because of his "repeated violations" of the company's civic integrity policy, which it implemented last fall to clamp down on misinformation.  Twitter didn't say which of Lindell's posts pushed it over the edge.  But he had used his personal account and My Pillow's corporate account in recent months to post and share bogus rumors about widespread election fraud that appeared aimed at undermining President Biden's victory.

Jonathan Turley Drops Facts on What's to Come With Twitter's New 'Birdwatch' Program.  With much predictable fanfare and hype from the mainstream media Monday [1/25/2021], Twitter announced the creation of what they call their "Birdwatch" program, which they say is designed to help counter the spread of alleged misinformation.  In a series of tweets, the popular social media platform described Birdwatch as "a community-driven approach" to combatting "misleading information."  In subsequent tweets, they gave a rough idea of how the program is supposed to work, encouraged people to sign up to be "testers", and said they will use feedback in order "to help shape this program and learn how to reach our goal of letting the Twitter community decide when and what context is added to a Tweet".

The Masks Are Coming Off.  [Scroll down]  We've had the censoring of Talk Radio on YouTube.  Although this was then restored after intervention at the highest level, I understand some of the wonderful conversations between Mike Graham and Peter Hitchens are still banned.  YouTube have also banned videos from extremely qualified scientists around the world, including two lengthy interviews given in English by one of the most qualified microbiologists on planet earth, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi.  We've then seen the President of the United States being banned from Facebook, Instagram and more recently Twitter.  I am no fan of Donald Trump, but it is clear that he has never used these platforms to "incite violence" — the excuse given for his ban — and it is obvious that there something else going on there.  And we've also seen numerous conservatives and scientists who oppose or question the mass quarantining of healthy people literally losing hundreds of Twitter followers in the last few days.  Their followers are simply being deleted by Jack's Magical Dissent Removing Algorithm, which has been invoked with a vengeance. [...] If 2020 was the year in which people put their Masks on, 2021 is already shaping up to be the year when the Globalists and Global Pravda really take theirs off.  They are really going for it, blatantly censoring dissent, brazenly de-platforming alternative views, and shamelessly using technology to ensure that reasoned, fact-based challenges to establishment narratives are silenced.

Twitter takes 17 hours to mobilize after tweet threatening Trump.  It took Twitter 17 hours to suspend an account bearing the name of Iran leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for posting a death threat to former President Trump.  The hateful tweet came from @khamenei_site on Thursday — an account later determined to be bogus — and depicted the likeness of Trump on the golf course being targeted by a drone flying overhead.  "Revenge is inevitable," said the post, translated from Farsi.  By mid-Friday morning, @khamenei_site was suspended for violating Twitter rules, with the social media giant later clarifying that the account was fake.

OANN: Michelle Malkin, RSBN and Gateway Pundit Suspended on Twitter for Violating New Orwellian "Civic Integrity" Rule.  Last week Twitter banned a Gateway Pundit tweet questioning fraud in the election.  Twitter handed The Gateway Pundit account a 12-hour suspension for questioning the stolen election.  Then upped it to a six-day suspension.  This was doled out in the middle of the night.  Someone on the late shift was targeting us.  The Gateway Pundit is one of the top 120 websites in America today and a leading voice for conservatives. [...] Twitter suspended the Gateway Pundit account again on Tuesday [1/19/2021] for another week for violating the "civic integrity" rules.  This is a new Orwellian category that allows Twitter to ban any conservative at will.

The Tech titans ignore incitement to violence against conservatives.  "Doxing" is defined as publishing on the internet private or identifying information about people with malicious intent.  People who are doxed have their lives destroyed.  Some are attacked so viciously they go into hiding.  It's therefore a dangerous incitement to violence that Don Winslow, a Russiagate conspiracy theorist, has released a video urging people to root out every single Trump supporter in America and target them for destruction.  Yet Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have allowed the video to remain, with the Twitter version having over 4 million views and getting retweeted over 28 thousand times.  The video (which I won't link but you can find [elsew]here) shows footage of Trump rallies and explains that all of the attendees are "domestic terrorists."  These domestic terrorists, he says, are hiding in plain sight.

Video Exposes Twitter Execs Planning 'Global Approach' to Censorship.  Guerilla journalism organization Project Veritas revealed devastating footage of Twitter leadership's plans for a "global" approach" to censoring "conspiracy theories."  Guerilla journalist and Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe released a video tweet exposing Twitter leadership's "Plans For Political Censorship On Global Scale" on Jan. 18.  O'Keefe's tweet specifically noted that Twitter leadership is cracking down on what they call "misleading information or coded rhetoric."  Twitter's Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead Vijaya Gadde could be heard in the footage saying that Twitter must go "Beyond de-amplification" and spoke of "conspiracy theories," alleging the platform will be "permanently suspending those accounts."  "The statements appeared to be related to Twitter's massive purge of 70,000 QAnon-related accounts in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 riot," the New York Post theorized.  The video allegedly showed a virtual conference that took place on Jan. 8, the same day sitting President Donald Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter.

Totalitarians in Focus.  Vijaya Gadde, a Public Relations executive at Twitter, thinks she is a good person.  Some may beg to differ.  [Video clip]

Twitter Shares Fall Even More Following Trump Ban.  Twitter shares — since President Donald Trump's permanent ban — slid even more on Monday [1/18/2021] before a slight rebound. [...] At this point, Twitter is down at least 15 percent so far in 2021.  Last week, CNBC analyst Jim Cramer warned that Twitter's stock could slide even further because of Trump's ban.  "I think that there are a lot of people who literally knew that the president was the most important person" on Twitter, he said, adding that "you had to keep checking him, and then you had to check people who talked about him."

Twitter temporarily suspends GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Twitter on Sunday [1/17/2021] temporarily suspended the account of new Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene after she posted a tweet questioning the results of the state's runoff election for Senate.  Twitter announced the 12-hour suspension, saying it determined Green's post "violated the Twitter rules, so we've temporarily suspended some of your account features."  The social media giant tagged one of Greene's tweets about the Jan. 5 election.  "The 1/5 disaster in Georgia lays solely in the hands of state leadership who failed voters in our state.  @GaSecofState and@GabrielSterling were begged by Republicans to fix our elections.  They did nothing.  They are to blame, not me, not @realDonaldTrump, not @CollinsforGA," she wrote on Twitter, referencing election officials in the Peach State.

You Can't 'Just Build Your Own Twitter'.  The balance of two opposing forces — military-industrial surveillance capitalism and progressive cultural hegemony — once formed an equilibrium that gave the average Joe some options in life.  That equilibrium was on its way out for a while, but it collapsed with the Capitol riots. [...] We're seeing the beginnings of what unambiguous power looks like.  Corporate donors are dropping the GOP, throwing away an intimate, decades-long DD/lg relationship.  But perhaps more important is the wave of unprecedented internet censorship that included the digital death penalty for Trump and his allies, and also for any users who continue to make claims of election fraud.  This was seemingly coordinated among the entire now-private public square, and private companies are of course allowed to do whatever they want.

Dorsey: 'This Is Going to be Much Bigger Than Just One Account'.  In a new video provided to Project Veritas by an unidentified Twitter employee, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey warns of further censorship following Twitter's recent ban on the president of the United States.  "We know we are focused on one account right now," Dorsey said, in reference to his company's decision to ban President Trump.  "But this is going to be much bigger than just one account and it's going to go on for much longer than just this day, and this week, and the next few weeks and go beyond the inauguration.  We have to expect that, and we have to be ready for that."

Twitter insider leaks tape of CEO Jack Dorsey telling staff Trump ban is 'bigger than just one account' and will 'go on beyond the inauguration'.  Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey has been recorded during an internal meeting saying that the company's clampdown on inciting violence will go much further than simply banning Donald Trump.  The president was permanently barred from Twitter on Friday, with Twitter saying: 'We have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.'  Trump is now blocked from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitch, among others.  On Thursday Project Veritas, which seeks to expose bias in media, published a clip which they said was given to them by a Twitter whistleblower.  [Video clip]

Project Veritas Drops a Video on Twitter CEO Jack Talking About Trump and What Is To Come.  Yesterday [1/13/2021], Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote a long Twitter thread trying to justify his banning of President Donald Trump from the platform as well as the actions taken against some other people on the right. [...] But people weren't buying his justification.  As we've seen, Twitter immediately shut off a critical story in October that Joe Biden had lied about never having met with his son's foreign business partners, even suspending the NY Post and preventing the url to the story they had on the Biden scandal from being spread on Twitter.  Jack later had to admit there was no violation of the Terms of Service.  But in the meantime a troublesome story for Biden was suppressed.  But when Democrats spread actual conspiracies or things that might impede public safety, their tweets don't seem to get the same attention.  But now Project Veritas has a whistleblower video on Jack Dorsey from a source inside Twitter.

Project Veritas Video Exposes Twitter CEO's Censorship Plans: 'Much Bigger Than Just One Account'.  On Thursday night, Project Veritas released a secretly recorded video of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey talking about his company's censorship plans beyond President Donald Trump and his exit from office.  Previewing the release, Project Veritas President James O'Keefe tweeted, "A whistleblower inside @Twitter recorded their CEO @jack and sent us the tape."  According to O'Keefe, the video details Twitter's agenda for further political censorship.

David Marcus Outlines Some Violent Material Twitter Refuses to Censor.  The Federalist journalist David Marcus goes through a list of all the things that Twitter is refusing to censor while they crackdown on conservative speech.  [Video clip]

Twitter's twisted logic.  It's no secret that President Trump — as a private citizen, a presidential candidate, and as president — has used Twitter to make outrageous, uncivil, and conspiratorial statements.  But this has been true for years.  Until this month, when Trump was permanently banned from the social network, the company had resisted the step, arguing that it had a policy against banning world leaders. [...] In taking the step not just to ban Trump but to restrict his access to the @POTUS account, Twitter broke with its own standard.  In a statement, the network said that "we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."  If incitement to violence is the new metric, however, Twitter is going to have to explain why it has banned Trump and not other world leaders who have consistently and repeatedly incited violence.  For instance, an account attributed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, remains active despite being used to promote violence and anti-Semitism.

Twitter, Facebook: $51 Billion Combined Market Value Erased Since Trump Ban.  Social media giants Facebook and Twitter have collectively seen $51.2 billion in combined market value wiped out over the last two trading sessions since they banned President Donald Trump from their platforms following the U.S. Capitol breach.  Large tech firms and a number of Democratic political figures have claimed Trump incited violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.  The incident disrupted debates in both the House and Senate as lawmakers were forced to shelter in place while police and security attempted to regain control.  Trump took to Twitter following the outbreak of violence to call on protesters to "go home in peace."  He denounced the violence as a "heinous attack" that "defiled the seat of American democracy" on Jan. 7.  It is unclear who instigated the breach of the building.

Twitter Doubles Down on Decision to Ban Donald Trump.  President Donald J. Trump is banned on Twitter.  He's banned on Facebook.  A sitting US president has been de-platformed over the chaos that erupted on the Hill last week.  He's been impeached again for inciting the riot that Democrats say amounted to insurrection.  The "Save America" rally was held on January 6, the same day as the congressional certification of the 2020 Electoral College results.  Pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Building.  Five people died.  Yet, the FBI now says that this might have been a pre-planned event, which undercuts the Democratic narrative that Trump was totally at fault for the chaos.  Trump was probably going to be banned from Twitter no matter what after he left office.  That was a given.  In fact, Twitter was sort of coy about that move as we entered the final weeks of his presidency.  This fiasco just accelerated the plan.

Twitter's official tweet about the Uganda election is unbelievable.  On Tuesday, Twitter left every sentient American wondering how a company so stupid could become so powerful.  Twitter spent last year silencing anything that would help Trump, including accurate facts about Biden pimping out his debauched son to foreign countries for big bucks.  It then inaugurated this year by booting the president of the United States off Twitter, followed by silencing all of his supporters.  But Twitter wasn't done.  Yesterday, in connection with the Uganda elections, Twitter issued a proud public policy statement about the absolute necessity of free speech on the internet, especially around elections.

I honestly can't believe Twitter just tweeted this.  But Twitter just tweeted this.  Twitter really just tweeted this in the middle of the conservative purge.

Regulate Social Media Like Public Utilities.  Democracy took a big blow when Twitter shut down President Donald Trump's accounts and Google and Amazon ousted Parler, a site favored by millions of conservatives.  Big Tech, which is run by the left, is robbing Americans of their right to communicate freely and exchange ideas.  The nation's founders worried that the government would use its power to censure and crush competing viewpoints.  Their remedy was the First Amendment, guaranteeing all of us freedom of speech and association and barring government censorship.  They had no way of anticipating that tech companies would grow more powerful than governments and have the monopolistic ability to suppress or cancel political viewpoints.  Yet, Facebook and Twitter now "wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions," explains ACLU lawyer Kate Ruane.  And Google, now the eponym for all internet searching, suppresses content by placing it on a distant page few searchers will ever get to.

There May be a Number of Ways Big Tech Implicated Themselves In Their Purge of Parler.  The web giants of this country exhibited a deeply troubling level of power in the past week, but in their zeal to exact their influence these tech titans may have unintentionally created problems for themselves.  Things began with Twitter initially blocking President Trump's account a month or so back, in the name of election security.  Following the mob scene in D.C. last week they flexed these digital muscles once again, and then things escalated between the major companies driving our tech sector.  Soon after the melee in the Congressional chambers, the President's Twitter account was again locked down.  FaceBook ramped that action up, and suspended his account outright, and then Twitter followed suit.  The company then took down the official Presidential Twitter account as well.  This only begins the unforeseen minefield these companies might be stomping through today[.]

Uganda Takes A Stand, Bans Facebook & Twitter From Internet After Censorship, Twitter Policy Has Meltdown.  On Tuesday, Uganda punched back at Facebook and Twitter by banning them from the internet after the two companies started censoring Uganda officials ahead of the election in the country.  "We demand that @Facebook & @Twitter write directly to the individuals that lost their accounts.  Since @Facebook cited @MoICT_Ug in their statement, let them write to us so that there's a chance for a fair hearing.  Accounts lost on Facebook belong to @GovUganda employees," tweeted Uganda Media Centre.

Idaho Internet Provider Blocks Access to Twitter, Facebook to Customers Who Request It.  A North Idaho Internet provider blocked access to Twitter and Facebook at its customers' requests.  According to emails sent to customers over the weekend, Your T1 WIFI — which provides services in the Spokane and northern Idaho areas — said it received phone calls from customers after those websites moved to block certain types of content and suspended accounts associated with President Donald Trump.  "It has come to our attention that Twitter and Facebook are engaged in censorship of our customers and information," an email to Your T1 WIFI customers said.  "We have the past couple days been fielding calls from customers voicing the concern that they do not want these sites allowed to be displayed on their internet feed... and that they do not want their children to go to these sites," the email added.  "They could do this themselves but some do not have the technical knowledge to do so and it would be very tiresome for us to do it for them and it would be expensive to visit each customer that wants this done."

Idaho Internet Provider Blocks Facebook, Twitter.  An internet service provider (ISP) in the North Idaho and the Spokane, Washington, area has decided to block Facebook and Twitter for its customers after some called in to complain about censorship on the platforms.  The ISP, Your T1 WIFI, confirmed that it will block Facebook and Twitter from its WIFI service for some customers starting this Wednesday, according to a report by KREM 2.  The move comes after Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump from its platform, and Facebook locked the president out of his account "indefinitely."

Gab Backed Up President Trump's Twitter, Recreated It On Website.  President Donald Trump may be gone from Twitter, but his tweets could now live on forever.  According to Populist Press, Gab backed up Trump's entire Twitter account before it was removed and recreated his page on Gab.

Gab CEO Defies Tech Tyrants — Restores All of President Trump's Tweets from Twitter — Trump's Account on Gab.  Popular businessman and President Donald Trump had a social media account on Twitter for several years and even before he was President of the United States.  Last week Twitter, Facebook, and others banned and removed the US President from their platforms.  It was a statement on the unprecedented power of their platforms and the power of collusion.  The tech giants want you to know who's boss and who will decide what is acceptable discourse in this once free country.  But the story did not end there.  Gab CEO Andrew Torba completely backed up President Trump's Twitter account before it was deleted and recreated the president's account on Gab.

Twitter Hasn't Suspended These Accounts Or Tweets That Openly Incite Violence.  On Friday, Twitter joined a slew of other social media companies in permanently suspending Donald Trump's accounts.  Subsequently, many other conservative users found themselves deplatformed by the tech giant.  The tech oligarchs' argument is that Trump's social media presence incites violence, as evidenced by the riot in the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.  Twitter argued that several of Trump's tweets violated its Glorification of Violence policy, which states, "You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people.  We also prohibit the glorification of violence."  Unsurprisingly, there are countless Twitter accounts that regularly call for harm or violence, in violation of this policy, yet have been allowed to persist.  While the president's posts and remarks have included some awful things, they have been in no way worse than much of what transpires on the platform.  Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has an intact Twitter account that consistently glorifies acts of violence, yet the brutal dictator has not faced any censorship or suspension.

What Now?  [Scroll down]  Both Twitter and Facebook deplatformed Trump, and when he shifted from his personal Twitter account to the POTUS account, Twitter silenced that one, too.  Other enemies of the left were also kicked off social media — among them Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon.  Facebook ejected the WalkAway movement, in the process deleting countless heartfelt posts by ordinary citizens explaining why they'd quit the Democratic Party.  YouTube took down a video by Rudy Giuliani.  Amazon, Google, and Apple removed Parler, a "free-speech" alternative to Twitter and Facebook, from their app stores.  The CEO of Mozilla, developer of the Firefox browser, wrote an essay entitled "We Need More than Deplatforming."  (Yet the social-media accounts of the Chinese Communist Party and Ayatollah Khamenei remained untouched.)

Twitter Shares Drop by 12 Percent After Company Banned Trump.  Shares dropped after the market opened on Monday, reaching a low of $45.17.  Twitter shares closed at $51.48 on Jan. 8.  Twitter said it removed Trump's account on Friday because some of his recent posts were glorifying violence.  The company echoed critics who attempted to connect Trump's rhetoric with the breach of the U.S. Capitol.  Trump responded by accusing Twitter of coordinating "with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me."  Twitter also banned prominent users including lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn.  Other users who weren't banned left the platform, including radio hosts Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh.

Texas Attorney General Vows to Fight Big Tech Censorship with Everything He's Got.  Twitter purged President Trump and thousands of conservative accounts on Friday [1/8/2021].  Because of Big Tech censorship, Parler is now the fastest growing social media company.  Thursday morning Parler CEO John Matze made a bold statement on his rapidly growing social media platform and condemned censorship of Facebook and Twitter.  24 hours later, Apple and Google threatened to ban Parler unless they censor and deplatform those who do not fall in line with the Communists.  Friday evening Google followed through with their threats and banned Parler from the Google play store.  Amazon is now targeting Parler for ruin.

Alternatives to Twitter.  One wonders how profitable Twitter will be once they get around to banning everyone Democrats and Social Justice Warriors think should get banned.

Here's a disturbing video of people inciting violence if that's really Twitter's concern.  As Twitchy reported Friday [1/8/2021], Twitter has permanently suspended the @realDonaldTrump account, explaining, "We have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."  There are a lot of videos like this one going around, but this one, put together by Caldron Pool, might be one of the best and most extensive.  While Democrats and the media are clutching their pearls over the president's alleged incitement of violence this week, here are some other people Twitter might want to take a look at if inciting violence is a bannable offense.  [Link to video clip]

Facebook and Twitter largely 'culpable for all the harm, all the hate, all the death' in Capitol attack: former Obama adviser.  Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites should be held accountable for helping to stoke the divisiveness that led to Wednesday's attack on the Capitol, according to a former Obama adviser who has also worked for Facebook. [...] A former economic adviser under President Barack Obama and the former Facebook privacy and public policy adviser, [Dipayan] Ghosh, as well as a growing number of scholars, is calling for social networks to face consequences for enabling the spread of the lies, hate speech, and conspiracy theories that led to the Capitol attack.

The Editor says...
[#1] Don't BLM and Antifa rioters use social media platforms to conspire with one another?  [#2] Here is a word of advice to all those who want to communicate with each other over short distances after they are locked out of Twitter, Facebook, and Parler:  Family Radio Service (FRS) walkie talkies work very well, no license is required, and (for now) they can be purchased and used anonymously.

Twitter Is The Enemy Of The American People.  On Oct. 18, 2020, Twitter banned the account of Dr. Scott Atlas for defending President Donald Trump's position on mask mandates.  In his tweet, he cited scientific studies, and the tweet contained absolutely no false information.  Also in October, Twitter banned the account of The New York Post for accurately reporting on a story about Hunter Biden's laptop.  Today we know these were just the first salvos in this evil company's assault on American liberty.  For all its talk about safety, community, and the health of discourse, we see today that Twitter acts in favor of one interest and one interest alone:  its own, even when it means destabilizing the American people.  On Friday [1/8/2021], the company permanently banned Trump from its platform and began a purge of conservative voices.  They claim this is needed to protect America from a coup.  That is a farcical lie.  They did it because their political enemies such as Trump and Sen. Josh Hawley are now out of power, and they mean to keep it [that] way.

If Twitter Has Taught Us Anything This Week, It's That The Platform Isn't "Fixable".  One of the many bits of fallout from Wednesday's riot was the decision by Twitter to permanently ban President Trump's account, as Allahpundit covered yesterday. [...] Yes, they have rules against promoting violence, but contrary to some of AP's analysis, I'm hard-pressed to see how that definition was applied in this case. [...] The people responsible for the violence are the people who made the decision to show up and commit acts of violence.  By this definition, every elected official who encouraged people to show up for a Black Lives Matter rally that later devolved into a riot is equally accountable for the arson and looting that followed.

'Banning free speech': President Trump pushes back on Twitter ban.  President Trump condemned Twitter shortly after the social media platform banned him permanently.  "As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me," the president said in a message on Friday night [1/8/2021] from his presidential Twitter account.  "Twitter may be a private company, but without the government's gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long."  Trump circumvented Twitter's ban of his personal account, posting the message briefly from his @POTUS handle before the tweet disappeared.  His message was then released in an official statement.  "As we've said, using another account to try to evade a suspension is against our rules," a Twitter spokesperson told the Washington Examiner on Friday night.  "We have taken steps to enforce this with regard to recent Tweets from the @POTUS account.

The Boot Is Coming Down Hard And Fast.  In response to pressures from all directions including its own staff, Twitter has followed Facebook's lead and removed Donald Trump's account.  And it wasn't just Trump.  Accounts are vanishing quickly, including some popular Trump supporter accounts.  I myself have lost hundreds of followers on Twitter in the last few hours, and I've seen people saying they lost a lot more.  It also wasn't just Trump supporters; leftist accounts are getting suspended too.  The online left is hopefully learning that cheering for Twitter "banning fascists" irrationally assumes that (A) their purges are only banning fascists and (B) they are limiting their bans to your personal definition of fascists.  There is no basis whatsoever for either of these assumptions.  Google has ratcheted things up even further by removing Parler from its app store, and Apple will likely soon follow.  This push to marginalize even the already fringey social media sites is making the libertarian/[leftist] argument of "If you don't like censorship just go to another platform" look pretty ridiculous.

Greg Gutfeld Joins Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Lou Dobbs In Leaving Twitter.  Fox News host Greg Gutfeld joined other prominent conservative voices on Saturday by abandoning his Twitter account after the social media platform permanently banned President Donald Trump.  "To be true to the resolution to myself:  this is my last tweet.  [O]ther than to read news, [I won't] be on [T]witter," Gutfeld first tweeted on Jan. 2. [...] On Saturday, after Twitter had banned the president and seemingly began purging the followers of conservative accounts, Gutfeld returned for a final sign-off.  "[O]kay, this IS my last tweet:  CNN tries to get FNC banned.  Apple targets Parler.  Publishers dump writers.  [M]usic labels drop artists.  [T]witter bans/removes thousands.  [T]ech companies join hands.  [T]his redefines who the true rebels are."

Trump fans ditch Twitter en masse after president's suspension.  Trump superfans are heading for the exits.  Just hours after President Trump was permanently banned from Twitter, his diehards on the platform vowed they would move on as well.  "Goodbye Twitter" trended during the early morning hours Saturday as people continued to come to grips with the leader of the free world being deplatformed.  "Goodbye Twitter friends.  See you @parler," said one user, citing a more pro free speech social media alternative to Twitter that is popular with conservatives.

Hey, Twitter, are you sure about this?  For a half-century, the trend in political culture has been inexorably in one direction: toward the steady loosening and eventually the near-obliteration of media filters. [...] The erosion of traditional establishment filters — first by such mediums as direct mail, talk radio and cable, later and most powerfully by social media — has been a primary factor in the rise of potent ideological movements on right and left alike.  It is why the election and bizarre presidency of an insurgent disruptor like Donald J. Trump — inconceivable in the 20th century era of establishment media — was eminently conceivable in this era.  And it is why the decision Friday night by Twitter to permanently ban Trump from its platform is a signal moment — a historic move, even before we know the consequences that will flow from it.  It represents an effort to reassert the notion that filters have a place in political communication and that some voices have lost their claim on public legitimacy — even when that voice has 89 million followers and is just two months past receiving the second-highest number of votes in U.S. election history.

CNN Parties Over Twitter's 'Amazing' Choice to Ban Trump:  He's 'Been Kneecapped!'  Mark it down, NewsBusters readers:  January 8, 2021 will go down as one of the greatest days in the lives of more than a few CNN charlatans due to the massive, unprecedented crackdown on American free speech, including Twitter's permanent banning of President Trump.  On CNN's Situation Room, the mood was euphoric as they celebrated the "amazing situation" and "historic moment" of Twitter having "kneecapped" Trump before our very eyes, even though it was many years later for these censorship fiends.  Chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta delivered the news, feigning concern for what Trump will do now and how it'll affect his "state of mind" considering "he's been unstable."  Acosta boasted that, if Trump were to send out a video message, the White House would have to rely on the media even though they're "their least favorite people in the world."

Twitter bans Trump 'due to the risk of further incitement of violence'.  Twitter suspended President Trump permanently.  The platform announced the suspension on Friday evening [1/8/2021], citing a "close review of recent tweets from" the president's personal account.  It said in a blog post that the suspension was "due to the risk of further incitement of violence."  The social media platform's review focused on two of the president's tweets Friday, which it said violated its Glorification of Violence policy.  The policy, Twitter stated, "aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021."

Twitter Permanently Banning Donald Trump Is 'Absolute Authoritarian Lunacy'.  Before Christmas, this was floated:  Twitter could permanently ban Donald Trump.  At the time, being the sitting president, he was offered an exemption.  You can't ban the leader of the free world.  Well, given the events of this week and the storming of the Capitol Building by pro-Trump supporters, the social media giant has decided to ban the president of the United States days before he's set to leave office.

Breaking: Twitter Suspends Dan Bongino For Posting Trump's Video Calling For Peace.  If there's one thing Twitter hates, it's when conservatives call for peaceful protests.  Prominent conservative Dan Bongino was locked out of his Twitter account for 12 hours after he posted President Donald Trump's call to "go home peacefully" on January 6th.  In response, Bongino said he is done with the far-left platform for good.  This is the same call to peace that got Trump banned from the social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.

Down the Memory Hole overnight:
Hacked.  My Twitter account was hacked a few days ago.  I learned about it via several emails from Twitter.  [Illustration]  Whoever hacked my account changed my email address:  [Illustration]  Twitter obviously knew my user name — @jhinderaker — and my email address.  I followed the instruction to contact Twitter support right away.  That is when the trouble started.  Twitter responded to my help ticket by telling me they have no record of my existence:  [Illustration]  I have been on Twitter since 2008 and have around 14,000 followers, but they "were not able to locate any history of an account with this email and username."  Despite the fact that they had emailed me, using that username, at that email address, just the day before.  I then made eight or nine attempts to alert Twitter to my account being hacked, using their help function.  But I was immediately foiled because the first thing you have to do is put in your username, which they kept telling me they'd never heard of.

Twitter boots Trump allies Mike Flynn and Sidney Powell.  Twitter on Friday [1/8/2021] suspended the accounts of President Trump's allies, former Gen. Mike Flynn and lawyer Sidney Powell, who backed his claims that fraud handed victory to President-elect Joe Biden.  The action follows the Wednesday attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters after Trump told them to "fight like hell" to persuade Congress to overturn Biden's win.  Powell recently claimed that Trump offered her a White House job to investigate voter fraud, but that senior White House staff — fearful of her wild claims of fraud — proceeded to block her from Trump's orbit.  Flynn reportedly floated Trump declaring martial law during a post-election Oval Office meeting, though he denied it.

The woke purge.  Cancel culture doesn't exist, they say.  And yet with the flick of a switch, billionaire capitalists voted for by precisely nobody have just silenced a man who is still the democratically elected president of the United States.  With the push of a button in their vast temples to technology, the new capitalist oligarchs of Silicon Valley have prevented a man who won the second largest vote in the history of the American republic just two months ago — 74 million votes — from engaging with his supporters (and critics) in the new public square of the internet age.  Not only does cancel culture exist — it is the means through which the powerful, unaccountable oligarchies of the internet era and their clueless cheerleaders in the liberal elites interfere in the democratic process and purge voices they disapprove of.  That's what Twitter's permanent suspension of Donald Trump confirms.  The new capitalists' cancellation of the democratically elected president of the United States is a very significant turning point in the politics and culture of the Western world.

Twitter Permanently Suspends Trump.  Twitter announced Friday it had decided to permanently suspend President Donald Trump's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, citing "the risk of further incitement of violence."  "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence," a post from Twitter Safety read. [...] The company cited two of the president's tweets from Friday as the reason for the permanent suspension: one in which he announced he would not be attending President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20 and a second where he praised his supporters as "great American Patriots" who will not be "disrespected or treated unfairly," just days after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, leaving five people dead.

The Editor says...
How many Democrats refused to attend the Inauguration of President Trump?  Were any of them kicked off Twitter as a result?

Rush Limbaugh deactivates his Twitter account after President Trump permanently banned.  Radio host Rush Limbaugh's Twitter account has been deactivated.  Twitter confirmed to USA TODAY that the account wasn't suspended but "deactivated by the owner."  Limbaugh is considered the leading conservative talk radio host and has been on the airwaves for more than three decades.  He has been an adamant supporter of President Donald Trump and his Twitter account, @RealRLimbaugh, had a similar to the style of Trump's @realDonaldTrump.  Twitter permanently banned Trump from the social media platform Friday, citing the risk that he would incite further violence.  He had 88.6 million followers.

Trump Responds to Twitter's Permanent Account Suspension.  President Donald Trump responded to Twitter's move to permanently suspend his account from its platform late Friday, condemning the big tech giant and saying that it does not stand for free speech.  The president also said he anticipates a "big announcement" soon and that his team is negotiating with other sites and is also looking at building a separate platform.  "As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me," Trump said in a statement.  "Twitter may be a private company, but without the government's gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long," he added.  "I predicted this would happen.  We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.  We will not be SILENCED!" he said.

Trump tweets from POTUS handle account, says looking 'at the possibilities of building out our own platform'.  President Donald Trump continued tweeting Friday evening using the government-owned @POTUS account, despite having his @realDonaldTrump account permanently suspended by Twitter earlier in the day.  "As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me," Trump wrote in a series of tweets that are no longer visible on the social media service.  The tweets were removed from the service almost immediately.  It's unclear what steps Twitter took in the handling of the @POTUS account.

ACLU raises concerns amid Twitter's ban of Trump.  The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday is raising concerns about social media platforms banning users, in the aftermath of Twitter's decision to permanently suspend President Trump.  While the ACLU has repeatedly locked horns with Mr. Trump and his administration over issues such as the president's travel ban, the ACLU is worried about the ramifications of tech companies diminishing online speech.  "We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now, but it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions — especially when political realities make those decisions easier," said Kate Ruane, ACLU senior legislative counsel, in a statement.  "President Trump can turn to his press team or Fox News to communicate with the public, but others — like the many Black, Brown, and LGBTQ activists who have been censored by social media companies — will not have that luxury."

Democrats Cheer Twitter For Engaging In Political Censorship.  Top Democrats cheered far-left Twitter's decision to ban President Donald Trump on Friday night, calling the controversial move "long overdue."  Democrat Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who most claim is a "moderate" or a "centrist," cheered the political censorship, writing on Twitter:  "Thank you @twitter for taking this action.  We must come together as a country to heal and find a common path forward."  [Tweet]  Far-left Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) wrote on Twitter:  "Great.  Now let's permanently suspend him from the White House."

Why [the] ban of @realDonaldTrump proves Twitter [is] not 'just a platform'.  Twitter has "permanently banned" President Donald Trump's account.  While this will please Democrats, and perhaps lessen the (justifiable) heat the company is taking from regulators, it just proves again that Twitter's claims that it is "just a platform" are hogwash.  Some of Trump's tweets were untrue and incendiary, but so are the Ayatollah Khamenei's.  His account is still up.  The difference is Twitter is run by American liberals, who only really police one type of person, of one political persuasion.  It's a little ridiculous that what finally did Trump in was tweeting that he wouldn't be attending Joe Biden's inauguration.  Twitter twisted that to mean that he still won't accept the results of the election — which just shows they were looking for an excuse.  Rather than let the readers judge, they pulled the plug.

Big Tech Launches Massive Coordinated Cyber Attack on 74,000,000 Trump Voters — GOP Silent.  Big tech has launched an unprecedented and coordinated cyber attack on President Donald Trump and his 74,000,000 voters.  As this was happening, the GOP was dead silent.  On Friday, Twitter permanently banned hundreds, if not thousands, of Trump supporters and prominent allies — before banning the president himself.  Nearly every account that helped to promote the Stop the Steal rallies or challenge the election results were banned, including Ali Alexander, Michael Coudrey, Gen. Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, and Lin Wood.  Countless smaller accounts that supported the president were also getting suspended in a seemingly constant rate.  The same has been happening over on Facebook and Instagram.

Donald Trump Block Shows Twitter 'Must Not Like Democracy,' Says Parler CEO John Matze.  The CEO of Parler, a social media platform favored by conservatives, has said Twitter's blocking of Donald Trump suggests it "must not like democracy."  John Matze — who co-founded the website in 2018 — made the comment on Thursday [1/7/2021] in response to the president's daughter, Tiffany Trump, who shared a statement released by her father that pledged an "orderly transition" to Joe Biden later this month.  Trump's statement was issued on Thursday via the White House communications chief Dan Scavino as the president was facing a 12-hour Twitter block for policy-breaking posts made as his supporters stormed the Capitol Building on Wednesday.  "What ever happened to freedom of speech?" Tiffany Trump wrote on Parler, attracting thousands of comments and shares, including from Matze, who has repeatedly pitched his platform as a "free speech" alternative to mainstream social networks.

Trump Vows To Start Own Social Platform After Being Banned From Twitter.  Donald Trump has stated he wants to create his own social media platform after being permanently suspended from Twitter.  The outgoing President of the United States was permanently banned from the platform yesterday, January 8, with Twitter stating that Trump may incite further violence as its reason for removing the 74-year-old from the platform.  Announcing the news, the social media platform said in a statement:  'After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.'

The tech monopolies have sprung into action.  [Scroll down]  Trump did not instigate violence.  The tech tyrants have systematically deleted Trump's words and the search engines will not help you find them, but you can, with difficulty, discover what he said on January 6:  ["]We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.  I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.["] [...] Having erased facts so they could claim Trump incited violence, the tech monopolies were set.  To date, this is the purge, in chronological order, all predicated on Trump "promoting violence":
  •   Believe it or not, it started with Pence unfollowing Trump on Twitter.
  •   Zuckerberg personally banned Trump from Facebook.
  •   Snapchat locked Trump's account.
  •   Shopify removed Trump's organization and campaign store.
  •   Michelle Obama called on all tech companies to ban President Trump.
  •   Facebook deleted the Walk Away movement page, including 500,000 Walk Away testimonials.
  •   Twitter banned General Flynn.
  •   Twitter banned Sidney Powell.
  •   Google's YouTube terminated Steve Bannon's War Room podcast while 500,000 were watching in real-time.
  •   Twitter permanently banned President Trump's personal account.
  •   The Gateway Pundit says that Twitter banned hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other lesser-known sites that challenged election results.
  •   The Trump campaign's email service has banned the campaign from its platform.
  •   Twitter deleted the official President of the United States account (@POTUS)

Breaching the Capitol:  The Surprise That Was No Surprise.  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube banned the President from social media for 12 [to] 24 hours.  This response is deeply irresponsible.  Like him or hate him, the President of the United States should never be censored.  Voters have a right to know his thoughts no matter what they are.  If Iranian Mullahs can make threats to the United States on Twitter, the President of the United States can express his views.

Twitter locks Trump's account for 12 hours, signals he could be banned.  Facebook and Twitter took the extraordinary step on Wednesday [1/6/2021] of locking President Donald Trump's account on their platforms after his supporters stormed the Capitol building to protest the election.  Twitter said it has locked President Donald Trump's account for 12 hours, and warned for the first time that it may suspend him permanently.  The temporary lock reflects Trump's violation of the Twitter rules, the company said.

Facebook Will Ban And Delete All Photos And Videos Of Any Aspect Of Wednesday Protests.  Facebook announced it would be stripping all photos and videos featuring Wednesday's riots at the U.S. Capitol, claiming such content promoted criminal activity.  "At this point," the company wrote, "they represent promotion of criminal activity which violates our policies."  No such widespread censorship was afforded to the left-wing riots erupting last year, killing at least 30 people while reporters stood in front of burning blazes and characterized the events as "peaceful protests."  Facebook's decision comes as Twitter declared a 12-hour suspension of President Donald Trump's account, going on to threaten a permanent ban against the president after removing a video from the White House urging his supporters raiding the capitol building to "go home now."  The tech giant also barred users from sharing Trump's plea for peace by prohibiting likes, retweets, or replies.  Twitter continued, warning it would be monitoring even "statements made off Twitter" for possible suspension.

Trump calls for peace, tells demonstrators to go home and Twitter removes the post, suspends his account.  The new party line that social media and the propaganda narrative media are enforcing is that any questioning of the fairness of the past presidential election amounts to incitement to violence.  Apparently using that illogic as a basis, Jack Dorsey's Twitter actually censored a video that President Trump posted, calling for demonstrators to go home and be peaceful.  That sort of thinking would lead to Twitter suspending the accounts of anyone complaining about racial injustice, since Black Lives Matter demonstrations have wrought so much damage on so many cities, in the name of racial justice.  The same standards never apply to leftists and conservatives when Twitter is censoring.  It's almost as if they want to falsely portray him as inciting violence... ya think?  Even ABC noted the deletion, though it ignored the call to peace:  [Video clip]

Twitter Censors Trump and Campaign 543 Times, But Never Biden.  Twitter's censorship crusade against President Donald Trump and his campaign pressed on this week.  The site labeled videos from Fox News and One America News Network.  It also labeled Peter Navarro's report on election irregularities, and the Dominion Voting Systems audit report from Antrim County, Michigan, among other tweets.  The president's Twitter account and the account for his campaign, @TeamTrump, have been censored, suppressed, and limited 543 times since May 31, 2018.  Since Dec. 14, both accounts have received 57 more labels.  Former Vice President Joe Biden and his campaign, @TeamJoe, have not been censored at all.  Twitter also labeled several news clips.  A clip from Mark Levin's show on Fox News discussing how the Democratic Party and the media are using the election to divide the nation was labeled as having disputed claims about election fraud.  The same warning was applied to multiple clips from One America News Network.

Twitter Hinting They'll Dump President Trump If Biden Is Inaugurated.  Social media has had a love-hate relationship with the right.  They loved the revenue and traffic our sites and brought them, but they hate the very ground we stand on, especially President Trump.  They are now hinting they will kick the President off the platform if Joe Biden is sworn in as President.  Democrats thought they had a lock on social media when they leveraged Facebook's data-mining tools to get the vote out for Obama.  You can only imagine their horror when they saw Trump turn the tables on them in 2016.  They were blindsided when the right broke new ground as great innovators and pioneers with our use of Social Media to bypass media gatekeepers of information.

Election Interference:  Twitter Changes Rules Back to What They Were Before Election Now That they Manipulated Election Results.  This is quite extraordinary.  Twitter on Wednesday [12/16/2020] announced they were switching back rules to before the election.  The rules served their purpose.  They were able to list any criticism of the fraudulent election as "disputed" or "fake news."  And they especially hit President Trump hard.  But now that the tech giant was able to manipulate the results and censor conservative arguments they are going to back off the new rules.  This is after they manipulated election results.

Twitter Confirms Trump Could Be Banned From Platform After Inauguration.  Twitter confirmed that they could clamp down harder on President Donald Trump's personal Twitter account after he leaves office.  Trump will lose the protections that Twitter offers to world leaders when he becomes a private citizen, exposing him to the possibility of being more strictly moderated and possibly even banned if he continues to disseminate "conspiracy theories," according to The Independent.  According to Twitter's "principles & approach" to world leaders, "if a Tweet from a world leader does violate the Twitter Rules but there is a clear public interest value to keeping the Tweet on the service, we may place it behind a notice that provides context about the violation and allows people to click through should they wish to see the content."

Twitter Removes 'Like,' 'Reply' and Retweet Count Functions From Multiple Trump Tweets About the Election.  Twitter disabled "liking" and replying to multiple tweets from President Donald Trump about the election on Saturday morning [12/12/2020].  The platform also removed the retweet count, so that people cannot see how many times it has been shared.  Users are now required to quote tweet the messages if they would like to share them.  When you attempt to do so, a a window pops up saying "this claim about election fraud is disputed."  There is also a "find out more" button that takes you to a curated list of tweets about how "election fraud of any kind is exceedingly rare in the US, election experts confirm."

Is the news broken?  [Transcript]  Twitter drew controversy shortly before the election when it censored The New York Post's article.  It was about controversies surrounding Joe Biden's son, Hunter, his foreign business deals, and contents alleged to be on his laptop computer.  At a Senate hearing, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said his company blocked the Post's tweets because of a policy against sharing material "hacked" from someone's computer, though there was no indication such material was in The Post article.  Jack Dorsey:  Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours.  Actually, it caused a two week long stalemate.  When Twitter finally unlocked the Post's account, the newspaper celebrated with a FREE BIRD front page.  From Twitter to Facebook and Google, Internet giants are under fire for their increasingly heavy-hand when flagging and blocking certain views, news and science.

Dehumanizing Americans.  By now, most Americans are well aware of the efforts to block communication countering the alternate reality of the "Great Reset."  Mainstream Media, Facebook, Twitter and other communication networks are working overtime to censor speech contrary to the approved narrative.  Even the president of our country is being censored.  He routinely has had corrections added to his Twitter feed; his speeches are not carried by MSM, and his attorneys' attempts to get the facts out about the stench of election fraud are sidelined or ignored.  As for Joe Average Citizen, social media giants such as Facebook pointedly block communication that is out of line with their "standards," while so-called "fact checkers," aka brainwashers, post relentless reminders about the newly favored "realities" of the Great Reset.

Twitter is in China's pocket.  [Scroll down]  This is the dilemma Jack Dorsey has created for himself in assigning his company to be the absolute arbiter of truth.  No one denies that the President traffics in half-truths or borderline conspiracies, as do many others who sign up to use Twitter's service.  But some state actors are using Twitter in a far nefarious manner than by simply retweeting favorable news clips.  In the past week, state-labeled accounts from the CCP of China have spread misinformation regarding the origins of COVID-19, pointing the finger at frozen food from Europe and Italy, in an attempt to shield themselves from culpability and obfuscate any investigation into their actions in Wuhan or their virology studies.  The posts from Chinese state-run media have gone unchallenged by Twitter, and Twitter's communications team, whose members apparently don't like using their own platform, remains silent.

Twitter Blocks 'Potentially Harmful' Links to Sidney Powell Election Lawsuit.  Twitter is blocking users from sharing links to lawyer Sidney Powell's lawsuit relating to widespread voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential election.  A number of users across Twitter have reported being unable to share links to lawyer Sidney Powell's lawsuit relating to voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential election.  When attempting to share the link to the document, users receive a notification stating that the link has been identified as "potentially harmful."

Twitter [is] Now Stopping Users From "Liking" President Trump's Tweet — Forcing Users to Read False Election Information.  Twitter has stepped up [its] war against President Donald J Trump by forcing users to re-read falsified election info before allowing users to like the presidents tweets.  Now, when liking one of the tweets Twitter deems "inaccurate", you are met with a caution box saying "this claim about election fraud is disputed — Help keep Twitter a place for reliable info.  Find out more before liking." [...] If you click on the "Find our more" tab, you are sent to a page soon Twitter filled with biased, liberal news sources.

Twitter's New Censorship Czar Announces Her Agenda.  Twitter just got a new leader for their Ministry of Propaganda, and she recently gave the world a glimpse into her agenda.  Spoiler alert, it ain't good, folks.  Protocol, a tech news site, recently published a profile of Christine Su, the company's senior product manager for conversation safety at Twitter.  In the piece titled, "How a Young, Queer Asian-American Businesswoman is Rethinking User Safety at Twitter," Su discussed her plans for Twitter's policies regarding the policing of speech on the platform.  According to Protocol, Su, who was hired six months ago, is responsible for "keeping everyday users safe online and rethinking the fundamentals of the platform along the way."  To accomplish this, the Twitter employee indicated that the company's censorship policy will focus on "transformative and procedural justice.'

Twitter is now warning you away from witness testimony at public hearings.  If these facts were asserted by Team Biden, every network would have covered this Pa hearing LIVE.

Sidney Powell's Site Gets Censored by Twitter After She Drops Big Election Lawsuits.  Sidney Powell filed lawsuits in both Michigan and Georgia on Wednesday night [11/25/2020] alleging multiple constitutional violations and seeking to have the elections decertified.  But people soon noticed something funny when they tried to share the link to her suits on her website on Twitter.  As the Epoch Times reported, such efforts were flagged with "Something went wrong, but don't fret — let's give it another shot" and another message warning of an unsafe link if you went to the site, "We can't complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.  Visit our Help Center to learn more."  It doesn't explain what is harmful or plain what the "partners" are.

Twitter to Warn Users When They 'Like' Controversial Tweets.  Don't touch that like button!  Twitter has unveiled a new policy to display warnings when users like a labelled tweet.  Twitter has outlined a wide range of updates to undermine conservative opposition amid the recent 2020 presidential election.  "Giving context on why a labeled Tweet is misleading under our election, COVID-19, and synthetic and manipulated media rules is vital," Twitter declared on Monday [11/23/2020] as it unveiled yet another policy change.  The official Twitter account explained that new "prompts" in recent months "helped decrease Quote Tweets of misleading information by 29%."  Now the platform is "expanding them to show when you tap to like a labeled Tweet."

FEC just turned Twitter into all-powerful propaganda machine accountable to no one.  Ah, to be Twitter.  Can control anything it publishes, profit from anything it wants — and not be held responsible for any of it.  Such is a unanimous ruling by the Federal Election Commission, which found Twitter violated no law by censoring The [New York] Post's factual report about the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop.  Stating that, in its view, "Twitter is likely a press entity," the FEC said that the social media network's "activities fall within our press exemption."  That's going to be news to Twitter and Facebook, which enjoy the benefits of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.  That law states that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

Cancel Culture Insurance:  Twitter Will Let You Hide Old Tweets.  Social media giant Twitter reportedly plans to introduce a number of new privacy-related features, including one that would allow users to hide their old tweets.  Twitter's privacy changes come on the heels of the increasingly common scenario in which a user of the platform is canceled for posts made up to a decade ago on the platform.  MacRumors reports that Twitter is introducing new privacy-related features to its platform that will give users greater control over their follower lists and who can see their profile.  One option planned for the platform is a feature that allows users to archive old tweets so that other users are unable to see them after a period of time set by the account holder.

Twitter considering subscription fees to ensure 'revenue durability'.  Twitter is considering adding subscriptions fees for some features as the company looks to diversify its revenue beyond ads, a company official confirmed Monday [2/8/2021].  "Increasing revenue durability is our top company objective.  You will see us continue to research and experiment with ways to further diversify our revenue beyond ads in 2021 and beyond," Twitter's revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, said in a statement.

VP Pence Just Unfollowed President Trump on Twitter.  This afternoon [1/6/2021] at 1:16 PM, former AG GOP Chair Kelli Ward tweeted a copy of Vice President Mike Pence's statement, informing the public that he has no intention of sending the Electoral College votes from 6 contested states back to their state's legislature.  100 Percent Fed Up reports — AZ GOP Chair Dr. Kelli Ward appears to be blaming VP Pence for the chaos that ensued in the Capitol building during the Joint Session of Congress.

Man Who Repaired Hunter Biden's Laptop Sues Twitter for Defamation.  Computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac provided the explosive information in The New York Post's expose on Hunter Biden after he gave Hunter's hard drive to Rudy Giuliani.  Twitter stopped users from sharing the Post's articles because it came from hacked material.  Now Mac Isaac has sued Twitter for defamation and wants $500 million in damages along with a public retraction.  In the lawsuit, Mac Isaac noted he talked to the FBI and Mr. Robert Costello, an attorney for Giuliani, between July 2019 and October 2020.  The Post received the hard drive from Hunter's computer from Giuliani, not Mac Isaac.  Therefore, Mac Isaac did not know the Post had the hard drive.  He did not want the Post to print his name or give anyone permission to report his name.

Six Takeaways as Facebook, Twitter CEOs Testify at Senate Hearing.  [#1] 'Tasks' and Coordination:  Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., one of the staunchest critics of the social media companies, said that a Facebook whistleblower had contacted his office about an internal platform called Tasks.  Hawley said the whistleblower, a former Facebook employee with direct knowledge of the company's content moderation policies, explained that Facebook's censorship teams used Tasks.  As an exhibit, Hawley showed a Tasks screenshot that seemed to show communication among Facebook employees and those of other tech giants.  "So, as I understand it, Facebook censorship teams communicate with their counterparts at Twitter and Google and then enter those companies' suggestions for censorship onto the Tasks platform so that Facebook can then follow up with them and effectively coordinate their censorship efforts," Hawley said.  "Let me ask you directly under oath, now:  Does Facebook coordinate its content moderation policies or efforts in any way with Google or Twitter?"  Zuckerberg didn't give a clear answer.

Computer repairman who made Hunter Biden hard-drive contents public sues Twitter for $500 million after moderators 'labeled him a hacker'.  A computer repair shop owner who Hunter Biden handed his laptops over to in April 2019 is suing Twitter for defamation, claiming moderators labeled him a hacker.  John Paul Mac Isaac is seeking $500 million in damages from Twitter after The New York Post's story about Biden, obtained from the 50-year-old's laptop, was labeled as potentially coming from hacked material.  Facebook and Twitter both restricted viewing of the Post's story, and Twitter pointed to its ban on posting 'hacked materials' as an explanation.

Man who repaired Hunter Biden's laptop sues Twitter for saying that contents that he released were 'hacked'.  John Paul Mac Isaac, the Wilmington, Delaware owner of a now-closed computer repair shop, is suing Twitter for half a billion dollars for implying that he is a "hacker." [...] My sympathies are entirely with Mr. Mac Isaac, and I hope a jury can be found in South Florida that will give him a fair hearing.  But I do worry that establishing a link between Twitter's use of the term hacking and the negative consequences he suffered will be difficult.

Twitter CEO Dorsey Says It Was 'Wrong' to Block New York Post Hunter Biden Story.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Tuesday [11/17/2020] acknowledged that the platform was "wrong" to block a New York Post report about Hunter Biden last month.  During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing regarding "censorship, suppression and the 2020 elections," Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg were asked about their companies' decision to suppress a New York Post story about a laptop and emails reportedly belonging to Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.  Twitter had blocked the sharing of the article both publicly and in private direct messages, while Facebook limited distribution of the article but did not completely block it.

Prepare for the Great Decoupling — Deplatforming moves downstream to WordPress.com and Mailchimp.  In the past day there have been two very disturbing developments in internet deplatforming.  We are all familiar with deplatforming from major social media services such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as those platforms outright silencing important news that harms Democrats, like the Biden family influence peddling scandal.  Twitter regularly now places notices or restrictions even on Trump's tweet on the allegation that his opinions on the election are disputed.  In the four years Trump as been the subject of dishonest and malicious conspiracy claims, particularly Russia collusion, I can't remember Twitter ever placing such restrictions on the tweets from Adam Schiff, other Democrat politicians, or mainstream media outlets peddling that disinformation.

Twitter flags Nikki Haley for saying obviously true things.  As with so many stories in politics these days, this one started with a tweet.  In this case, it was from former governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.  Given all of the election fraud stories we've been covering for this entire cycle, her comments seemed innocuous enough.  [Tweet]  Surprise, surprise.  Twitter almost immediately slapped a "disputed" warning label on the tweet.  But rather than meekly accepting this next round of censorship, Haley pushed back.  She asked why she was singled out for this sort of attention when Ayatollah Khamenei is allowed to tweet out Holocaust denial material.  It may come as a surprise to no one that Twitter apparently doesn't have a policy about denying the Holocaust.  But you're not allowed to tweet about things that actually did happen right here in the United States.

Twitter Puts Warning Label on Nikki Haley's Tweet But Lets Ayatollah Slide.  Twitter slapped a warning label on a tweet from former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley arguing that "election fraud does happen," but the social media platform has looked the other way at tweets from Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei denying the Holocaust.  The social media platform placed a "disputed" label on Haley's statement that "Despite what the media tells us, election fraud does happen, and policies like ballot harvesting and mailing ballots to people who don't request them makes it easier."  The label links to a series of fact checks that do not address Haley's claim about ballot harvesting.

Hillary's Claim That Russia Interfered In Election [was] Allowed, But Social Media Shuts Down Trump's Voter Fraud Claim.  Since Election Day 2020, President Donald Trump has claimed, without evidence, that there were some shenanigans in the presidential election — voter fraud, dead people voting, and the like.  Social media was having none on it.  In a 24-hour period between mid-morning Thursday [11/5/2020] and Friday, Twitter censored six of Trump's posts.  The posts weren't immediately visible.  Instead, there was this note attached by Twitter:  "Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process." Site visitors could still click "view" on the right side to see the post.  In one post, Trump said:  "All of the recent Biden claimed States will be legally challenged by us for Voter Fraud and State Election Fraud.  Plenty of proof — just check out the Media.  WE WILL WIN! America First!"

Why Twitter Won't Let People Share Sworn Court Documents Alleging Voter Fraud.  If you thought Twitter's censorship of reported Joe Biden family corruption or frequent flagging of the U.S. president's tweets were isolated incidents, think again.  Big Tech's efforts to shield favored political figures and positions from scrutiny have only increased.  You and I can find ourselves branded with censorious labels even for sharing court documents containing sworn testimony, should the offending share touch any of a growing number of third rails.  Today, the integrity of the 2020 presidential election is the greatest third rail of them all.  I found that out this week when I tweeted screenshots of the summary of a sworn affidavit, and a link to that affidavit, delivered by Detroit poll challenger Zachary Larsen.  In the affidavit, Larsen, a former Michigan assistant attorney general, claims to have witnessed several disturbing instances of fraud during the vote-counting he watched on and after Nov. 3, 2020.

Twitter Labels/Hides 7 of Trump's Most Recent 16 Tweets.  As of early Friday morning, President Trump had issued 16 tweets in 24 hours, and seven of them were labeled as "misleading" and hidden by Twitter.  Around 2 a.m., Trump reacted to the censorship, writing:  "Twitter is out of control, made possible through the government gift of Section 230!"  Several of the suppressed tweets were video clips of President Trump's news conference on Thursday evening, where he discussed the problems he sees with the ballot counting and alleged fraud.

Trump will lose a certain Twitter privilege if Biden wins the 2020 election.  If President Trump loses the election, he will also have to say goodbye to a Twitter privilege that lets world leaders keep up tweets with certain offensive or misleading content, according to a report.  Trump, as president, has benefited from the Twitter policy that flags content that violates the platform's rules — but does not outright force their deletion, as is the case with ordinary users, Bloomberg reported.  But if Biden wins the election, come January, Trump will fall into the former world leader category, losing the special treatment, the report said.  Since election night, eight of Trump's tweets have been flagged by the social media giant.

Assuming he loses the election...
Twitter Confirms Trump's Account Will No Longer Receive 'Special Protections' Starting January 20th, Will Be Censored for Violations.  Twitter has confirmed that President Donald Trump will no longer receive "special protections" beginning on January 20th at 12:01 p.m. if he does not win the election.  The platform has already been censoring the president and his supporters for years, but is now promising even more censorship if he does not fall in line.

Twitter is wildly censoring President Trump.  During these insecure days, Trump has been trying to have a tweetstorm to keep his base informed and engaged.  The hard-left activists at Twitter, though, are doing everything they can to stop him.  Trump tweeted out a short clip of a speech he gave on Thursday, in which he said that Detroit and Philadelphia are famous for corruption and should not be allowed to affect the outcome of this election.  He also added that the Republicans won a case against Philadelphia regarding election observers, only to have the election officials ignore the court order.  The fact that they're refusing to allow observers, he said, indicates that they're trying to commit fraud.  To get to that video, though, one has to click past a warning saying that "Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civil process."

The election coup plot, explained.  I fully expect that Twitter and Facebook will suppress circulation of this blog post, but so what?  The half of the country that never strays beyond the mainstream media narrative would find it unbelievable, a fantasy of conspiracy theorizing.  After four years of their media telling them that Russia hacked the 2016 election, and Hillary claiming she was cheated, the new media-approved narrative is that any questioning of electoral fraud is an attack on democracy.  Such people are a lost cause, unless (or until) crimes are proven in court and election cheaters are sentenced to prison.  But for the rest of us who have eyes and brains, there is no stopping suspicion and activism in the "nasty street fight ahead."

Twitter slaps warning label on Team Trump S.C. victory tweet.  Twitter censored the Trump campaign Tuesday night, slapping a warning label on a tweet claiming victory in South Carolina.  The Team Trump account posted that "President @realDonaldTrump wins #SouthCarolina!" shortly after 8 p.m., an hour after polls closed.  Mr. Trump did win the state — unsurprisingly since no Democratic presidential candidate has won South Carolina in nearly a half-century.  The 2020 Biden-Harris ticket made little effort to win the state and no handicapper saw a Democratic victory there.

It truly appears that the fix is in.  What we're seeing happening in Michigan and Wisconsin is nothing short of election theft.  That is unambiguous to anyone who is paying attention.  But they're having trouble revealing it to other Americans because, on cue, it's being censored across the board.  The President's Tweets are being hit.  Prominent conservatives' Facebook and Twitter posts are being suppressed.  For those who are just coming in on the topic I'm conspicuously dancing around, it appears that the election really is being stolen right before our eyes.  Michigan and Wisconsin are seeing voting totals materialize overnight that make it clear the fix is in.  And they're not even trying to hide it.  In Michigan, an overnight vote update added 138,339 votes to Vice President Joe Biden's totals.  That same [update yielded] ZERO votes for President Trump.

Twitter Blocks Presidential Communications On Election Night.  Tonight as America elects its next president, social media company Twitter has blocked the communications of the President of the United States to the American people.  After Joe Biden declared he is winning, Trump tweeted that Biden is trying to steal the election.  Twitter immediately blocked the tweet.

Twitter backs down and unlocks New York Post account after two-week standoff over Hunter Biden posts.  The New York Post is now free to roam about the Twitterverse after a two-week clash with the social media giant over posting links to its reporting about Hunter Biden.  In a series of tweets Friday evening, Twitter Safety announced that it was updating its policy regarding how to handle content that was blocked for a policy that has since been changed — and that as a result, the New York Post's account would no longer be restricted.

Twitter backs down, unlocks Post's account.  Twitter backed down Friday [10/30/2020] in its battle with The [New York] Post and unlocked its main account after a two-week stalemate over the Hunter Biden exposé.  The move came after The Post refused Twitter's demand that it delete six tweets that linked to stories that the company claimed — without any evidence — were based on hacked information.  The Post never budged, and kept the tweets on the account during the standoff — even as Twitter obscured them from view.  In a series of tweets, the social-media giant said it was revising its "Hacked Materials Policy" and "updating our practice of not retroactively overturning prior enforcement."

Twitter Throws Up A Wall On Border Issues.  In 2016, building a border wall and reducing illegal immigration were pivotal issues in the presidential election.  Human trafficking, drug smuggling, and gang members crossing over onto U.S. soil were such a strong concern that Donald Trump's promises to put a lid on the problem helped him gain the White House throne.  Four years later, those worries have slipped a few notches as Americans struggle with a worldwide pandemic, lockdowns, and the loss of jobs, income, and businesses — not to mention their liberty and freedom.  Even so, immigration must still be a worthy opponent to the left if Twitter finds it necessary to block border wall construction updates.

Twitter censors DHS border wall tweet as 'hateful'.  Twitter deleted a tweet and shut down the account of the country's border chief late Wednesday [10/28/2020] after he posted a message celebrating construction of nearly 400 miles of wall.  "This should outrage every American citizen," said acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan, who was with other Homeland Security officials at the border Thursday to celebrate wall construction.  The tweet, which was still blocked as of Thursday morning, said walls "stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators and drugs," and said "It's a fact, walls work."

Crenshaw Rips Twitter's Dorsey: 'Partisan And A Hypocrite'.  On Wednesday, after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google's CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress while Democrats remained crushingly silent about Big Tech's alleged attempts to suppress conservative points of view, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) ripped Dorsey, calling him a "partisan and a hypocrite," and slammed Democrats:  "There are no liberals left in the Democrat Party.  Not a single Democrat Senator defended free speech or freedom of the press today."

Dorsey Just Lied To Congress And Claimed Twitter Never Censored President Donald Trump.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey lied to Congress on Tuesday [10/27/2020] during a Senate hearing focused on Big Tech's content moderation policies when he claimed that his social media company has never censored President Donald Trump.  "Just to be clear, we have not censored the president," Dorsey said in response to Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.  "We have not taken the tweets down that you're referencing.  We have added context with a label and we do the same for leaders around the world."

Twitter is running a blackmail operation — cooperate or no traffic for you.  For all their talk of "neutral platforms," the Big Shots at Big Tech — Twitter, Facebook and Google — are running a protection racket.  They figure they can dictate what Americans get to see and read, and what other media companies must do to reach the public via those platforms.  It's a clear threat to a healthy democracy — and Congress has noticed.  On Wednesday, the Senate launched a hearing to investigate "Big Tech's bad behavior."  Center-stage:  Twitter's strong-arm tactics to censor The Post ever since we began reporting on Hunter Biden's e-mails.  First, it froze our account and banned our stories; then, amid a public backlash, it agreed to unfreeze us — but only if we deleted our original tweets.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sounded like every mob enforcer and shakedown artist in history:  Nice paper you got there, New York Post.  Shame, should something happen to it.  He knows full well media outlets depend on social media, and Google search algorithms, to help readers access our reporting.

How America Becomes Totalitarian.  Although President Trump has been critical of the press, he has not taken any action against journalists or censored them in any way.  The same cannot be said for American companies like Twitter, who claim that it is their mission to prevent the spread of misinformation yet allow China to use the platform to help shield itself from criticism with bald-faced lies.  When it comes to promoting misinformation that originates in China, like Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian's claim that the United States military brought COVID-19 to China, Twitter does not seem to have a problem with it, leaving Lijian's Twitter account intact, while blocking the account of President Trump's press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany.  It is clear that Twitter subscribes to the Orwellian idea that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Twitter, Facebook Confess There Is No Evidence Of Russian Disinformation Behind Hunter Biden Story.  In Wednesday's [10/28/2020] Senate hearing on Big Tech and Section 230, both Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that neither had any evidence that the New York Post's reporting on Joe Biden's knowledge of his son Hunter Biden's foreign business deals is Russian disinformation.  "For both Mr. Zuckerberg and Dorsey who censored the New York Post stories or throttle them back, do you have any evidence that the New York Post story is part of Russian disinformation or that those emails are not authentic?" Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked.  "Do you have any information whatsoever they are not authentic or they are Russian disinformation?  Dorsey and Zuckerberg both denied receiving any indication that the story was part of a Russian misinformation campaign.

Cruz Blasts Twitter: 'Mr. Dorsey, Who [...] Elected You?'.  Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) grilled Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on the platform's decision to block the New York Post's stories on Hunter Biden, as well as the decision to suspend the Post's account.  Dorsey tried to explain during the hearing that the company had been in error on its quick "enforcement" that blocked the two URLs from being shared over direct messaging or via tweet.  However, he insisted that in order to unlock the Post's account, they would have to delete their original tweets that violated policy.  This was part of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on Oct. 28.  "You can censor The New York Post, you can censor Politico, you can presumably censor The New York Times or any other media outlet, Mr. Dorsey, who [...] elected you?" fired Cruz.  He continued, asking why Twitter was "in charge of what the media are allowed to report, what the American people are allowed to hear, and why do you persist on behaving as a Democratic SuperPac silencing views to the contrary?"  The New York Post has been locked out of its account since Oct. 14.

Ted Cruz Slams Twitter CEO for Censoring NY Post Biden Story: 'Behaving as a Democratic Super PAC'.  Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) slammed Twitter and its CEO Jack Dorsey during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, comparing the company to a "Democratic super PAC."  The Committee last week voted to subpoena Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, after both platforms reduced circulation or entirely blocked a New York Post story featuring materials purportedly from Hunter Biden's laptop.  The social media companies' actions have led conservatives to accuse them of censorship.  "Mr. Dorsey, who [...] elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear, and why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC, silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?" Cruz said during the hearing.

Facebook, Twitter, Google CEOs testify in Section 230 Senate hearing.  The CEOs of three of the nation's top tech firms — Google, Twitter and Facebook — are being grilled by a Senate panel on Wednesday after coming under fire over censorship concerns, specifically for blocking The Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine and China.  Sen. Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, questioned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey why the social media platform flagged a post from President Trump about mail-in ballots, but allowed tweets that "glorify violence" against Israel by Iranian Ayatollah ali Khamenei to remain on the site untouched.  "Mr Dorsey, is that acceptable, based on your policies?" Wicker asked.  "We believe it's important for everyone to hear from global leaders," Dorsey said.

Facebook is still slow-walking information about Hunter Biden.  Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook team are smarter than Jack Dorsey and his Twitter team.  When the New York Post published information about Hunter Biden's hard drive and its truly disreputable contents, Twitter blocked any references to the material and banned the New York Post from Twitter.  That got Congress's attention.  Meanwhile, Facebook opted to slow walk material about Hunter Biden, effectively preventing anything from going viral.  This low profile approach is dulling complaints about Facebook's muted censorship.

Facebook censors AT, backs down hours later.  A Taiwanese media outlet owned by Guo Wengui, a Chinese dissident billionaire, published some of the Hunter Biden sex tapes.  Other Guo-owned outlets allege that (a) Nancy Pelosi and the DOJ have known what's on Hunter's hard drive since September; (b) China "owns" Joe Biden; (c) Joe was responsible for the deaths of CIA informants; and (d) the outlet has millions of videos and photos of people who have also allowed the Chinese government to compromise them.  Facebook has spent most of the day suppressing the spread of this information.  On October 14, 2020, the New York Post began reporting on emails about Ukraine from a laptop that Hunter Biden had allegedly dropped off for repair and never recovered.  Since then, the FBI has said that the computer is legitimate.  No one from the Biden camp has denied the authenticity of either the laptop or its contents.  We learned too that the computer contained videos and photographs of Hunter Biden engaged in sexual activity.  These images allegedly include impropriety with underage girls.  What almost overshadowed the shocking allegations was the ferocity with which the Tech Tyrants acted to prevent the news from spreading.  Twitter blocked any attempts to tweet the story and locked the New York Post out of its Twitter account.  Even though the laptop has been authenticated, Twitter has not budged from this stance.

Twitter Roadblocks Kimberly Klacik.  Esteemed countermoonbat Kimberly Klacik must be getting some traction, despite the unlikelihood of a Republican winning a seat in Congress from the ruins of Baltimore.  She scares the Democrat apparatchiks at Twitter enough that they put up a roadblock to limit retweets linking to an article in the Wall Street Journal that makes it clear voters would be wise to elect her.

Twitter Blocks Daily Signal's Kenosha Video With 'Sensitive Material' Warning.  Twitter put a "sensitive material" label Thursday on The Daily Signal's news video showing businesses burned by rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  The Daily Signal's three-minute video, released late Wednesday, highlights some of the destruction wrought by rioters on the nights of Aug. 23 and 24. [...] Twitter's "sensitive material" warning does not remove the content from the platform, but does make the material harder to access by requiring users to click on the "view" button on the warning label.  Twitter users, and not the platform itself, usually flag tweets they say includes sensitive content.  This is sometimes a "coordinated effort by trolls on the left" who report tweets as a means to suppress content they don't agree with, Lyndsey Fifield, The Heritage Foundation's social media manager, said.

Blind Horse.  Bret Weinstein had his life threatened at Evergreen College for refusing to declare his inherent racism, his Unity 2020 Twitter account was suspended without explanation — and now this.

Twitter Doesn't Want People to Know the Detroit News Endorsed Republican John James for Senate.  On Thursday [10/22/2020], The Detroit News endorsed Republican John James over incumbent Democrat Gary Peters for U.S. Senate.  "It is an honor to have the endorsement of one of Michigan's most prestigious and well-read publications," James said in response to the endorsement.  "Our state and nation are currently at a crossroads, and Michigan has the choice between a combat veteran or a career politician, a war fighter or a gaslighter.  It's time for Michigan to have effective leadership in the Senate where no voice will be left out."

Twitter removes anti-mask tweet from Dr. Scott Atlas.  Twitter removed a tweet from a top White House coronavirus adviser, saying that, contrary to official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, masks don't prevent the spread of the virus.  On Saturday [10/17/2020], Dr. Scott Atlas tweeted that evidence showed masks don't work, according to NBC News.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released guidance in April urging Americans to wear masks in public to prevent the spread of coronavirus after weeks of recommending the opposite.

These five people are allowed to tweet but one of America's oldest newspapers can't.  The New York Post, one of America's oldest newspapers, founded by America's first monetary expert-turned pop culture icon, has been muzzled on Twitter for reporting a bombshell that could affect the presidential election.  Twitter has refused to unlock the New York Post's account since last Wednesday unless the outlet deletes multiple tweets about its reporting on 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, the Post reported. [...] But while the Big Apple tabloid is gagged online, Twitter allows the likes of Louis Farrakhan, Richard Spencer, Ali Khamenei, Nicolas Maduro and O.J. Simpson to tweet freely.

Twitter looks to keep The Post's account hostage through Trump-Biden debate.  It's now been a week since Twitter locked The [New York] Post's account over its exposé on Hunter Biden's emails — and it appears the hostage situation will continue through the final presidential debate on Thursday.  The social media giant is refusing to unlock The Post's main account unless the news organization deletes six tweets about its own reporting on Joe Biden's son.  This means The Post may not be able to share its coverage of the last showdown between President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 3 election with its close to 2 million followers.  Twitter locked The Post's main account Oct. 14, when the news org published the first article in its series of bombshell reports.

The 'Good Censors'.  I don't know if, as the New York Post alleged last week, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden met with a Ukrainian energy executive named Vadym Pozharskyi in 2015.  I don't know if Biden's son Hunter tried to broker such a meeting as part of his board directorship deal with Pozharskyi's firm, Burisma Holdings. [...] What I do know is that if I read the story online and found it compelling, I should have been able to share it with friends.  Instead, both Facebook and Twitter made a decision to try to kill the Post's scoop.  Andy Stone, the former Democratic Party staffer who is now Facebook's policy communications manager, announced that his company would be "reducing" the "distribution" of the Post story.  Twitter barred its users from sharing it not only with followers but also through direct messages, locking the accounts of people — including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany — who retweeted it.  This is not an isolated incident.  In May, Twitter attached a health warning to one of President Trump's Tweets.

Tea Party group files complaint against Twitter for allegedly suppressing negative Biden news.  Tea Party Patriots Foundation said Tuesday [10/20/2020] it was filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Twitter, alleging the social media company violated campaign finance laws through its treatment of bad news for Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden.  Jenny Beth Martin, TPPF president, said in a statement she believes Twitter has used "corporate resources well in excess of $25,000 in their ongoing efforts to support the Biden candidacy while opposing President Trump's reelection."  TPPF said its complaint focuses squarely on Twitter, its CEO Jack Dorsey, and Twitter vice president Brandon Borrman.

More "Experts" [are] Being Silenced By Big Tech — What Did They Say?  America's Frontline Doctors held their 2nd Summit in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday [10/17/2020].  They are a group of physicians and researchers who feel strongly that mass lockdowns, masking requirements and the prevention of early COVID-19 treatment has caused immeasurably suffering — and likely unnecessary deaths — in our fight against COVID-19.  As of early this morning, their video and tweets appear to still be spreading on Twitter and YouTube. [...] America's Frontline Doctors held its 1st Summit in June of this year and articles, tweets, Facebook posts, and videos were widely censored online.  Just days ago, Dr. Scott Atlas — a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force was suspended from Twitter for posting that masks don't work particularly well in the fight against COVID-19.

A Senate Pass for Twitter and Biden?  The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee was supposed to issue a subpoena Tuesday [10/20/2020] to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey — but those plans seem to be on hold.  When will the remaining conservative leaders in Washington have enough of this abuse?  Freedom loving Americans have long been fed up with the double standards, suspensions, editorializing, and censorship by social media corporations.  Active interference in elections should be troubling to those on both sides of the aisle — but it looks like the Democrats and even some Republicans will try to whistle past the Biden scandal graveyard on this one.  Senators are hardly the only individuals owed an explanation (and now not getting it) for the blatant censorship of evidence of the Biden's criminal enterprise.  Everyone on social media deserve answers about why Twitter can behave like the Chinese Communist Party and control access to, as well as dissemination of, information.

Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes — or Joe Biden's Big Mouth.  The move by Facebook and Twitter to censor a New York Post story about Joe Biden was Silicon Valley's version of an October surprise.  Since publication of a story last week alleging that Hunter Biden was introducing foreign business colleagues to his father, Twitter has kept locked the account of the 200-year-old newspaper until it deletes its tweets about its Biden reporting.

Facebook, Twitter censored Trump, campaign 65 times, Biden zero:  Study.  Facebook and Twitter have censored President Trump and his campaign accounts at least 65 times in the last two years, while Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden and his camp have never been dinged, according to a report released Monday [10/19/2020].  The conservative Media Research Center's Techwatch department found that the tech giants had a decidedly lopsided approach to the presidential candidates and their campaigns when it comes to flagging and axing their content.  The biggest discrepancy came with Twitter, which accounted for 98% of the censorship incidents against the Trump camp from May 2018 to Oct. 16, 2020.  The analysis did not include ads from PACs or super PACs.

Is Twitter, Facebook censorship of New York Post Biden-Ukraine story the beginning of social tyranny?  Twitter and Facebook have both limited distribution of an Oct. 14 report from the New York Post's Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge entitled, "Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad" detailing an alleged meeting between former Vice President Joe Biden and Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi who Biden's son, Hunter, used to work for, in April 2015.  The Wall Street Journal's Robert McMillan and Jeff Horwitz reported on Oct. 15, "Twitter on Wednesday blocked users from posting links to the articles, initially citing a potential violation of its rules regarding hacked materials.  The company later said the articles also violated its policies on displaying private information like email addresses and phone numbers without a person's permission... Twitter's move came after Facebook also limited the distribution of the articles on its platform, saying it was awaiting guidance from its third-party fact-checking partners — independent organizations that routinely review the accuracy of viral content.  Facebook has slowed the spread of the Post articles pending a decision by those partners, company spokesman Andy Stone said in a Twitter message on Wednesday morning."

Twitter refuses to unlock New York Post account unless Hunter Biden posts [are] deleted.  Twitter has refused to unlock the New York Post's account since Wednesday [10/14/2020] unless the outlet deletes six tweets about its reporting on 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, the Post reported.  Both the San Francisco-based social media platform and Facebook came under fire this week after the two blocked users from sharing a Post article showing purported communication between 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company.  The younger Biden's work in the country while his father was vice president was at the heart of President Trump's impeachment trial earlier this year.

Matt Gaetz tweets out entire Hunter Biden story line by line to evade Twitter block.  Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican, had an idea on how to get around Twitter's block of the New York Post's Hunter Biden bombshell:  Tweet it out one line at a time.  He said Twitter had censored the New York Post, the House Judiciary Republicans, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and "thousands of other users for sharing this damning story on Hunter Biden."  "So I'm tweeting the entire story line by line in a thread below," Mr. Gaetz said on Thursday, urging readers to retweet it "before it's deleted!"  Sure enough, the multi-tweet thread included the story as well as photos and graphics from the New York Post's Wednesday scoop about Hunter Biden's dealings with the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings during his father's tenure as vice president.

Social media backlash resurrected over Biden's transition team's ties to Facebook and Twitter.  The Biden campaign is facing renewed criticism over its deep connections with Big Tech after both Twitter and Facebook censored a story from The New York Post detailing allegedly corrupt business deals by Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden.  The move prompted fresh criticism on social media over the Biden transition team's hiring of top Facebook executive Jessica Hertz, which reportedly came days after the 2020 Democrat's campaign penned a letter to the social media giant urging them to censor President Trump's posts.  Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden revelations also came days after the company's director of public policy, Carlos Monje, reportedly left his post to work for the Biden transition team.

Twitter Locks Account of Republican Senate Candidate Lauren Witzke — Again.  Twitter has once again censored the Republican candidate for Delaware's U.S. Senate seat, Lauren Witzke, over a tweet drawing attention to the consequences of mass immigration for Europe.  As Breitbart News previously reported, Witzke has already been locked out of her Twitter once this month.  The far-left platform, whose CEO, Jack Dorsey, will likely be subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee next week over its censorship of the New York Post's bombshell Biden-Ukraine story, said the tweet constituted "hateful conduct."

Twitter's Censorship of the New York Post Is Un-American.  [Scroll down]  Indeed, if journalists were forbidden from distributing "content obtained without authorization," the majority of the biggest news stories of the past century would be off limits.  President Donald Trump's tax return story.  The Pentagon Papers.  Watergate.  The Iran-Contra scandal.  All the revelations of Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning.  The most vital charge of journalism is to procure information that the powerful hide.  Twitter claims it doesn't want to incentivize hacking by allowing its platform to be used to distribute possibly "illegally obtained materials."  Yet, when a Daily Caller reporter offered evidence that Hunter Biden's laptop was obtained by a repair shop legally, Twitter suspended his account as well.  The very notion that the establishment media wouldn't run with hacked emails from Trump, if they pointed to possible misconduct, strains credulity. [...] By the way, as of yet, no one has really disputed the veracity of the Post's reporting.  Hunter Biden has not claimed that those aren't his pictures or his emails.

Biden campaign 'glad' Twitter, Facebook censored Post's Hunter Biden exposé.  Joe Biden's campaign said Thursday [10/15/2020] they had no problem with Twitter and Facebook's unprecedented censoring of The [New York] Post's bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden's business dealings — even admitting they were "glad" it happened.  Biden campaign national press secretary Jamal Brown went so far as to claim that the gagging of one of America's largest news organizations "made clear" that The Post's reporting on Ukraine- and China-related documents from a Hunter Biden hard drive was untrue.

Twitter Is Silencing Anybody Who Wants to Talk About Hunter Biden.  As a libertarian, I respect Hunter Biden's right to party.  As a conservative (and occasionally a Republican sympathizer), I condemn the brazen corruption that pays for Hunter's lavish, hedonistic lifestyle.  So I took an interest in the New York Post's story on Wednesday about a laptop they claim to have obtained, allegedly once belonging to the younger Biden.  The NYP claims the laptop contains evidence that Hunter profited from his father's name, and may prove his father was part of it.  I don't know if any of that is true.  It confirms my prejudices, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate. [...] You know who doesn't think it's funny, though?  Twitter.  That social-media website is so unamused by the NY Post's Hunter Biden story that users can't even link to it.

11 Hacks, Leaks, And Hoaxes That Twitter And Facebook Didn't Throttle — Because They Hurt Trump.  On Wednesday, Twitter and Facebook banned their users from sharing a link to an explosive report from the New York Post containing emails indicating Hunter Biden had lucratively monetized his father's vice presidency through international business dealings.  A massive public relations disaster ensued, including fierce reactions from senators and members of Congress with tech oversight.  In response, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claimed Twitter had banned the link because it included private information obtained through hacking.

If We Let Big Tech Strangle The Press, Say Goodbye To Your Freedoms.  With the recent suppression of a New York Post story damaging to Joe Biden's presidential campaign, many Americans have finally had enough of the one-sided censorious behavior of tech giants.  Less than three weeks before one the most contentious and fraught elections in American history, Facebook and Twitter users were alarmed when it became clear they were prevented from sharing the Post's article detailing the sordid dealings of Joe Biden's son, Hunter.  Both citizens and lawmakers justifiably fear the enormous influence wielded by entities like Facebook, Google, and Twitter; the rise of an unchecked tech-tyranny where one side of the political aisle has its views promoted while the other side has its views punished.  Nearly two centuries ago, the author of one of the most penetrating insights on American life shared similar fears of what would happen should a free press remain free in name only.

Twitter will stop removing hacked material and will label Tweets for context instead of blocking links.  Twitter is no longer blocking links to the Joe Biden Ukraine story and has now changed its policies to say it will label posts it finds questionable instead of removing them or stopping people from sharing them, after being threatened with subpoenas and investigations by Republicans.  The about-turn came on Thursday night after an explosive 24 hours during which Trump's re-election campaign and his White House Press Secretary had their accounts locked for posting links to the Biden story.  The story by The New York Post suggested Biden met with a Ukrainian businessman in 2015, when his son Hunter was being paid by the businessman, and that he then used his power as Vice President to force Ukrainian officials to fire a prosecutor who was looking into the businessman's gas firm.

90% of campaign contributions from Twitter and Facebook went to Democrats:  Study.  Both Facebook and Twitter have come under scrutiny for their campaign contributions in a new study by Joseph Vazquez, an analyst with the Media Research Center, a conservative press watchdog.  Mr. Vazquez reviewed the current political donation records of both social media giants on Open Secrets, an independent nonprofit which tracks federal campaign donations and lobbying data.  The report was released Thursday [10/15/2020].  "Open Secrets records revealed that for 'all federal candidates,' both Facebook and Twitter gave over 90% of their political contributions to Democrats for the 2020 cycle so far," Mr. Vazquez wrote.

Kamala spokesman, Democrat PAC staffer now hold top comms posts at Twitter, Facebook.  Twitter's efforts to suppress a New York Post article about Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter come with renewed interest over the political biases of its top officials, including a communications officer who previously worked for Biden's running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris.  The ongoing debate over free speech on social media took on new urgency Wednesday when Twitter flagged as "potentially harmful" a report in the Post about emails indicating that Hunter Biden introduced his father, then the Vice President of the United States, to Vadym Pozharskyi, a top adviser to the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, less than a year before the elder Biden openly pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor tasked with investigating the company.

Gregg Jarrett:  Facebook and Twitter's censorship is an insult to democracy — they must stop or be broken up.  The great Twitter and Facebook masquerade is over.  Posing as disinterested and neutral media platforms, they have unmasked themselves as partisan protectors of Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and propaganda advocates of the progressive cause.  It is time that Twitter and Facebook be forced to halt their destructive practices or be broken up.  The two technology giants wield too much marketplace power in the ever-expanding social media universe.  With power comes abuse.  This was on full display Wednesday when both Twitter and Facebook blocked access to a New York Post story offering stunning email evidence that Biden may have exploited his position as vice president to financially benefit his son, Hunter Biden.

Sen. Hawley:  Twitter Censorship of Biden Story 'Looks... Like an In-Kind Campaign Contribution'.  Reacting to Twitter's censorship of a New York Post story involving Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, and Burisma, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) accused "big tech" of wanting to influence the election.  Hawley said he's asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate what "looks like an in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign." [...] Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey issued a statement Wednesday night, which Sen. Hawley called "insulting."  Dorsey tweeted:  "Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great.  And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we're blocking: unacceptable."

Ted Cruz slams Twitter CEO: Jack Dorsey 'behaving as Joe Biden's press secretary'.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will be subpoenaed by Senate Republicans next week and questioned on why the social media company blocked two New York Post articles alleging Hunter Biden corruption while his father was vice president, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told "Outnumbered Overtime" Thursday [10/15/2020].  The Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee told host Harris Faulkner he couldn't tweet out the second article while he was in the confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett earlier in the day.  "Let me be very clear, Twitter is interfering in this election.  They are censoring the press," Cruz said, and further explained, "silencing the media is a direct violation of the principles of the First Amendment."

Hawley asks FEC to probe Twitter, FB for potential violations on Post censorship.  Sen. Josh Hawley on Wednesday [10/14/2020] demanded that the Federal Election Commission investigate Twitter and Facebook for possibly violation campaign-finance law by censoring The Post's reporting on emails from Hunter Biden's laptop.  The Missouri Republican wrote in a letter to the FEC that the social media giants' "active suppression of public speech" regarding The Post's article would appear to constitute a contribution to Joe Biden's campaign under federal law.  Federal law prohibits any corporation from making a contribution to a federal candidate for office.  "There can be no serious doubt that the Biden campaign derives extraordinary value from depriving voters access to information that, if true, would link the former Vice President to corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs," Hawley wrote.  "This censorship manifestly will influence the presidential election."

Twitter Cites 'Hacked Materials Policy' to Justify Censorship of NY Post Hunter Biden Article.  Twitter said Thursday [10/15/2020] that it censored a New York Post article based on emails between Hunter Biden and a Burisma executive in accordance with its "hacked materials policy."  "In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter," a Twitter spokesperson told National Review when asked why the platform was not allowing users to share the Post's article.

Shhh! Don't Talk About Hunter Biden.  The story might have been a one-day affair — except for Twitter and Facebook interfered to keep people from sharing it. [...] "Unsafe"?  For the Biden campaign, maybe, given that Hunter Biden says (for example, in this ABC Nightline interview) that he never talked to his father about Burisma business.  Facebook muted the story on its platform.  This really is outrageous.  You can say that Twitter and Facebook are private companies, and that therefore they have a right to do this.  I think that is true as a matter of law — but should it be?  They operate more like public utilities than newspapers.  Leaving aside the legality of this move, think about what it says that the two most powerful social media companies have taken it upon themselves to censor a major newspaper's story about a presidential candidate's allegedly corrupt son, just weeks before the election?  Do you not see how dangerous this is, given the power of social media over our discourse?  Twitter and Facebook crossed a line.  They showed their true colors today.  When the election is over, Congress is going to have to have some serious discussions about regulating them in the interest of free speech and fairness.

Twitter Locks Trump Campaign Account Less than 3 Weeks Before Presidential Election.  Twitter locked the account of @TeamTrump, an official Trump campaign account, citing the same policy it used to ban links to the New York Post's bombshell story on hitherto unrevealed links between Joe Biden and the Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.  Mike Hahn, a social media manager for Team Trump, revealed the censorship in a tweet earlier today [10/15/2020].

Power Mad Twitter Suspends WH Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany's Personal Account.  The New York Post broke politically-damaging news about Joe Biden on Wednesday [10/14/2020], reporting on recovered emails that further prove Hunter Biden sold access to his father during the Obama administration.  The emails referenced a meeting Hunter Biden allegedly arranged between then-Vice President Joe Biden and an executive at the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, the same corrupt company that paid Hunter Biden over $80,000 a month in an apparent effort to buy influence with Joe Biden.  And the effort appears to have worked.  Twitter and Facebook felt the need to protect Joe Biden from the negative press and took the unprecedented step of censoring the Post's story.  The power-mad company then locked White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany's Twitter account after McEnany shared the story.

Sen. Josh Hawley Blasts Jack Dorsey After the CEO Admits Twitter's Actions Censoring Hunter Biden News Was 'Unacceptable'.  Missouri Senator Josh Hawley blasted Jack Dorsey on Wednesday night [10/14/2020] after the Twitter CEO admitted that the platform's actions banning the explosive Hunter Biden report from the New York Post was "unacceptable."  In a tweet about Twitter's censorship, Dorsey wrote that "our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great.  And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we're blocking: unacceptable."

Kaleigh McEnany attacks Twitter for not banning articles that accused Trump of collusion with Russia.  White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany hit out at Twitter on Wednesday night after it locked her personal account over a tweet referencing a story about Joe Biden's dealings with his son Hunter's business associates in the Ukraine.  Speaking with Sean Hannity on Fox News, McEnany accused the social media giant of bias and censorship for only banning content that 'hurts the side of the aisle that Silicon Valley prefers'.  She accused the social media giant of allowing articles that accused Trump of collusion with Russia to be posted on its site, despite the president being cleared during his impeachment trial earlier this year.

Jack Dorsey apologizes after Trump threatened to remove Facebook and Twitter protections.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized on Wednesday night after the social media giant faced backlash over its decision to block links to a story which claims Joe Biden met with a Ukrainian businessman while he was Vice President, but he has still not lifted restrictions on it.  It came just an hour after President Donald Trump threatened to remove the US legal protections that exempts the likes of Twitter and Facebook from liability for the material users post on their networks.  Trump called for the law, known as Section 230, to be repealed as he blasted the social media giants as 'terrible' for 'reducing circulation' of a New York Post article which published the claims about his rival Biden earlier in the day.

President Trump Rakes Facebook and Twitter Over the Coals for Censoring Hunter Biden Story.  On Wednesday [10/14/2020], The New York Post published a blockbuster story about a "smoking gun" email allegedly proving that then-Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter introduced the VP to an executive at the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma — before Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian president to fire a prosecutor looking into Burisma.  Facebook announced that it was reducing the article's distribution, even before any fact-check.  Twitter also apparently prevented an editor at the Post from tweeting the article.

Big Tech is in the tank for Biden [and the] Democrats.  In case there was any doubt that Facebook and Twitter are corruptly partisan, the social-media giants censored The [New York] Post's story Wednesday [10/14/2020] on Hunter Biden's e-mails suggesting he took cash for access to his father, Joe Biden.  The bombshell exclusive was trending all Wednesday morning on social media platforms until Big Tech stepped in to run protection for the Democratic presidential candidate.  Facebook announced it would censor the story by "reducing its distribution on our platform."  Twitter also intervened to protect Biden from the scandal yesterday by blocking The Post's Twitter account, @nypost, claiming the story violates its rules against "distribution of hacked material."  Links to the story were tagged by Twitter with a warning message:  "This link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful."

Twitter CEO admits handling of blocked Post article was 'unacceptable'.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said it was "unacceptable" that the social media giant blocked users from sharing a [New York] Post exposé about Hunter Biden's emails without providing a clear message as to why it was taking the action.  Dorsey released his statement in a tweet Wednesday night [10/14/2020] — hours after a number of high-profile Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley, blasted the social media giant for blocking the stories from being shared on the platform.  "Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great.  And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we're blocking: unacceptable," Dorsey wrote in the tweet.  Twitter blocked users from sharing an article that indicated Hunter Biden introduced his father Joe to a Ukranian businessman — charging that "hacked materials" were used in the story.

Liberal Reporter:  What Twitter and Facebook Did on Biden Story Is 'Creepy and Authoritarian'.  The New York Post obtained emails showing that Joe Biden lied about not knowing what his son, Hunter, was doing regarding his Ukrainian activities.  Hunter Biden was allegedly selling access while sitting on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, despite having zero experience in this field, while earning tens of thousands of dollars a month.  This corrupt arrangement occurred back in 2014 when Joe was leading anti-corruption efforts in the country.  Multiple people raised the alarm over this gig.  And it's a sore subject, as evidenced by Joe Biden's aggressive reaction toward it.

If 'unreliable' is the issue, why did social media never block anti-Trump stories?  This is what totalitarianism looks like in our century:  not men in darkened cells driving screws under the fingernails of dissidents, but Silicon Valley dweebs removing from vast swaths of the Internet a damaging expos  on their preferred presidential candidate.  That's what Facebook and Twitter did to the New York Post's bombshell report on Hunter Biden, revealing why the illustrious vice-presidential son was hired by a shady Ukrainian energy firm in exchange for at least $50,000 a month.  According to e-mails obtained by The Post, Hunter introduced the firm's executives to his father — just when Joe Biden was the second-most powerful man on earth, with outsize influence over the fate of the embattled Eastern European country.

'This is Digital Civil War': NY Post Editor Fumes After Facebook and Twitter Censor Biden Bombshell.  Both Facebook and Twitter are censoring a bombshell story in the New York Post that implicates Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his ne'er-do-well son Hunter Biden in major corruption involving Ukraine.  Blockbuster emails from Hunter Biden's laptop reveal that he introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a Ukrainian energy executive.  Sohrab Ahmari, the op-ed editor for the Post expressed outrage on Twitter over the censorship, calling it a "Big Tech information coup" and a "digital civil war."  "I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nation's largest papers by circulation, can't post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden," said Ahmari.

Hunter Biden and the Big Tech information coup.  There is nothing to see.  In 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma on a reported salary of $50,000 a month.  Hunter knows nothing about the energy business, and he doesn't seem to speak Ukrainian.  'I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,' Joe Biden said in 2019, though he had been photographed playing golf in the Hamptons with Hunter and another Burisma board member, Devon Archer, in 2014.  But there is nothing to see.  On Wednesday, the New York Post published an email from Vadim Pozharskyi, an adviser to the Burisma board, from April 2015.  Pozharskyi thanks Hunter for 'inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spend some time together'.  But there is nothing to see. [...] There is nothing to see because Facebook doesn't want you to see it and Twitter won't let you share it.

Twitter warns users that Hunter Biden story in New York Post may be 'unsafe'.  Twitter users who click on a link to a New York Post story involving Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden's son, Hunter Biden, were redirected on Wednesday to a webpage labeling the hyperlink of the Post's story as "unsafe."  "Warning: this link may be unsafe," reads the message from Twitter.  "The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with Twitter's URL Policy."  Content that violates Twitter's URL policy includes, "violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm," spammy links that mislead users, malicious links that could harm devices or steal information, and other categories of content that may violate other Twitter rules.

Twitter Locks Account of Ric Grenell over Voter Fraud Warning.  Twitter locked the account of former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell after he shared an image of ballots sent to him by a friend living in California, who says they were addressed to his parents — who he claims have been dead for ten years.  "He's my friend in California, a very close friend of mine.  It's his parents who were sent these ballots, and he gave me the photo, and he gave me permission."

The Left's 'Mostly Peaceful' Revolution/Coup.  [Scroll down]  Google will skew search results to always paint President Trump as illegitimate.  Twitter of course will suspend the president's account because it would be undemocratic to allow him to speak directly to Americans.  Facebook will do the same.  All this will be done to prevent Trump from lying to the people about what is obviously a popular national uprising to award Joseph Biden the presidency he won fair and square, despite how the obviously "stolen" election pans out.  At least that is how the media and Big Tech will paint it.

Conservatives, Republican Candidates Report Censorship and Shadow Banning by Twitter, Facebook, Google.  Conservative radio and Fox News host Mark Levin says Facebook is censoring his content.  "Facebook has just sent us this message.  It's a clear effort at censorship," Levin wrote on his Facebook page Monday morning.  "Every link I post is from a legitimate source.  But because so many people are seeing what I'm posting and we're within weeks of the election it's clear that Facebook is trying to influence the election's outcome.  It's also clear Facebook is pushing a leftwing agenda.  I'll address this tonight on radio."  Twitter guru, actor James Woods, is regularly banned from Twitter for being a political commentator.  Woods was suspended from Twitter for 24 hours for being retweeted by President Trump.

Twitter just censored Trump's FLU tweet!  This morning [10/6/2020] Trump tweeted about Flu season coming up, noting that we deal with sometimes high death tolls during Flu season without shutting the country down and we need to learn to do the same with COVID: [...] There is literally nothing wrong with this tweet whatsoever.  The 100,000 fatality number for the flu that Trump uses as an example is legitimate and it is true that in some, if not most populations the coronavirus is less lethal than the flu.  But Twitter censored Trump's tweet anyway, claiming that it was "spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19".

Twitter Leftists Ban Top US Doctor David Samadi After He Tweets Well Wishes to President Trump.  There have now been 126 international studies on HCQ (hydroxychloroquine) and its effectiveness in treating the coronavirus.  76 of these international studies are peer reviewed.  64%, or nearly 2/3's of the studies found HCQ effective in treating COVID-19 in the early treatment stage of the disease.  After President Trump announced he had been tested positive for the coronavirus Dr. David Samadi, a top 100 US doctor tweeted out encouragement to President Trump and suggested the proven early treatment of HCQ, zinc and Zpack.

Dem 'Squad' accuses Twitter of shielding Trump from hate-tweets after dismissing attacks on them.  Reps.  Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are complaining that Twitter has gone the extra mile to shield President Trump from tweets wishing him ill as he battles COVID-19 after failing to block death threats against them.  As Trump, an avid Twittter [sic] user, faced brutal attacks on the platform Friday [10/2/2020] after reporting his diagnosis, the San Francisco-based social media giant said posts "that wish or hope for death, serious bodily harm or fatal disease against *anyone* are not allowed and will need to be removed."  That prompted questions from Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez, half of a group of four Democratic House members dubbed "the Squad," about why Twitter hasn't intervened on behalf of other public figures, from politicians to celebrities and journalists who have received death threats or messages wishing them harm.

I got locked out of Twitter for having the 'wrong' opinion on Covid.  I woke yesterday morning to find that I had been locked out of Twitter for "violating our rules against abuse and harassment".  I was dumbfounded.  Which of my recent tweets had been abusive or harassed anyone?  I glanced down the email to see something I had posted last week in response to yet another We're All Doomed! report on the BBC news.

Twitter Shuts Down Account of Chinese Professor Who Has Evidence China Created the Coronavirus in a Lab.  Twitter is at it again.  This time shutting down individuals who tweet information detrimental to the Chinese Communist Party.

Fmr Acting AG Whitaker:  Facebook, Twitter Algorithms Could Be Viewed by DOJ as an 'Illegal Campaign Contribution'.  Friday [9/4/2020], during an appearance on Fox News Channel's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker argued for a Department of Justice investigation into how Facebook and Twitter were altering their algorithms for the sake of politics.  Whitaker told host Tucker Carlson he did not see American democracy surviving another election cycle under the circumstances by which those social media outlets function.  "Yes, I actually do believe we are going to get to the bottom of this insidious, really, censorship of mostly conservative voices on social media," he said.  "And I think the Department of Justice has been looking at this issue, and I also believe that because of the way the algorithms that Facebook and Twitter and the like use to provide your news feed, I think that could be viewed, and maybe viewed by this Department of Justice, as a campaign contribution, an illegal campaign contribution, that ultimately, I think, they will step in and take action."

Twitter Allows Blue-Checked, Black Feminist to Call for Race War Against Whites.  Twitter wastes no time claiming that everything conservatives say is "violence" and bans them for it.  But it has turned a blind eye to direct calls for violence in support of Black Lives Matter posted by a blue check-marked feminist nicknamed Feminista Jones.  The Twitter account calling for open warfare between blacks and whites is maintained by writer Michelle Taylor, a hate speech purveyor who has had her dreck published in a long list of anti-American, left-wing outlets such as Salon, Time, Ebony, and the Washington Post.  Taylor has won herself a vaunted "blue checkmark" from Twitter, meaning that Twitter not only verified that her feed is indeed hers, but that they endorse her work.  Very few people on the right have ever gotten a blue checkmark, but Twitter hands out that honorific like cheap candy to leftists.

Lin Wood, attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, says he was locked out of Twitter account.  The high-profile attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with fatally shooting two people in Kenosha, said he was locked out of his Twitter account Tuesday [9/1/2020] after posting about raising money for Rittenhouse's legal defense.  L. Lin Wood argued the action against his account is the latest example of Twitter censorship of conservative voices and he intends to file a lawsuit against the social media giant and its CEO Jack Dorsey.  "I'm going to take Jack Dorsey [...] down," Wood told Fox News.  "He has been abusing the First Amendment of this country for his own agenda."

CNN and Twitter Target President Trump and The Gateway Pundit.  CNN and Twitter are at it again.  Today CNN slandered President Trump and the Gateway Pundit and encouraged Twitter to take down a tweet based on CDC data that the President retweeted.  CNN and Twitter don't want Americans to know the full truth about COVID-19.  Last night we posted an article about COVID-19[.] [...] The gist of the article is that COVID-19 is not nearly as deadly as first projected by the WHO and then by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx.  Based on CDC numbers this past week only 6% of all deaths attributed to COVID-19 were instances where the only factor in the individual's death was due to COVI9-19.

Twitter supports threatening comments against law enforcement officers.  There is an old saying that goes, "actions speak louder than words."  On Wednesday [8/26/2020], Twitter made a big statement in its actions and comments.  Essentially, Twitter said that it supports threats against law enforcement officers.  The action comes as Shaun King, an activist and podcast host with over 1 million followers on the platform, threatened the safety of law enforcement officers on Tuesday.  King called for the name of the officer that shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha.  The shooting has sparked riots across the city over several nights.  Twitter made comments to the NY Post on Wednesday that the tweet did not violate any of their policies.  The policies in question are around threatening harm to an identifiable group.  It's the same policy that has been used against President Trump in the past.

Notice that all Twitter "mistakes" go in the same direction.
Twitter Apologizes For Suspending the Babylon Bee's Account 'By Mistake'.  Twitter has apologized to the conservative satirical website the Babylon Bee for wrongfully suspending its account after accidentally flagging it as spam Monday night [8/17/2020].  The Babylon Bee's editor-in-chief Kyle Mann shared an email from Twitter on his personal account Monday night detailing the suspension.  The email read, "Your account, TheBabylonBee has been suspended for violating the Twitter Rules.  Specifically for:  Violating our rules against platform manipulation and spam.  You may not use Twitter's services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people's experience on Twitter."

Who Elected Twitter and Facebook to Censor Speech?  I have spent my professional life defending the First Amendment and the free-speech rights it enshrines.  It is the bulwark of all our freedoms.  The attacks on it are proliferating alarmingly.  Now, the most powerful social media platforms — which function as today's public square — are arrogantly silencing a U.S. president.  If a president's right to be heard in the public square may be freely assaulted, who is safe?  This is extremely dangerous to self-government and the perpetuation of our civil rights.  Yet politicians, many of them bought off by those social-media giants, do nothing.  And the news media, which in the days of more objective journalism boldly championed free speech, say little or nothing if Republicans or conservatives are the targets.  The same is true of former civil-liberties organizations.

Twitter Official Who Announced Trump Campaign Account Suspension Is Former Kamala Harris Press Secretary.  Twitter on Wednesday [8/5/2020] banned President Trump's campaign from tweeting until they delete a tweet about the Coronavirus that the tech company says violates its "rules against misinformation."  This is happening in an election year during a pandemic.  Where is the DOJ? Where are the Republican lawmakers?  The Washington Post corrected its report that Twitter banned President Trump over his tweet of a video clip of a Fox News interview in which he said children are "almost immune" from Covid-19.  Twitter banned Trump's campaign, not the President's account.

Fauci's Daughter Ali Fauci Is A Software Engineer For Twitter.  NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci, facing harsh criticism for his response to the Coronavirus outbreak, has a daughter named Alison ("Ali") who is a software engineer for Twitter.  This comes as Silicon Valley increasingly cracks down on so-called misinformation about the virus from truth-minded individuals who do not automatically accept what the experts like Fauci have to say.  Fauci's daughter's software engineer job at Twitter was confirmed in articles by Heavy and Deseret.  Twitter has some explaining to do to convince independent-minded people that there is no conflict of interest when it comes to censoring information critical of Ali's father Dr. Fauci.

Election Interference:  Twitter Just Censored a Doctor, Public Health Expert, and GOP Chairwoman.  Twitter informed me that my account was suspended for sharing content they disagree with, and while I suppose I should be flattered by joining such august company as Donald Trump Jr., this issue is bigger than me:  it is a question of censorship.  The reason I was given by Twitter for why my account was suspended was because, according to them, I spread "false information" about COVID-19, or rather, information that goes against "accepted science."  Is it possible that the geniuses at Twitter are referencing the medical journal Lancet, which published a study claiming hydroxychloroquine was not effective in fighting the coronavirus and that this drug, which has been used for decades with great success to treat malaria, may cause cardiac problems?  Because, if so, that study was later retracted after it was discovered that the underlying data the company used was totally falsified.

By Suppressing Medical Debate, It Is Twitter that Endangers Americans.  Twitter has once again acted as judge, juro, and executioner.  For four days, Twitter prevented the @BreitbartNews twitter account from posting, only restoring its permissions earlier today.  This is in no small part because Twitter dragged its feet on Breitbart News's appeal[.]  Twitter initially locked Breitbart News's account because it posted a video of a press conference featuring Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and licensed doctors sharing their views and opinions on coronavirus and the medical response to the pandemic.  The event was held by the organization America's Frontline Doctors and organized by the Tea Party Patriots.

Twitter defends blocking Trump tweets but not Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei.  A Twitter spokeswoman has defended the company's decision to block and restrict tweets from President Trump but not those of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which call for genocide of the Israeli people.  The reason?  Because the Iranian dictator's tweets pass as "commentary on political issues of the day" while Trump's could "inspire harm," Twitter claims.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Remove Video Of America's Frontline Doctors Disputing Media Lies On COVID and Hydroxychloroquine.  This video is being posted to Vidmax to give one more source to view and share it from.  From Breitbart News:  Facebook has removed a video posted by Breitbart News earlier today, which was the top-performing Facebook post in the world Monday afternoon, of a press conference in D.C. held by the group America's Frontline Doctors and organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots.  The press conference featured Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and frontline doctors sharing their views and opinions on coronavirus and the medical response to the pandemic.  YouTube (which is owned by Google) and Twitter subsequently removed footage of the press conference as well.  [Video clip]

Twitter Censors Videos of Doctors' Capitol Hill Coronavirus Press Conference, Locks Breitbart Account.  Twitter deleted Breitbart News' Periscope livestream of a Washington D.C. press conference held on Monday by the group America's Frontline Doctors and organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots.  Breitbart News recently reported that the Masters of the Universe quickly censored a live stream published by Breitbart News of a press conference held in Washington D.C. by the group America's Frontline Doctors and organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots. [...] A Twitter spokesperson told Breitbart News:  "Tweets with the video are in violation of our COVID-19 misinformation policy.  We are taking action in line with our policy here: [link]

The Editor says...
In other words, Twitter will decide what's true and what's not.

Is Twitter Hiding A Screenshot Of Its Trend And Search Blacklist Tools?  While we cannot confirm independently that the screenshot is, in fact, from Twitter's development/moderator tools, it certainly would open up a whole new can of worms regarding the hack if it turns out to be.

Ricky Gervais: 'If You're Mildly Conservative on Twitter People Call You Hitler'.  The creator of The Office, Ricky Gervais, has called out the online "fascists" that want to shut down freedom of speech, saying that "if you're mildly conservative on Twitter people call you Hitler."  Continuing on his press tour marking the nineteenth anniversary of The Office, Gervais followed up his criticisms of cancel culture with an attack on the idea of so-called "hate speech".

Twitter suspends dozens of accounts associated with white nationalist Identitarian movement.  Twitter said it suspended dozens of accounts associated with the Identitarian movement, a white nationalist ideology whose adherents oppose multiculturalism in Europe.  More than 50 accounts connected to the movement were suspended from the social media service Friday after the publication of a report about its proliferation on the platform, NBC News first reported Friday [7/10/2020].  "The accounts in question were suspended for violating our policies in relation to violent extremism," a Twitter spokesperson told The Washington Times.

Twitter Covering Up For Antifa — Suspends Account Exposing Terror Training Tactics Videos.  Antifa is posting videos online on how you can smash windshields, cut seatbelts and drag people from their vehicles.  This antifa member says its necessary when Americans don't stop and wait during their street protests.  There is NOTHING about this group that is civil or lawful.  [Video clip]

Twitter's Brazen 2020 Election Interference Will Eventually End In Banning Trump.  It seems clear now that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is going to ban President Donald Trump.  It's just a matter of when.  Dorsey will come up with a pretext, however absurd or cynical, as part of Twitter's ongoing efforts to interfere in the 2020 election.  It will probably consist of a charge that Trump has had one too many violations of some entirely subjective and impossible-to-define Twitter policy on abusive or harmful speech.  We got another preview of what that might look like this week when Twitter once again appended a warning label to a Trump tweet that apparently violated Twitter's policy against "abusive behavior." What did Trump say that was abusive?  He said there would never be an "autonomous zone" in the nation's capital, and that any mob trying to take over D.C. streets would be met with "serious force."  In other words, the president promised to enforce the law.  That was considered "abusive" by Twitter.

Comedy writer permanently banned from Twitter for saying "men aren't women".  Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan has been permanently banned from Twitter after he tweeted "men aren't women tho" in response to a tweet by a women's group wishing men who identify as women a happy Pride Month.  Lineman, who had hundreds of thousands of followers on the social network, is the creator or co-creator of the sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books, and The IT Crowd.  Twitter said Linehan "has been permanently suspended after repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation."

Twitter Went Too Far Yesterday and Now People Are Searching for a New Social Media Network.  Let's go over what Twitter did to make people so mad.  At the beginning of the day, a racist grifter looking for social media fame followed a woman to her home after claiming that she flipped him off and called him the "n-word."  He proceeded to film himself harassing the panicked woman and displaying her license plate.  According to some Twitter users who looked into the man, who was identified as Karlos Dillard, Dillard has an odd history that includes claiming people were racist toward him while filming them, and then even selling merchandise off of his videos.  Despite the fact that this video clearly violated several of Twitter's rules, Twitter dragged its feet for an entire day before it finally took down the tweet and suspended Dillard's account.  While Twitter was taking its sweet time moving on this blatant disregard for an innocent woman's safety, it was firing off at the hip toward President Donald Trump.

Twitter Hires Ex-FBI Lawyer Who Played Key Role In Probe Of Trump Campaign.  Twitter announced Monday [6/15/2020] that it has hired the former FBI lawyer who approved key steps taken during the investigation into the Trump campaign, including the decisions to surveil former campaign aide Carter Page and to use an FBI agent to secretly monitor Michael Flynn during a national security briefing for the campaign.  James Baker will serve as deputy general counsel of Twitter, said Sean Edgett, the general counsel of the social media company.  Baker "is committed to our core principles of an open internet and freedom of expression," Edgett said in a statement.

Twitter's Jack Dorsey [is a] Worse Threat To Democracy Than Russia's Putin.  Election meddling, anyone?  By "fact-checking" just one tweet by President Donald J. Trump, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey shows he and other social media giants like him have both the power and the desire to swing elections and the power and desire to swing the 2020 election away from Trump and toward the incoherent Joe Biden who probably thinks tweeting is what those honking geese were doing outside his basement window.  That action, along with tagging another Trump tweet commenting on the need for law enforcement and civil and state authorities to confront rioting in Minneapolis as possibly promoting violence interferes with the 2020 election in ways that Vladimir Putin could only dream of.  By controlling what we see and hear and know and think about, the Dorseys of the world can influence massive numbers of votes, more than could ever possibly be stolen by fraudulent mail-in voting schemes.

We Can't Let Social Media Become the Socialist Media.  It was an unprecedented moment in the history of social media.  On May 26th, Twitter decided it needed to correct a statement from President Donald Trump when he criticized the legitimacy of mail-in voting.  Out of cyberspace's blackness, social media decided it had not only the right, but the obligation to inform the public about what the "truth" is.  Make no mistake.  Despite an ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has been subsumed by a sudden urgency to root out "systemic racism" and expose "white privilege" in America (which has, in turn, been subsumed by the blind rage and greed of rioting and looting), freedom of speech remains fundamental to keeping America free.  America's foundational value of free speech should mean that, whether you are a humble factory worker or the President of the United States, you have the right to your opinion, and to express that opinion without fear of being arrested, censured or financial ruined.

Twitter says it will focus on 'context' not 'fact-checking' after Trump confronts social media.  Social media behemoth Twitter announced that it is getting out of the 'fact-checking' business and will instead focus more on the "context" of messages after a dust-up with President Donald Trump led him to threaten platforms with new regulations.  In as series of messages Tuesday evening, platform officials and co-founder Jack Dorsey said they have reviewed "Twitter Safety" policies regarding posts that could be in violation of their posting rules, saying the site will now focus on "context, not fact-checking" content.  The messages come about a week after Twitter attempted to fact-check a post President Trump made about mail-in vote fraud and then labeled another tweet as having "glorified violence."

Twitter flags Republican tweets for 'glorifying violence,' but leaves others untouched.  Twitter for several years has been at the forefront of one of the tech world's more intractable ongoing problems:  To what extent do social media companies regulate the speech posted on their platforms?  Most companies police user content to varying degrees.  Facebook's "community standards," for instance, forbid an extensive range of posts from sexual content to "cruel and insensitive" material — though Twitter has for years overseen user posts in an arguably more hands-off manner:  It allows sexually explicit content, for instance, while Facebook's recent censorship of anti-lockdown protest groups drove home its heavier hand of content regulation.  Yet Twitter in recent weeks is indicating that it intends to increase regulation of at least some types of tweets:  It has flagged several posts from prominent Republican politicians — including President Donald Trump — and claimed that their messages violate its terms of service regarding the "glorification of violence."

Twitter Targets Trump Again, Flagging Tweet After Executive Order.  Twitter flagged and hid a tweet posted by President Donald Trump's early Friday morning after the president signed an Executive Order challenging the growing political bias in tech companies, whose platforms are meant to be neutral.  Trump's tweet was in response to the growing unrest and rioting in Minnesota, in response to the horrific death of George Floyd while in police custody. [...] Trump signed the Executive Order Thursday aimed at social media giants he says, have been operating as biased publishers rather than platforms for free speech.

Twitter And Social Media Are A Cancer On Our Civic Life.  They Don't Deserve Protection.  There's nothing like a row between Twitter and President Trump to turn everyone into an expert on 47 U.S. Code § 230, a heretofore obscure section of federal law that deals with liability protections for companies like Twitter. [...] So let me just say up front, I am not an expert on Section 230 or on federal liability law generally. [...] But I don't need to be an expert in liability law to know this: social media are corrosive to our civic life, and social media companies like Twitter are largely unaccountable for their actions in that regard.  Without question, Twitter and Facebook and YouTube have harmed democratic life in America, eroded our civic values, and exacerbated divisions and distrust between citizens.  If they all disappeared tomorrow, the country would be better off.

The Editor says...
The same could be said of cell phones and cable TV.

Cracking Down on Misfits' Crime Sprees and Big Tech.  [Scroll down]  Indeed, as others have noted, Twitter regularly permits actual calls to violence on its site if the target is the president or conservatives. [...] Twitter is targeting the President of the United States 24/7, while turning their heads from protest organizers who are planning, plotting, and communicating their next moves daily on this very platform.  Indeed, Yoel Roth, Twitter's (ludicrous) head of site integrity himself has tweeted that Trump was a "racist tangerine" and complained of "actual Nazis in the White House."  To my knowledge he's still in that position and his tweets still are neither flagged nor removed.

33 Examples of Twitter's Anti-Conservative Bias.  President Donald Trump is right that social media companies have been targeting conservatives.  Twitter, in particular, has been engaging in a relentless attack on the American political process by censoring conservatives.  Now that has escalated to fact-checking the president nearly five months from a presidential election.  The Media Research Center released a report in 2018, which found that Twitter led in censoring the right.  That hasn't changed.  Project Veritas caught Twitter with hidden camera interviews admitting the process of shadow banning — which means content is hidden from users without the poster ever knowing it.  One engineer admitted that accounts were flagged as bots simply by searching for words such as "America" and "God."  Twitter's rules have been influenced by liberal think tanks like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Since then, Twitter has gotten worse.  Here are some examples: [...]

German official vows to 'open any doors' to get Twitter to move to Germany, where it'll be 'a perfect fit'.  Hit the road, Jack!  That's the response of many Americans after a German government official lobbied Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to relocate to Germany amid the tech monopoly's escalating feud with President Trump.  Basically, Twitter has begun censoring and doing bogus "fact-checks" on Trump's tweets while continuing to allow left-wing politicians and media outlets to post inflammatory fake news.

Facebook is right.  Twitter is wrong.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey opened up a Pandora's box two days ago by dropping a fact-check on a tweet by Donald Trump regarding mail-in ballots.  That raised all sorts of hell from a bombastic President, as well as more questions than answers.  There are several problems with Twitter deciding to put its thumb on the scale of 'truth' on its social platform.  The site has previously come under enormous scrutiny over widely perceived political and ideological bias.  The charges against the company include its unfair and unbalanced actions in banning conservative or politically right-leaning accounts, as well as shadow-banning and limiting views and engagements on trending topics which it deems problematic.  The extent of these actions is unknown, as Twitter does not share discipline or corporate information regarding personal accounts, but none of that matters.  Twitter now sits right in the sights of legislative tech-happy politicians such as Sen. Josh Hawley, Sen. Ted Cruz and of course the President himself.  And Twitter's new selective fact-checking system has only further infuriated the company's critics.

Twitter needs to fact-check these tweets from prominent liberals.  [Scroll down]  Start with a 2017 tweet from CNN contributor Ana Navarro claiming that an "Ivanka Fund got $100 million pledge from the Saudis and UAE."  The truth:  The cash went to a World Bank initiative for female entrepreneurs.  Navarro's tweet garnered more than 43,000 retweets.  Or how about a 2019 tweet from actress Nancy Lee Grahn that featured photos of migrant children at a border detention center and railed against Team Trump for allegedly torturing kids?  As Internet sleuths pointed out, Grahn's photo was cropped to remove the timestamp: 2015.  It garnered nearly 50,000 retweets anyway.  Then there was Rachel Maddow's blog's 2018 claim that the White House had edited the video of the president's Helsinki news conference with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin "to remove [a] question about whether [he] wanted Trump to win."  The Washington Post and numerous other outlets debunked the claim, yet the tweet is still up, with 24,000 retweets — and no Twitter warning label.

Twitter is digging its own grave.  President Trump is allegedly preparing some sort of executive order that would clamp down on Twitter and potentially other social media outlets.  This is apparently a move in response to the company's decision to start "fact-checking" some of the President's tweets and flagging them as being content of dubious accuracy.  Whether or not this is something that the White House is even able to do will likely be a subject of debate until the courts settle the matter, but that's hardly the key issue at hand.  At National Review, David Harsanyi wrote at length about the folly of Twitter deciding to jump into the business of fact-checking and flagging certain bits of content and not others.  He notes that politics is rarely a dispute over facts, but rather values, dooming such fact-checking efforts to wind up being viewed as partisan harassment.

8 Lies by Joe Biden and the Left that Twitter Didn't 'Fact Check'.  Twitter added a "fact check" label to President Donald Trump's tweets raising widely-held concerns with mail-in voting fraud earlier today, but it has failed to apply a similar standard to repeated falsehoods by elected Democrats, the mainstream media, and Joe Biden.  Unlike Facebook, which gives itself plausible deniability for fact-checking bias by relying on "third party fact checkers" (almost all left-leaning) to pick and choose what to fact-check and what to ignore, Twitter made the decision to fact-check Trump's tweet itself, linking to an official "moment" curated by Twitter employees and containing numerous articles from the mainstream media calling the president a liar.

The Folly of Twitter's Fact-Check Policy.  No American, not even the president, has an inherent right to a social-media account.  Tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter are free to ban any user they see fit.  They're free to fact-check anyone they want, to create a framework of acceptable speech, and to enforce their policies either consistently or capriciously.  They're free to accuse Donald Trump — and only Trump, if they see fit — of being a liar.  They're free to do all of these things.  Even if they shouldn't.  Yesterday [5/26/2020], after years of pressure from media and Democrats, Twitter labeled two of Trump's tweets [...] as "potentially misleading."  It's a mistake for any platform to drop its neutral stance and take on fact-checking duties, a task that's going to be impossible to accomplish either objectively or effectively.  It's going to corrode trust in the brand, but it won't change a single mind.

Mark Zuckerberg criticizes Twitter for fact-checking Trump.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Twitter was wrong to fact-check President Trump's tweets that made the dubious claim that mail-in ballots increase voter fraud.  Zuckerberg reasoned that the social media platforms shouldn't be the "arbiters of truth[.]"  "We have a different policy, I think, than Twitter on this," Zuckerberg said in an excerpt from a Fox News interview scheduled to air on The Daily Briefing Thursday [5/28/2020].  "I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," Zuckerberg went on.  "In general, private companies probably shouldn't be, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that."

Twitter Adds Labels to Trump's Tweets for First Time.  Twitter added information to refute the inaccuracies in President Trump's tweets for the first time on Tuesday, after years of pressure over its inaction on his false and threatening posts.  The social media company added links late Tuesday to two of Mr. Trump's tweets in which he had posted about mail-in ballots and falsely claimed that they would cause the November presidential election to be "rigged."  The links — which were in blue lettering at the bottom of the posts and punctuated by an exclamation mark — urged people to "get the facts" about voting by mail.  Clicking on the links led to a CNN story that said Mr. Trump's claims were unsubstantiated and to a list of bullet points that Twitter had compiled rebutting the inaccuracies.

Trump says 'big action to follow' after Twitter puts fact-check label on his tweets.  President Trump indicated he would take action against Twitter after it affixed fact-check labels on his tweets.  "Twitter has now shown that everything we have been saying about them (and their other compatriots) is correct.  Big action to follow!" he tweeted Wednesday [5/27/2020].  Hours earlier, Trump threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies because conservatives felt their voices were being censored by the platforms.  Twitter placed the label on the president's tweets for the first time Tuesday when he tweeted about mail-in voting in California.  The warning linked to a page with tweets and articles discussing the issue.

Twitter Permanently Suspends Account of Republican Running to Challenge Rep. Ilhan Omar.  A Republican candidate running to challenge Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota had her Twitter account permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter rules, according to a Twitter spokesperson.  Danielle Stella says she was banned for a tweet in which she spread a baseless claim about Omar and said if the claim is true, Omar should be tried for treason and hanged, according to a post to her Facebook account.  Two Twitter accounts of Stella's have been suspended, her campaign confirmed to CNN.

Twitter Makes Big Move Into Thought Policing.  [Scroll down]  No doubt I will be accused of overreacting by some, but I've been watching this play out for years.  At times it seems as if Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey are engaged in some sort of personal, perverse billionaire fun and trying to see which one can make his platform more heavy-handed when it comes to the freedom of expression of its users.  Dorsey gets my vote every time, and not just because I use Twitter far more than Facebook.  Twitter is forever trying new ways to police speech in the name of "safety," which is laughable.  Dorsey and Co. use the safety angle to position themselves as the arbiters of what words mean and whether they should be classified as "hate speech."

Project Veritas Uncovered an Important Coronavirus Story and Twitter Is Actively Suppressing It.  Project Veritas recently released a video detailing how the number of Wuhan coronavirus deaths in the New York City area are being padded.  Patients are being labeled as "coronavirus deaths" even though the person may have never even tested positive for the virus.  The watchdog group shared their investigative video on Twitter.  Interestingly enough, the social media platform was caught removing retweets.  One of the Project Veritas members caught the number of retweets decreasing from 6,324 immediately to 5,981 in a video.  "He caught Twitter reducing the number of retweets of our COVID-19 video," founder James O'Keefe said in a video uncovering the social media giant's move.  "Jack Dorsey, what are you doing?"

Twitter Suspends Bannon's 'War Room:  Pandemic' Account Without Reason.  War Room:  Pandemic was launched in January, as many politicians and the media were still consumed with the impeachment story.  The show has played host to leading experts including Dr. Steven Hatfill, Bill Gertz, as well as anti-Chinese Communist Party dissidents.  Co-hosts Steve Bannon, Jason Miller, Raheem Kassam, and Jack Maxey provide breaking news updates and analysis on the coronavirus pandemic.  The show has been lauded by the mainstream media as one of the first shows out there on the subject matter.

A 'vulture' circles over Twitter.  A conservative hedge fund manager, known as a 'vulture' and 'financial terrorist', based on his history of tormenting socialists, has suddenly got his sights on Twitter.  Couldn't happen to a nice bunch of woke, hostile, leftists.

Republican Donor Buys Stake In Twitter, Folks on the Left Have a Meltdown.  Major Republican donor Paul Singer has just purchased a big stake in Twitter and is reportedly pondering changes, among them getting rid of the present CEO, Jack Dorsey, according to a report in The Guardian. [...] Singer is reportedly unhappy with Dorsey's leadership, including his split attention because he's also in charge of Square, an payment company and that Dorsey wants to live part of the year in Africa.  Twitter's share price has suffered, although it recently picked up quarterly revenue.

FCC commissioner rips Twitter for suspending popular conservative account.  The commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission blasted Twitter after the social media company suspended the popular conservative account Comfortably Smug for a tweet about Joe Biden.  "Hard to see how this @ComfortablySmug tweet — which combined known examples of political satire — violated Twitter's rules against abuse and harassment," FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said Tuesday on Twitter.  Comfortably Smug, an anonymous conservative troll account, was suspending after tweeting, "Where's Hunter, Fat?" The tweet references both Biden's son Hunter Biden and a comment the former vice president made on the campaign trail where he called a voter "fat" and "sedentary" at a campaign event in Iowa.

Twitter locks James O'Keefe's account for reporting two men work for Bernie Sanders.  Investigative journalism is challenging when the propagandists in mainstream and social media do everything they can to discredit the truth.  This is what James O'Keefe at Project Veritas deals with on a regular basis as they drop bombshell after bombshell about Democrats, mainstream media, and Big Tech.  Among those exposed by Project Veritas recently are Bernie Sanders' campaign, CNN, and Twitter.  This is why it's not surprising Twitter has locked his account based on a Tweet last month that called for a correction from mainstream media.

Zerohedge Suspended On Twitter.  First it was Facebook, then all of New Zealand; now Twitter has decided to suspend Zero Hedge.  Just as in the prior bans, which were eventually overturned, so in this case it is unclear what prompted Twitter's abrupt censorship: the only notification we received from twitter was the following: [...]

Top Conservative and Pro-Trump Website Zero Hedge is Suspended from Twitter.  The tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter continue to purge conservative content from their platforms.  In February 2018 Facebook launched a new algorithm to ensure that conservative news would not spread on the social media platform.  The algorithm change caused President Donald Trump's engagement on Facebook posts to plummet a whopping 45%.  In contrast, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) do not appear to have suffered a comparable decline in Facebook engagement.

Twitter Attaches Warning to President Donald Trump's Beautiful Pro-Life Video.  President Trump made history again on Friday [1/24/2020] being the first sitting president ever to address the annual March for Life rally in Washington DC. But not everyone was celebrating the president's message on Life.  Twitter attached a warning to President Trump's pro-life video this morning.

Twitter Puts Warning on Trump Team's Pro-Life Video Featuring Smiling Babies.  Twitter censored and attached a warning to a pro-life ad from the Trump campaign that featured beautiful babies growing in the womb, being hugged by the president, and playing on playgrounds.  Twitter hid the video for a short time on Friday with this warning, "This media may contain sensitive material."  In order to see it, a viewer would have to click through the warning.  The video, seen below, has nothing sensitive in it except to disagree with Democrats who think it's okay to kill babies.  The pro-life message that life is worthwhile and babies deserve to live was loud and clear in the message.  There was nothing inappropriate about it.

Twitter's "Director of Trust and Safety Council" — Jen Clarke — Is a Trump-Hating, Far Left Lunatic.  In July 2018 we reported that a study by the leftist website VICE News found that Twitter is censoring top pro-Trump lawmakers.  Twitter is targeting pro-Trump Republican lawmakers Matt Gaetz, Devin Nunes, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe with the same shadowbanning technique.  Twitter is also censoring prominent pro-Trump accounts including:  Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, Paul Joseph Watson, TGP's Jim Hoft, TGP's Cassandra Fairbanks and others.

Andy Ngo Suspended From Twitter for Stating Facts.  Journalist Andy Ngo gets a lot of abuse.  We saw what Antifa thugs did to him for trying to cover their activities in Portland.  The liberal Silicon Valley establishment doesn't treat him any better.  When he risked traumatizing Chelsea Clinton by exposing her to factual reality, Twitter suspended him.  Ngo's thought crime was tweeting this:  "The US is one of the safest countries for trans people.  The murder rate of trans victims is actually lower than that for cis population.  Also, who is behind the murders?  Mostly black men."

Twitter suspends conservative journalist Andy Ngo.  Twitter suspended a conservative gay journalist for hate speech Monday for stating without rancor that trans murder rates are low.  Andy Ngo committed the "hateful conduct" in response to a tweet by former first daughter Chelsea Clinton that said that "since 2013, more than 150 trans people have been murdered in the U.S., the majority Black transgender women," which she called "an epidemic of violence and hate."  Not so fast, Mr. Ngo said, noting that 150 deaths over several years in a nation of more than 300 million people is hardly an epidemic.

Twitter will ban all political advertising before 2020 election.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced a ban on Wednesday [10/30/2019] of all political advertising on the social media platform.  In a lengthy Twitter thread, Dorsey outlined his company's decision and argued that a political message's reach "should be earned, not bought."

Mark Zuckerberg defends political ads on Facebook the same day Twitter bans them.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday [10/30/2019] defended political advertisements being hosted on his social networking site the same day Twitter announced it would be banning the same ads from its platform.  Mdr.  Zuckerberg shared his comments during an earnings call on Facebook, asking:  "Right now, the content debate is about political ads.  Should we block political ads with false statements?  Should we block all political ads?"  "I don't think it's right for private companies to censor politicians or the news.  And although I've considered whether we should not carry these ads in the past, and I'll continue to do so, on balance so far I've thought we should continue," he said.

The Editor says...
The Democrat nominee in the 2020 presidential election is very likely to lose.  No amount of advertising on the internet will change that.  Thus the likely winner is the Republican incumbent, which Twitter can only resist and impede by banning all ads.  Facebook goes the other direction, opting to cash in on the advertising.

Twitter Bans Gay Man For Telling Inconvenient Truths About Transgender People.  Mikey Harlow, outspoken gay writer and model, has been banned from Twitter permanently for dubious reasons.  It all started when he posted these few tweets about inconvenient truths that Twitter must not want you to see. [...] He continued poking the beast by announcing, "Good news!  There is NOT an epidemic of trans people being murdered.  5 out of 100k Americans are the victims of homicide.  1.1 out of every 100k trans people are victims of homicide.  About 20-25 trans people killed each year.  51 Americans are struck by lightning every year."  These statstics fly in the face of the popular LGBTQWTF claims that trans people are at higher risk of violence than anyone else.  It's simply not true.

Twitter Removes Video Critiquing Joe Biden.  Twitter disabled a satirical video the president posted yesterday critiquing Joe Biden.  Twitter, along with multiple technology companies, has faced criticism from conservatives alleging bias against their worldview.  While it's unlikely that the letter to Twitter sent by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) trying to get President Donald Trump kicked off the tech platform will be successful, taking down the president's video is likely to anger Trump supporters against the tech giant.

Kamala Harris:  Trump Should Be Suspended From Twitter — His Words Could Result in Harm to People.  Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) said Monday night [9/30/2019] on CNN that President Donald Trump should be suspended from Twitter for threats to the whistleblower and tweeting Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) should be arrested for treason.  Harris said, "Frankly, when you look at what he's been tweeting today, directed at the whistleblower, directed at so many people, I frankly, think that based on this and all we've seen him do before, including attacking members of Congress that frankly his Twitter account should be suspended."

Here's More Proof on How Twitter is Censoring President Trump's Account To Hide His Support!.  We reported in July 2018 that Twitter has long been accused of censoring conservatives.  Twitter was indeed censoring and shadowbanning the President of the United States, Donald Trump's twitter account, @realDonaldTrump.  In July there was even video proof that President Trump's Twitter page is being censored.

Twitter rightly bans conservative child comedian 'Mini AOC'.  [Scroll down]  The case of Mini AOC (whose real name I'll not be using) is even more egregious than that of [Greta] Thunberg.  Whereas Thunberg's parents were complicit in allowing her to become a pawn of the Left, Mini AOC's mother actively instigated turning her daughter into a living political parody.  Remember, this child is half Thunberg's age and less than a third of the real Ocasio-Cortez.  As cute as the girl may be and as funny as her anti-socialist quips surely are, an 8-year-old with zero political agency should not be forced to express opinions she may not later agree with as an independent, adult individual.

The Nauseating Irony of Silicon Valley's Bigotry Against Conservative America.  Twitter's "Trust and Safety Council" works overtime to ban conservatives but not actual dictators or terrorists.  YouTube recently demonetized channels that challenge an acceptable left-wing narrative.  Facebook fired a top executive for donating to Trump.  Netflix's original content is all "progressive" propaganda.  In June a Google executive was caught conspiring to rig the 2020 election against the president.  And following that, despite its once high-minded claim as a "bastion of free speech," Reddit finally "quarantined" its largest conservative forum:  The Donald.  This level of coordinated thought suppression isn't going to help anything.  On the left, it shows that so-called progressives have driven the final nail in the coffin of liberalism.  On the right, it proves that we need Donald Trump to survive — which he illustrated with his social media summit last week.  Beyond all that, the nauseating irony is that the power Silicon Valley's self-righteous elite lord over us didn't come out of nowhere.  Conservative institutions made it possible.

Why Do Transgender Users Get Away With What Gets Other People Banned From Twitter?  [Scroll down]  Although I did violate Twitter's terms of service by misgendering, it's not such a simple matter of rule-breaking: should people using social media platforms be forced to act as if biological sex is meaningless, and anyone with dissenting views must either keep her mouth shut or have her account closed? [...] Why is it okay for transwomen to hurl insults at biological women, but not okay for biological women to hurl insults at transwomen?

McConnell in 'Major War' With Twitter; GOP Committees, Campaigns, Super PACs Suspend Advertising.  Twitter's decision to lock the account of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign — for posting a video showing protestors making violent threats against him — sparked an avalanche of announcements Thursday [8/8/2019] by major Republican campaign committees, super PACs, and lawmakers to buy no advertising on the social media platform.  National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spokesman Jesse Hunt called Twitter's decision to suspend the @Team_Mitch account "another ridiculously hostile act toward conservatives" and announced that the NRSC will stop spending on the platform as a result.

Twitter Removes #ClintonBodyCount with 84,000 Mentions from Trending List After Epstein Death.  In July Epstein was found injured and in a fetal position inside his cell at a New York City jail.  He was reportedly put under suicide watch.  On Saturday he reportedly hanged himself.  Within an hour #ClintonBodyCount was trending on Twitter.

Twitter Suspends Mitch McConnell Campaign Account for Sharing Death Threats Against Mitch McConnell.  Black Lives Matter Louisville leader Chanelle Helm is a political activist who has met with numerous high profile politicians, including current presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, to advance the identity politics of her movement.  Ms. Chanelle Helm posted video to her Facebook page showing a protest Monday at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's house. [...] To highlight the hypocrisy of the radical leftists, several social media and twitter accounts began sharing the video of Ms. Helm's call to violence; including the twitter account of Mitch McConnell.  In response to the video showing how violent Ms. Chanelle Helm is, and bringing forth the transparency of sunlight upon the group's objectives, Twitter began demanding the videos and tweets must be removed.

Twitter Forces McConnell Campaign To Pull Video Showing Violent Threats Against Him.  On Monday night, dozens of left-wing activists converged on the Louisville home of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to protest for gun control.  Video of one of the protesters, Black Lives Matter activist Chanelle Helm, calling for violence against McConnell — initially posted on Facebook and then tweeted out by congressional staffer Ben Goldey — quickly went viral, retweeted by the McConnell re-election campaign and Daily Wire reporter Ryan Saavedra.  By Tuesday [8/6/2019], Twitter had locked all three accounts until they pulled their posts featuring the video.

Twitter bans 'angel mom' for criticizing illegals who kill thousands of Americans every year.  Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza uses Twitter to raise awareness about a chilling trend that's claiming the lives of thousands of Americans like her son every year:  Illegal immigrants who commit murder.  Twitter doesn't think she deserves a voice.

Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza Suspended from Twitter.  [Scroll down]  And this evening [7/20/2019] Maria Espinoza, the co-founder and National Director of The Remembrance Project, notified The Gateway Pundit that senior chaplain Ruth Martin (see photo below with President Trump) was placed in Facebook jail for posting a cartoon.  Maria told The Gateway Pund, "This is unacceptable and ludicrous for such bias and flat out discrimination against conservative Americans and our freedom of speech."

Anti-Extremism Expert Loses Jobs, Twitter Account After Antifa Smears.  Anti-extremism researcher Eoin Lenihan struck a nerve when he published the results of a study showing the links between liberal news outlets and the violent thugs who organize under the name "antifa."  After Lenihan published his report, antifa activists contacted his employers to get him fired and reported him on Twitter, succeeding in shutting down his Twitter account.  A reporter with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has disputed part of Lenihan's story, as noted in an update below.  Lenihan's story seems all the more important after Rose City Antifa in Portland beat up Quillette editor Andy Ngo, using milkshakes with quick-dry cement and landing him in the hospital with brain bleed.  The anti-extremism researcher told PJ Media, "I am not surprised that Andy has been brutally attacked."  He noted that Rose City Antifa belongs "to the Torch Antifa collective which is a network of Militant Antifa collectives throughout the USA.  This means that Rose City Antifa prioritise the use of violence as their primary means of defeating those they deem to be fascist."

Cruz to Christian Conservatives:  We Are Not Going to Let Big Tech Silence Us.  Speaking at Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority event on Thursday [6/27/2019], Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) recalled when a Twitter executive couldn't answer whether a tweet with Mother Theresa's quote "Abortion is profoundly anti-woman" was considered hate speech by the social media platform.  [Video clip]

Twitter to start policing gov't officials, will slap 'disclaimer' on Trump's tweets that break its 'rules'.  Twitter has announced that it intends to add what would essentially be warning labels and disclaimers to tweets posted by world leaders that allegedly violate the platform's controversial and highly inconsistent policies concerning abuse, harassment, threats and so-called hate speech.  While the social media network has denied that this new rule has anything to do with President Donald Trump, there's a strong belief that the rule is in fact centered on stymieing him.  "[T]here are certain cases where it may be in the public's interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules," the social media network announced in a blog post Thursday [6/27/2019].

Wonder if I'll get banned by Twitter for this one!.  I figured that I'd better get a screenshot!

The Collusion Between Twitter, Google in Silencing the Pinterest Investigation is Cartel Behavior.  Pinterest had a covert policy of censoring conservatives.  The policy was exposed by Live Action, a pro-life group that was a target of Pinterest censorship, and by Project Veritas.  Since then, YouTube (Google) and Twitter have shut down Veritas efforts to broadcast material about the investigation.

AT cartoonist Mike Harris suspended by Twitter over pro-life cartoon.  It is becoming a badge of honor to be a conservative suspended by Twitter, so much so that I am beginning to wonder what's wrong with me.  Our very frequent cartoon contributor Mike Harris was just suspended for 3 days on Twitter for posting there his cartoon making the point that mass extermination of human life is common to both the aboriton industry and the Nazis.

Twitter Bans Conservative Reporter Nick Monroe.  Twitter has banned a conservative reporter who was openly trying to be less edgy and more newsy, three years after being embroiled in Gamergate and other internet-based arguments.  When it comes to the research and aggregation of political news, Nick Monroe is second to none.  Anyone within the political sphere — whether on the left or right — is familiar with the independent journalist, who goes by @nickmon1112 on Twitter.  Or at least he did, until Twitter banned him on Tuesday [5/28/2019].

Twitter suspends OAN reporter Chanel Rion for posting harmless photo with Trump Jr.  [Video clip]

Facebook's Ridiculous Double Standard In Plain View.  This reminds me of those times Twitter suspended me for retweeting antisemitic tweets (with my own comments above the tweets) done with sole purpose of showing people the type of antisemitic garbage we are up against.  I was forced to delete the retweets.  Yet the source antisemitic tweets remained online.  But please tell me how there isn't a bias against conservative and pro-Israel accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter going after the scientists in conflict with transgender activist orthodoxy now.  Ray Blanchard, Ph.D. is no Alex Jones with out-there conspiracy theories.  He's a respected scientist whose research on transgenderism is science-based and consistent with existing research on the reality of gender dysphoria, the psychological disorder that prompts some patients to attempt to change their sex.  He's also quite compassionate toward these individuals, as they are his patients, but his research is premised on hard, fact-based research, such as that there is no changing a person's chromosomes, even if a person has altered his body through surgery. [...] In short, he's a moderate, with views well within the mainstream of science.  And Twitter banned him — not for saying anything wild, not for insulting anyone, but for publishing his research.

James Woods says he's leaving Twitter 'until free speech is allowed'.  Actor James Woods says he will no longer use Twitter after claiming the platform removed a tweet he refused to take down.

David Horowitz Suspended from Twitter.  Conservative author and media pundit David Horowitz, founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and editor of FrontPage magazine, was suspended by Twitter on Tuesday [5/7/2019].  It is unclear why Horowitz's account has been suspended.  It comes just days after Facebook launched an unprecedented crackdown against right-of-center personalities including Laura Loomer and Paul Joseph Watson, in addition to its implementation of a blanket ban on anyone who links too often to InfoWars.

Twitter Suspends Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Parody Account for 'Spammy Behavior,' Which Seems Dubious.  Twitter has banned a parody account that made fun of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), as well as the account's creator and operator, Michael Morrison.  Parody accounts are permitted on Twitter as long as they are clearly identified as such.  This account, @AOCPress, obeyed that rule, and its termination has prompted conservatives to accuse the platform of hypocrisy.  They have a point.  The official reason for removing the accounts was "spammy behavior."

How Do We Push Back Against the Twitter Mob?  After Ryszard Legutko was deplatformed by the safe-spacers at Middlebury College I thought the least I could do was buy his book, The Demon in Democracy.  He argues that communism and liberal democracy are similar in their faith in inevitable progress — in communism towards the socialist state, in liberal democracy towards the day when there are no more victims and the last white supremacist has been razed flat.  And in some ways liberal democracy is worse than communism, because its victim hunt doesn't stop with the workers.

Twitter Conservatives: Don't Cede Ground!  A recent Pew Research Survey confirms what we've long suspected:  Twitter is not remotely representative of American public opinion.  According to the survey, the median Twitter user is younger, better-educated, more affluent, and more inclined to lean leftward politically than the average American.  When it comes to the most prolific of Twitter users — the top 10 percent in terms of content and activity who account for 80 percent of the activity we see from U.S. Twitter users, the statistics skew even further from the norm.  In other words, Twitter overwhelmingly is populated by far Left activists, woke academics, political commentators, and pundits who have nothing better to do than fire off angry blurb after angry blurb, composed in no more than 280 characters.  It is an echo chamber where leftist malcontents in the press, entertainment, other media, and the hallowed halls of higher education vent their spleens at all things "right" and "good," in defiance of the views of mainstream America.

ObamaGate: No Misdemeanors, Only High Crimes.  When an evening TV show host starts to tear up live on camera after she is forced admit that the Mueller report confirms that the president is not an agent of a foreign adversary, you have to ask: what is going on in America?  All the more so after a private Twitter user, who posted a video of the teary-eyed Rachel Maddow, was suspended by the social media platform.  Why?  Because she posted the close-up that clearly demonstrated that Maddow was overwrought.  Suspended for posting the truth.

Leftist Nastiness & Rage Know No Bounds.  Conservatives are censored on Twitter and Facebook.  Google, the mainstream media and other social media platforms refused to run ads for the pro-life movie "Unplanned," and Twitter often censors pro-life tweets.

Can We Talk?  [S]hortly after joining Twitter, I read an interview with a writer who said in a magazine interview that he'd asked a number of pro-life advocates the same ridiculous hypothetical question about choosing between the life of a child and a canister of frozen embryos, bragging that no one had been to give him the "correct" answer.  Because I foolishly believed his claim, I attempted to establish a dialog with this writer.  After a very brief and rather rude, profanity-laced exchange, this person suddenly declared that I was not allowed to participate in the public conversation about abortion.  Soon thereafter I was apparently shadow-banned by Twitter and so I simply deleted my account.

Direct Message Engineer Explains How Twitter Filters Ideas.  How does Twitter get rid of conservative tweets?  "You just delete them... but the problem is there are hundreds of thousands of them, so you got to like, write algorithms that do it for you."  The algorithms find the tweets by using "like 5000 keywords to describe a redneck"

Twitter suspends account of pro-life movie on the weekend of [its] release.  The account was re-opened after people started tweeting about it.

Rep. Devin Nunes Sues Twitter for $250 Million in Damages for "Shadow-Banning" Conservatives to Influence Elections.  A 2018 study by the leftist website VICE News found that Twitter is censoring top pro-Trump lawmakers.  Twitter is targeting pro-Trump Republican lawmakers Matt Gaetz, Devin Nunes, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe with the same shadowbanning technique.

Twitter Legal Warns Michelle Malkin Her 'Mohammed Cartoon Tweet' Violates "Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws" — Which Are Punishable by Prison or Death.  Twitter legal sent conservative firebrand Michelle Malkin a warning last week that her Mohammed cartoon tweet violated Pakistan's "blasphemy laws."  The specific blasphemy laws Michelle Malkin violated are punishable by life imprisonment or death and Twitter happily delivered the death threat to her.

Twitter sued by feminist blogger blocked over 'men aren't women' tweet: lawsuit.  Social media giant Twitter is being sued by a Canadian blogger who says she was permanently banned from the platform last year for her tweets about transgender people, a lawsuit said Monday.  Meghan Murphy, the founder of the blog Feminist Current, was locked out of her account last year when the company asked her to delete a tweet that said, "Men aren't women," CNET reported, citing the lawsuit.  A second tweet said, "How are transwomen not men?" according to the suit.

Islam forbids the killing of spiders, therefore, Islam is a religion of peace.  And if you dare to disagree, as one ex-Muslim (@ApostateProphet) on Twitter did, you will get banned.

Report: Twitter [is] Colluding with Ocasio-Cortez to Ensure Message Is More Effective.  After years of searching, there is still absolutely zero evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.  That's not exactly a surprise to Trump supporters.  Collusion, however, seems to take place on the other side of the political aisle on a relatively frequent basis.

This Daily Wire Figure Just Got Suspended From Twitter For The Dumbest Reason Imaginable.  Daily Wire God-King Jeremy Boreing was suspended from Twitter Thursday after tweeting about ... Brussels sprouts.  No, we're not kidding.  Brussels sprouts.  Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro revealed the suspension on Twitter Thursday morning [1/3/2019] after Boreing reportedly received a note from Twitter informing him of a 12-hour suspension because he'd encouraged another Twitter user — me, your fair reporter, Emily Zanotti — to commit "self-harm" in a critique of my recipe for the roasted side dish.

Twitter Suspends Humanitarian Account for Publishing Photos of the War in Yemen.  It isn't just the right that is being subjected to Orwellian censorship on social media, Twitter is now censoring Pulitzer-worthy photos showing the horror of the war in Yemen.  On Tuesday [12/4/2018], the social media platform banned the OpDesanitize account which publishes graphic photos from war zones the US is involved in — mainly Yemen.  Their goal is to raise awareness of the true costs of war.

Blacklisted Feminist:  Saying Men Aren't Women Used to Be 'Banal,' Today It's 'Heresy'.  Meghan Murphy, a prominent feminist who was recently banned from Twitter for stating that men aren't women, wrote an article for Quillette on Wednesday [11/28/2018] explaining how formerly "banal" facts have become "heresy — akin to terrorist speech."  Murphy, who accused Twitter of "censoring basic facts and silencing people," was permanently suspended from the social network last week for stating, "Women aren't men," and "How are transwomen not men?  What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?"  After Twitter made Murphy delete the posts, she made another post calling out Twitter, and was subsequently blacklisted.

Does Twitter Have A Liberal Agenda?  Conservatives have been wondering if all the banning and shadowbanning (essentially artificially limiting the reach of accounts by controlling who can see their content) happening on Twitter is targeting one side of the political aisle over the other for some time now.  Spend any time on the platform and one comes across users openly wondering why their replies aren't being seen or their tweets aren't showing up in followers feeds.  And they're almost exclusively conservatives.

Do you hear the people Tweet?  Glenn Reynolds has deactivated his Twitter account citing the banning of Jesse Kelly for no apparent reason as the immediate cause of his disillusionment with the platform.  Explaining his decision he wrote "why should I provide free content to people I don't like, who hate me?  I'm currently working on a book on social media, and I keep coming back to the point that Twitter is far and away the most socially destructive of the various platforms.  So I decided to suspend them, as they are suspending others.  At least I'm giving my reasons, which is more than they've done usually."  He may have beaten the digital bouncers to the door by only a little.  The Thought Police are rushing to ensure that everyone toes the line.

Conservatives, Don't Quit Twitter.  Twitter is not a place for the faint of heart.  There's no doubt that taking a break from Twitter is good for the soul and disposition:  Anyone who uses it regularly is aware of how much it can influence your mood.  And one ill-advised tweet can not only ruin your day, but your career.  Post-2016 Twitter is a far more hostile place than it was before Donald Trump was elected.  Republican lawmakers have been shadowbanned on Twitter, and the company even indulged a petition drive to banish President Trump from the site.  Founder Jack Dorsey faced harsh questioning from congressional Republicans earlier this year about his company's anti-conservative bias.

Laura Loomer kicked off Twitter for criticizing Congresswoman-elect Ilhan Omar.  Twitter double-standard of what is permitted political discourse protects people like Louis Farrakhan, Linda Sarsour, Ilhan Omar and thousands of deranged anti-Trump conspiracy theorists, but hammers people put in the media "far right" box.

Satire:
Twitter Introduces New Feature Allowing Users To Flag Civil, Appropriate Content.  In an attempt to preserve its reputation as a place of toxic interaction and owning each other online, Twitter has announced an exciting new feature that allows users to flag all civil, appropriate content on the platform.  If users come across a calm, civil interaction between two or more users, they're encouraged to flag the users so a Twitter employee can come along and ban them from ever using the website again.  Violations will include earnestly asking someone how they came to embrace their beliefs, telling someone you disagree with that you respect their opinion, and treating people across the aisle as though they are actual humans.

The Escalating Assault on Citizen Journalism.  This past week, the progressive establishment attempted to silence two more independents.  In the first case, Twitter and Facebook conspired to deny the audacious 25-year-old journalist Laura Loomer her rapidly growing audience.  In the second, Special Counsel Robert Mueller lowered the boom on Jerome Corsi, a 72-year-old Harvard Ph.D.  An all too typical headline this week from ABC News — "Conspiracy theorist becomes key figure as Mueller builds case" — delegitimizes Corsi even before the article begins.  Corsi is not a journalist; he is a "conspiracy theorist."  The media are not opposed to conspiracy theorizing in general — Michael Moore did win an Oscar — but rather to theorizing that has the potential to harm the progressive establishment.

Twitter Permanently Bans Feminist For Writing That 'Men Aren't Women'.  Despite its CEO telling Congress the contrary a few months ago, Twitter has amped up its pattern of politically one-sided application of its terms of service.  Last week, the social media giant permanently banned Meghan Murphy, a writer based in British Columbia, for critiquing transgender ideology online.  The platform repeatedly suspended her account for this then ultimately banned her last week, saying such behavior "violated [its] rules against hateful conduct."  Here's a sampling of tweets Twitter required Murphy to delete as "objectionable" before allowing her access back to her account. [...]

Laura Loomer now banned from Twitter & Facebook for 30 days.  What's interesting is how Sr.  Twitter staff spend considerable time discussing Laura.

Saying 'Only Hitler is Hitler' is Offensive to Facebook.  [Scroll down]  My point being that Hitler was a particularly evil historical figure, and that to call everyone you disagree with Hitler diminishes his evil, and diminishes the horrors he committed, which is incredibly callous towards his victims.  I'm used to social media unfairly suspending me and banning me.  Twitterstan banned me for good after I criticized Marvel's Islamic propaganda comic book, Ms. Marvel.  We're in the middle of a global jihad, but you'd never know it if you read the comic book, as the only Muslims in it are heroes or victims.  After Pakistan blocked me on Instagramistan, my account is dead.  I'm tired of social(ist) media companies focusing on punishing their ideological opponents, while allowing leftists and Muslims to get away with murder.

Keyword:  cahoots.
Report: Twitter Deleting Accounts at Request of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  Twitter has reportedly deleted as many as 10,000 accounts at the request of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a party group that supports Democrats running for the U.S. House of Representatives.  Social media platform Twitter recently told Reuters in a statement:  "We took action on relevant accounts and activity on Twitter," following the removal of over 10,000 Twitter accounts in September and October.  The removal of the accounts is reportedly due to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) a party group that works to help Democrats running for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gab is back in business.  I have at this writing 6,334 followers on Twitter.  I hope they all follow me on Gab.  Twitter eventually will banish me as it has some of my friends and colleagues.  Eventually, the fascists will ban me.  I don't like giving them free content.  Facebook too.  I write stuff, they sell ads.

Twitter: Yes to Ahmadinejad, No to the Gay Patriot.  Did you know that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's former president, is on Twitter?  It's true.  On his Twitter account, Ahmadinejad describes himself as "Husband, Dad, Grandfather, University Professor, President, Mayor, Proud Iranian."  A better description would be "Jew hater, Holocaust denier, homophobe, serial human rights violator, and Death to America advocate."  There's a place on Twitter for a guy like that, but not for the Gay Patriot.

Louis Farrakhan 'Termites' Video Removed From Facebook.  A video posted to the Facebook account of Louis Farrakhan in which the Nation of Islam leader compares Jews to termites was removed for violating the social media platforms hate speech policies.  It remains posted on Twitter, which said last week that it does not violate company policies.

Louis Farrakhan won't be suspended by Twitter despite anti-Semitic tweet.  Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who in a recent tweet said he was not prejudiced against Jewish people but was simply "anti-Termite," will be allowed to continue to use the social media platform.  Farrakhan took to the site on Tuesday [10/16/2018] by posting a video of himself speaking at an event in Detroit, during which he addressed "the members of the Jewish community that don't like me."  In a caption to the video, he wrote:  "I'm not an anti-Semite.  I'm anti-Termite."

Mission impossible:  Can you regain access after Twitter lockout?  If you rely on Twitter for business or recreation, it's time to worry.  Although the days of frequent service outages have passed, users have a new cause for concern — getting locked out by Twitter itself, without explanation.  Unfortunately, when this happens, you have no recourse, and there is no one to call.  It's bad news.  One of the top technology industry analysts in the world, Ray Wang, whom I have known personally for many years, is a victim of this situation.  Wang is no newcomer to Twitter: his account has been active since 2008 and has 119,000 followers.  He is also a blue-checked user, meaning Twitter has verified his identity as authentic.  Given his credentials, if this can happen to Ray, then you are also at risk.

Top Ten Alternative Media Sites Banned on Facebook and Twitter.  Sites dealing with government transparency, pages dedicated to police brutality and alternative media — take a closer look at the top ten accounts with millions of followers that were recently suspended by Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Etc. are Subversive to American Government.  What if I told you that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google and other big tech companies are subversive to American government; and what they are advocating is completely illegal in this country?  Facebook sells itself as an American online social networking service company.  Apparently, it is only for those who are willing to socialize in pushing the same illegal propaganda.  For example, they advance homosexuality and sodomy (Jude 1:7).  For those who have not taken the time to peruse the United States Constitution and its enumerated laws you may want to do so, that is if you would like to remain a free people (2 Corinthians 3:17).  In every state in our Union, homosexuality and sodomy is a felony.  Yet, these big tech companies are banning and censoring people who are making reference to our constitutional laws (Romans 3:20) in exposing the crimes of those who are guilty as charged.  With the use of the revisionists, they now call it "hate speech."

'Kill Kavanaugh' Tops Twitter Search and Hashtag Suggestions.  Typing "kill" into Twitter's search function currently returns a shocking result at the top of its search suggestions:  "#KillKavanaugh."  It's also currently the third autocompleted suggestion in searches for "ki" and the fourth suggestion in searches for "k" as of this writing.  That's right — by typing a single letter into search, Twitter is suggesting that its users might be interested in a hashtag about the murder of a federal judge and SCOTUS nominee.

Twitter's Denial of Bias Still Doesn't Ring True.  Perhaps the leaders of Silicon Valley's major Internet-based tech companies be more credible if they heeded their conservative-leaning employees, who feel marginalized and muted, because of the leftist cultures they have cultivated in their workplaces.  And maybe these executives would be taken more seriously if they would simply stop lying — especially in places such as before Congressional committees — by saying they don't "intentionally" impose policies that censor those on the right.  Because that is exactly what they do.

Michelle Malkin Shreds Twitter:  Biased Algorithm 'Triggering Lockdowns... if You Use the Wrong Phrases'.  Michelle Malkin warned of technology companies' tightening control over the parameters of political speech and expression during a Wednesday interview with Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour on SiriusXM's Breitbart News Tonight.  Malkin's comments came against the backdrop of Wednesday's [9/12/2018] publishing of a leaked video from 2016 depicting Google's leadership lamenting the election of President Donald Trump and pledging global political opposition to both nationalism and populism.  [Audio clip]

Jeff Sessions 'Exploring Potential Investigation' of Google, Facebook, Twitter.  Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reportedly "exploring a potential investigation" of Big Tech social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google.  According to Bloomberg, Sessions will "be briefed on Sept. 25 by Republican state attorneys general who are already examining the firms' practices," and will "help Sessions decide if there's a federal case to be made against companies such as Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. for violating consumer-protection or antitrust laws."

Twitter blocks posts that use phrase 'illegal alien' as 'hateful content'.  The federal government, U.S. Supreme Court, and lawyers across the country use the word "illegal alien" to describe immigrants who illegally enter the country, because that's the definition in the law.  But Twitter makes its own laws, and the social media giant is now blocking folks from promoting any messages with the phrase, which its moderators apparently consider "hate speech."

Twitter Permanently Suspends Alex Jones and InfoWars After Jones Confronts CNN's Deplatforming Crusader Oliver Darcy.  Oliver Darcy has been a naked activist crusading to get a host of accounts, including Jones' most of all, banned from Twitter, FaceBook, etc.  Oliver Darcy and CNN have abandoned any pretense of objectivity and are simply now activists and lobbyists pressuring other companies to ban their critics and competitors.  Until recently, Twitter had been the lone hold-out, refusing to ban Jones, stating that he had not broken any rules.  Which made Darcy and CNN crusade all the harder to get Jones banned, writing stories frequently demanding that Twitter get with the deplatforming program.

Alex Jones Banned From Twitter, Louis Farrakhan and Hamas Remain.  On Thursday [9/6/2018], Twitter permanently suspended conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and InfoWars from Twitter and Periscope.  This followed Jones' altercation with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) outside of the hearing with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.  Some have accused Twitter of applying a double standard, however, since both notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and the terrorist organization Hamas still have accounts on the platform.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Confirms 'Algorithms Unfairly Filtered Out 600,000 Accounts'.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that his company's algorithms "were unfairly filtering 600,000 accounts, including some members of Congress," from search results based on the type of followers they had.  Dorsey confirmed that 600,000 accounts were shadowbanned during his hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday [9/5/2018].  "In the spirit of accountability and transparency: recently we failed our intended impartiality.  Our algorithms were unfairly filtering 600,000 accounts, including some members of Congress, from our search auto-complete and latest results," claimed Dorsey.

Twitter Suspends Benghazi Hero For Mocking Obama, Liberals.  Twitter suspended former Army Ranger and Benghazi hero Kris Paronto over the weekend for mocking former President Barack Obama and liberals after another Twitter account claimed that Obama killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.  The incident happened after a far-left Twitter account told Robert J. O'Neill — the Navy SEAL who is credited with killing bin Laden — that it was Obama who killed the Islamic terrorist.

Freed From Twitter Jail, Benghazi Hero Kris Paronto Thanks Trump Jr.  For Powerful Obama Smackdown.  In his campaign speech on Friday [9/7/2018], former president Barack Obama dismissed Republican "wild conspiracy theories, like those surrounding Benghazi."  Benghazi survivor Kris Paronto naturally took offense, and soon found himself suspended on Twitter.  Donald Trump Jr. later joined in denouncing Obama's remarks, earning thanks from Paronto.  After Obama's attack on Benghazi "conspiracy theories," the Benghazi survivor blasted the former president on Twitter.

WSJ: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Personally Decides Who Gets Blacklisted.  The Wall Street Journal published an article recently outlining the efforts Twitter has made to crack down on "bad actors" on its platform, including the personal involvement of CEO Jack Dorsey in deciding who gets blacklisted.  An article published in the Wall Street Journal titled "Inside Twitter's Long, Slow Struggle to Police Bad Actors," outlines how Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey personally stepped in to make decisions on the banning of high-profile accounts, regularly frustrating Twitter employees.  The article states that Twitter primarily relies on reports from users to police their platform and decisions on whether to ban accounts are then made by reviewing a consistent set of policies relating to the platform's rules.

Forget Russia, Twitter Is Meddling in 2018 Elections, Shadow-Banning GOP Candidates John James and Ron Bassilian.  A recent study by the leftist website VICE News found that Twitter was censoring top pro-Trump lawmakers.  Twitter is targeting pro-Trump Republican lawmakers Matt Gaetz, Devin Nunes, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe with the same shadowbanning technique.  Twitter is also censoring prominent pro-Trump accounts including:  Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, Paul Joseph Watson, TGP's Jim Hoft, TGP's Cassandra Fairbanks, TGP's Lucian Wintrich, TGP's Cristina Laila and Laura Loomer among others.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Admits Platform Is 'Left-Leaning'.  In the clip that aired on CNN, Dorsey defined shadowbanning, a practice many conservatives have complained has happened to them and that President Trump condemned on Saturday [8/18/2018], as "hiding that tweet from everyone without that person knowing about it."  Regarding recent criticism levied at the social media platform, Dorsey contended that Twitter does not police content, but rather behavior.

Alex Jones Temporarily Blocked From Twitter.  The personal account of Alex Jones has been temporarily blocked on Twitter after one of his posts reportedly incited violence.  A spokesperson for the social networking site confirmed the action Tuesday [8/14/2018], stating the Infowars host has been placed in "read-only mode."

Twitter Suspends Gavin McInnes For Violating 'Violent Extremist' Policy; McInnes Responds.  The rationale for suspending the accounts, Twitter suggested in a statement, is that McInnes and his Proud Boys are a "violent extremist group."  "We can confirm that these accounts have been suspended from Twitter and Periscope for violating our policy prohibiting violent extremist groups," a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed in a statement.  In response to the suspension, McInnes, who also co-founded Vice magazine, warned that Twitter's actions against him were just part of a larger attempt to crack down on conservative voices and prevent President Trump from getting reelected.

Jeong And Owens Prove Twitter Censorship Weighs More Heavily On Conservatives.  When The New York Times named Sarah Jeong to its editorial board despite a history of racist statements on Twitter (a history vaster than originally reported), non-leftists observed that similar comments directed against any group other than whites would be unacceptable in polite society.  Turning Points USA communications director Candace Owens decided to prove the point, and Twitter obliged her.  Owens tweeted comments Saturday worded identically to those made by Jeong, but she substituted "Jewish people" and "Black people" for white people, and she expressly noted that the comments mimicked Jeong.  Twitter promptly suspended her account, then restored it after an online backlash and an internal review.

Twitter CEO on decision not to ban Alex Jones: 'He hasn't violated our rules'.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Tuesday [8/7/2018] explained the site's decision not to suspend conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, breaking with several other top tech companies.  In recent days, Jones and his website, InfoWars, have been banned or otherwise punished by YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Facebook and others.  In a series of tweets, Dorsey said that Jones had not violated Twitter rules.

Twitter is run by Democratic donors and activists.  After Twitter was caught last month "shadow-banning" Republicans, while giving Democrats unrestricted voice, the social-media giant insisted it has no political agenda.  But records of its political contributions show board members, top executives and major shareholders have all given overwhelmingly to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while snubbing Republicans and Donald Trump.  Federal records reveal 80 percent of Twitter's corporate PAC contributions in the 2018 election cycle have gone to Democratic candidates, none of whom are moderates.  Liberal Democrats also got top dollar in the 2016 race.  The lobbying records I reviewed, moreover, show Twitter has sought to influence Congress and federal agencies on behalf of Democratic causes and against President Trump's policies.

Twitter's Statement About How They Don't Shadow Ban Kinda Sounds Like They Shadow Ban.  While others are distracted by recent news that the U.S. economy grew by 4.1% this quarter, or that Donald Trump's once-loyal lawyer now claims, without evidence, that the then-presidential candidate was aware his son was meeting with Russians for dirt on Hillary Clinton (which Trump continues to deny), or that Russian hackers appear to have targeted the first candidate in the 2018 cycle, it's easy to miss the most important question of the day:  Is Twitter being unfair to conservatives?  VICE News first noticed that several prominent Republicans. such as RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and congressmen like Matt Gaetz and Mark Meadows, were not appearing in Twitter's search box even when their full names were typed out.  That effectively lumped in Republican politicians with figures like far-right provocateurs Richard Spencer, Laura Loomer, and Mike Cernovich.  By contrast, none of their Democratic counterparts were affected.  After the story went up, several conservative journalists noticed their accounts were also affected.

Candace Owens Copies Racist Tweets by Sarah Jeong but Replaces "White" with "Black" and Is Immediately Suspended!  On Saturday [8/4/2018] conservative Candace Owens copied the racist tweets by Sarah Jeong but replaced "white" with "black" and "Jewish."  She was immediately suspended!  This is the far left insanity and racism being pushed by Twitter!

Candace Owens was Suspended from Twitter — We've Got Her Top 10 Tweets of the Week — Guess Which One Got Their Attention?  Candace Owens started out her tweet by claiming she vehemently disagreed with President Trump's remark about Don Lemon being the dumbest man of television, demanding that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough of the "Morning Joe" show is the dumbest man on television.

Jim Jordan:  Social Media Giants 'Cannot Say They're an Open Platform' and Restrict Free Speech.  House Freedom Caucus co-founder Jim Jordan (R-OH) told Breitbart News Daily in an exclusive interview on Friday that social media giants "cannot say they're an open platform" and then restrict free speech.  Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow asked Jordan about the rampant censorship on social media, particularly on Twitter.  Breitbart News reported that Twitter was engaging in shadow banning, a method by which Twitter can limit the reach of a Twitter account, including stopping a user's followers from seeing tweets from their account.  This practice has reportedly disproportionately affected conservatives on the platform.

Twitter To Conservatives:  DROP DEAD!.  Just last week Twitter got caught shadow banning prominent Republicans including party chair Ronna McDaniel, according to an article published by Vice News.  Rather than showing contrition, Twitter has decided to double down publicly displaying their hatred of Republicans and conservatives.  In other words, they are telling them to Drop Dead!  Twitter has chosen a group mostly comprised of Trump haters to study "how communities form around political discussions on Twitter, and the challenges that may arise as those discussions develop. [...] As reported by Fox News, at least four of the six members of the new Twitter team has a history of being anti-Trump.

Facebook Blocks Beautiful and Moving Pro-Life Ad:  Says It Violates Rules.  Chris McDonough is a Republican candidate for St. Charles County Circuit Judge, Division 4 in Missouri.  On Sunday [7/29/2018] Chris posted this beautiful and hopeful story on his McDonough for Judge Facebook page. [...] But Facebook would not approve the pro-life ad.  It violated the rules.

Kenya believe it?
Thousands of Kenyans Leave Twitter for Gab After Popular Blogger Banned.  Thousands of Kenyan Twitter users have left the website for the free speech social media platform Gab following the suspension of a popular Kenyan blogger.  Following the suspension of influential blogger Cyprian Nyakundi, over 5,000 Kenyan Twitter users have left the platform, migrating to the free-speech social media platform Gab.

Consequences for "Shadow-Banning" Conservatives.  Last week, Vice News reported Twitter was allegedly "Shadow-Banning" prominent conservatives by making it harder to search for them on their platform.  Twitter offers an auto-populated drop-down search box which makes it easy to lookup user accounts, however certain conservatives accounts were not appearing in these search results.  Thus, the term "Shadow-Ban" became known as when a social media company bans a user account without the user ever knowing.  The Twitter account of Rep. Devin Nunes (R) was subject to this "Shadow-Ban" and he is now looking into possible legal action against the social media giant for the decrease in visibility of his account as well as many other conservatives that were banned[.]

Twitter Suspends Conservative Commentator Over Her Comments About Extreme Muslims, Transgender Troops.  Kathleen McKinley, a conservative blogger and political commentator for a local Fox station in Houston, was surprised Friday [7/27/2018] to find an email from Twitter announcing her account had been suspended.  Twitter listed two tweets that it claimed violated rules against "hateful conduct," emails that McKinley shared with The Daily Caller News Foundation show.

Twitter's Censorship Problem Looks Like It's Here To Stay.  The company faced a sharp backlash last week after a Vice News investigation revealed that Twitter was hiding several prominent Republicans from its search bar.  Those affected included four House Republicans:  Rep. Devin Nunes of California, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina.  All four are members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.  Democrats weren't affected in the same way, Vice found.  Nunes is looking at taking legal steps against Twitter, he said in a Fox News interview on Sunday [7/29/2018].

Media Blackout on Conservative Voices now in Effect for Midterms.  The gig is up on mainstream and social media.  It's not about algorithms, not about Facebook's sanctimonious 'Community Standards'.  It's not even about both Facebook and Twitter suddenly nosediving at the same time on the stock market.  It's about the MSM and social media working in sync with the Democrats to regain power in Midterm elections by keeping the masses from ever getting anywhere close to the truth.  Celebrating the downward spiral of Facebook and Twitter is a perfect diversion to keep people from knowing they can no longer find the truth on the 'Net.  Even if social media giants are losing billions, they'll still be around for Midterms and more than likely straight through the 2020 presidential race.

Twitter Algorithm Buried Republicans For Something Totally Out Of Their Control.  Several Republican congressmen's Twitter accounts were suppressed this week because users that Twitter is actively trying to suppress engaged with the congressmen's handles, two top Twitter executives said in a Thursday evening blog post.  Twitter executives Vijaya Gadde and Kayvon Beykpour conceded in a Thursday evening blog post that Twitter's algorithm had limited the Republican congressmen's visibility on the site because it linked them to what the company calls "bad-faith actors."  Twitter, in May, began phasing in a change to its algorithm to suppress Twitter users who the company said stop short of violating Twitter's terms of service, but are still considered harmful to "healthy conversation."  The new algorithm, Twitter said, would discriminate against those "bad-faith actors" by hiding their visibility in conversations and searches.

Twitter Admits:  Your Posts Will Be Hidden if the Right Accounts Block You.  Twitter manipulates the visibility of its users based on who has chosen to block or mute them, the company admitted in a Thursday [7/26/2018] blog post — raising further questions about ideological bias in how the tech giant chooses which accounts set the standard for "conversational health."  Twitter has denied the use of shadowbanning, arguing over semantics while admitting it does hide users' posts via algorithmic parameters that the company continues to defend with virtually zero transparency.

Devin Nunes:  We Are Looking at "Legal Remedies" to Deal with Twitter Censoring Conservatives.  A recent study by the leftist website VICE News found that Twitter is censoring top pro-Trump lawmakers.  Twitter is targeting pro-Trump Republican lawmakers Matt Gaetz, Devin Nunes, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe with the same shadowbanning technique.  Twitter is also censoring prominent pro-Trump accounts including:  Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, Paul Joseph Watson, TGP's Jim Hoft, TGP's Cassandra Fairbanks, TGP's Lucian Wintrich, TGP's Cristina Laila and Laura Loomer among others.

Shadowbanning: Twitter's Revenge on Trump.  Twitter, like its Facebook cousin, now claims to have "fixed" the "error" involving the failure of prominent conservatives such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to not appear in Twitter's search box and denies it engages in the practice known as "shadow banning." [...] Yes, Virginia, shadowbanning exists as Twitter plays "trick or tweet" with conservatives.  As a shadowbanned Twitter user, I have seen my tweets suddenly become "unavailable," followers suddenly "unfollow" en masse, Twitter analytics stats suddenly flatline and set to zero, and attached photos or explanatory graphics suddenly become "unavailable".  If you are a prolific Twitter conservative, you will be accused of "automated" behavior and have your account locked or even suspended.  Once I was suspended for "aggressive following behavior" just for following all conservative accounts Twitter suggested I should follow.

Rep. Matt Gaetz Filing Federal Election Commission Complaint Against Twitter.  Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is filing a complaint against Twitter with the Federal Election Commission after it was revealed that his own account was being shadowbanned by Twitter.  Rep. Gaetz argued earlier this week that he believes that Twitter may have illegally donated to the campaigns of his opponents by prejudicing against his content and limiting his social media visibility.  An investigation from the far-left Vice Magazine found that only conservatives users were being subjected to the Twitter search limiting that impacted Gaetz.

Twitter Bans Prominent Pro-Trump Activists as It Fights Censorship Allegations.  Twitter banned the account of a pro-Trump grassroots campaign with 15 state field directors along with another prominent Trump supporter, failing to reinstate the accounts on the same day that the company came under fire from the president himself for discrimination against conservatives.

Tom Fitton:  Twitter Shadow-Banned My Account After President Trump Tweeted About Me.  Twitter is desperately trying to do damage control after they were caught red-handed shadow-banning Trump supporters and Republican lawmakers.  President of Judicial Watch Tom Fitton said this week he was shadow-banned by Twitter after President Trump tweeted about him.  He said the shadow-ban appears to be lifted after publicly complaining about it.

Twitter [is] 'Shadow Banning' Prominent Republicans.  Algorithms employed by Twitter to limit the reach of hateful content are preventing the accounts of prominent Republicans, such as RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, from appearing in search results.  The phenomenon known as "shadow banning" has affected several conservative Republican lawmakers, including Representatives Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz, as well as Donald Trump Jr.'s spokesman Andrew Surabian.  It has not extended to their counterparts on the left, whose accounts continue to auto-populate in Twitter search results.  When contacted for comment, a Twitter spokesman told Vice that the shadow bans were the result of algorithms that analyze "account behavior" in order to reduce the visibility of accounts that routinely spew hateful and bigoted content.  The stated goal of the shadow-banning algorithms, according to a May 15 blog post, is to elevate the visibility of accounts that are "contributing to the healthy conversation" in searches and conversation.

How 'Social Media' Became 'Anti-Social Media': Twitter's And Facebook's Reckoning.  Twitter might soon have the government breathing down its neck for "shadow-banning" conservatives, while Facebook's market value has plunged more than $130 billion in just two days as the once-dominant social media site's growth goes flat amid charges of bias.  Is this the beginning of the end of the social media boom?

How Facebook Went So Wrong So Fast.  What happened?  That's what many of Facebook Inc.'s investors — and I — have spent the last 18 hours wondering.  On Wednesday, the company posted disappointing figures for second-quarter revenue, user growth and profits.  Executives also warned that Facebook's rapid rate of revenue growth would become relatively pedestrian the rest of this year and that a surge of spending would drastically drag down profit margins for the next several years.  During a conference call with stock analysts, nearly every word out of executives' mouths was more alarming than the last.

Trump warns Twitter it will be investigated for 'shadow banning' conservatives.  Donald Trump entered a contentious battle over online censorship on Thursday, blasting privately-owned Twitter for allegedly depressing the exposure of messages from its conservaitve users.  'Twitter "SHADOW BANNING" prominent Republicans.  Not good' the president boomed, ironically on his globally unmissable Twitter account.  'We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once!  Many complaints.'  It's unclear what the administration could do to challenge Twitter for sorting content and delivering it selectively to users based on a computer algorithm.

Twitter Suspends Jim Treacher.  In another suspension for Tweeting While Conservative, Twitter has suspended Jim Treacher's account.

The Government is Your Mother, and Mother Knows Best.  Some of my readers may already know that I've been banned from Twitter.  You may not know the reason, however.  Some folks were arguing that the word "retarded" should be banned from Twitter discourse.  Naturally, I replied that this was retarded.  Twitter has apparently sided with those demanding censorship, so let it be known that the social media platform has banned use of this word.  Using it results in account suspension.

Is Twitter censoring the #WalkAway hashtag?  Using the #WalkAway hashtag, former democrats are tweeting about their decision to leave their party.  Brandon Straka of Unsilent Minority started the movement with a powerful video that is blowing up Twitter.  Yet since it began, #WalkAway (and a similar hashtag, #DemExit) have not trended, despite their immense popularity.  People on Twitter are calling out the social media giant for censoring the hashtag.

California Judge:  Twitter Can Be Sued For Falsely Advertising They Allow Free Speech.  A California judge has ruled that social media giant Twitter can be sued for falsely advertising free speech.  The judge said that Twitter's policy of banning users "at any time, for any reason or for no reason" may constitute an "unconscionable contract" for a company which advertises free speech.  The judge rejected Twitter's motion to dismiss the lawsuit from Jared Taylor, who was banned by the platform in December last year, according to Breitbart.  Taylor, a self-described "white activist" may proceed with his lawsuit against Twitter because the social media company falsely advertises free speech, yet bans users for "any or no reason."

Judge Rules In Favor Of Right-Winger Suing Twitter For Banning His Account.  On Thursday [6/14/2018], a California superior court judge ruled in favor of "white advocate" Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, who is suing Twitter for banning his account over his political views.

Twitter to Face Claims by 'White Advocate' Over Banned Accounts.  Twitter Inc. lost its bid to dismiss a lawsuit by a "white advocate" who was banned from the site in a challenge to the company's ability to exclude users it deems objectionable.  California Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn in San Francisco rejected Jared Taylor's claims that Twitter violated his free speech rights and discriminated against him when it permanently suspended his accounts in December.

The Editor says...
Censorship is bad, but Twitter is not a public utility.  One has the right to free speech, but one does not have the right to use someone else's communications medium.

Facebook, Amazon, Google And Twitter All Work With Left-Wing SPLC.  Four of the world's biggest tech platforms have working partnerships with a left-wing nonprofit that has a track record of inaccuracies and routinely labels conservative organizations as "hate groups."  Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter all work with or consult the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in policing their platforms for "hate speech" or "hate groups," a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.  The SPLC is on a list of "external experts and organizations" that Facebook works with "to inform our hate speech policies," Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja told TheDCNF in an interview.

Twitter Has A New Way To [Torment] Conservatives.  Twitter seems to have found a new way to throttle certain users' accounts, as one prominent conservative writer and comedian recently found himself in the crosshairs of this insidious tactic.  Stephen Kruiser, a longtime stand-up comic and contributor at conservative outlets including PJ Media and American Spectator, was an early adopter of Twitter and has spent nearly a decade building up an impressive following of over 200,000 people.  For those of us who work in the media and entertainment industries, Twitter is not just a frivolous distraction and a way to follow news trends; it's an invaluable promotional tool.

Twitter Is Going To Limit The Visibility Of Tweets From People Behaving Badly.  On Tuesday, Twitter announced a massive change to the way its conversations will work, evaluating not just the content of individual tweets, but the way users behave more broadly on the service.  Twitter will now use thousands of behavioral signals when filtering search, replies, and algorithmic recommendations.  If it believes you are trying to game its system, or simply acting like a jerk, it will push your tweets lower down.  It's the biggest update so far in the company's push to create healthier conversations, an initiative announced by its CEO Jack Dorsey in March.  Among the signals Twitter will use:  whether you tweet at large numbers of accounts you don't follow, how often you're blocked by people you interact with, whether you created many accounts from a single IP address, and whether your account is closely related to others that have violated its terms of service.

Twitter Bans Criticism of Islam.  Hamas has a Twitter account and its top tweet calls for, "intensifying efforts to resist Israeli Judaisation of Jerusalem."  (The Hamas site is protected by Cloudflare.)  Twitter doesn't have a problem with a murderous Islamic terror group slurring Jews on its service.  Here, as Front Page's Jamie Glazov found out, is what it does have a problem with. [...]

Twitter threats to kill Rep. Goodlatte reveals multiple levels of leftist hypocrisy.  A man named Michael McGowan has been arrested in Roanoke, VA and is reported by WDBJ TV to have been charged with ["]'making a threatening communication through interstate commerce' Friday [4/6/2018], according to a release sent out by the Department of Justice.["]  Under the Twitter handle of LittleMac, McGowan has been threatening Goodlatte with execution, with absolutely no removal by Twitter, despite its longstanding notoriety for banning conservatives for violating community standards.

Did Twitter's CEO Just Share a Post Calling For 'Civil War,' Wiping Out the GOP, and How We Should Be Like CA?  Well, if there were any lingering doubts about Twitter's perceived bias against conservatives, look no further than what CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted out last night.  Apparently, a "good read" is a post co-written by a Center for American Progress senior fellow that calls for "civil war," the destruction of the GOP, and the adoption of how California runs everything from sea to shining sea.  Yeah, bipartisanship is dead, so mob rule is what's needed.  Now, to be fair, the "civil war" will be won at the ballot box and demographic shifts, namely through the so-called emerging Democratic majority, but the overall theme is quite explicit:  conservative Republicans are not welcome until they reform.  In other words, until they break to the power of progressivism.

Twitter CEO Shares And Raves About Article Calling For Dem Victory In Second 'Civil War'.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey aroused controversy after labeling a Medium article "great" that claimed there's no "bipartisan way forward" in the United States and that the country is engaged in a "fundamental conflict between two worldviews that must be resolved in short order."  Dorsey shared the Medium article on his personal Twitter account Thursday night [4/5/2018], with the accompanying acclaim that it was a "great read."

Why is Twitter getting away with shadowbanning Ted Cruz?  Has Ted Cruz been shadowbanned by Twitter? [...] Ace draws his conclusion from a piece by Jim Geraghty, here, which describes how Ted Cruz, with 3 million Twitter followers, gets only a couple hundred retweets any time he says something there, while left-wing senator Kamala Harris, who has half his followers, gets thousands and thousands of retweets.

Twitter refuses to comment on Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic tweets.  Twitter has refused to comment on anti-Semitic tweets from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, including one where he writes "the Jews have control over those agencies [FBI] of government."  When reached for a response by Fox News, a Twitter spokesman said the company does not comment on individual accounts.  The spokesman pointed Fox News to the company's help center, where it details its enforcement options and its approach to enforcement philosophy and policy development.

Twitter is Censoring Donald Trump Jr.'s Twitter Feed — On a Drudge Report Tweet on Maxine Waters.  Tech Giants Google, Twitter and Facebook are currently purging conservative content from Facebook and YouTube — They are hiding conservative stories on Google — They are shadow-banning conservative news on all social media.

Twitter suspends user for calling Maxine Waters 'crazy old lying lunatic in a bad wig'.  Bastion of free speech, Twitter is not.  Maxine Waters has been accusing critics of being Russian bots, and apparently @TrueJackDaniel didn't appreciate it.

Important free speech case filed against Twitter.  [I]t all started when Twitter banned Jared Taylor and American Renaissance from its platform.  Breitbart has a long report on the case.  I think Taylor has a good case, but you know how our court system has become (too often these days) the place where Leftwing ideology has found its home and Constitutional protections are lost, so I won't dare to predict how this could turn out.

Free Speech' Suit Aims to End Twitter's Political Censorship.  A group of free-speech lawyers filed the most serious legal challenge yet to Twitter's censorship policies Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court, seeking a ruling preventing Twitter from banning users purely on the basis of their views and political associations.

Undercover Video Reveals How Twitter Silences Conservatives.  If it's not bad enough that Facebook is now picking and choosing which news you see in your newsfeed, the most recent undercover video from James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has revealed exactly how Twitter actively silences conservative users.  Last month, Project Veritas released an undercover video in which Twitter Senior Network Security Engineer Clay Haynes says that Twitter is "more than happy to help the Department of Justice with their little [President Donald Trump] investigation."  They followed up that video with another video featuring eight current and former Twitter employees, who reveal that Twitter silences conservatives through a technique called "shadow banning."

Twitter's army of peeping Toms.  [James] O'Keefe's latest video reveals that Twitter — according to its own employees — is paying "hundreds of people" to examine "private" messages sent by Twitter users to one another.  The nine-and-a-half-minute video ought to be enough to convince anyone to avoid using Twitter for any messages that might cause embarrassment to the sender.  The blackmail potential revealed is stunning, as is the sheer creepiness of the entire effort.

Tech Totalitarians.  Leftists are apparently so fearful of competing in the arena of ideas, they are literally eliminating those competing ideas — and often, the people who espouse them — at the social websites more and more Americans use to communicate with each other, or get their "news."  And these very same corporate entities, replete with people best described as fascist-minded tech nerds, are also determined to eliminate privacy.  We begin with Project Veritas' undercover investigation revealing that Twitter is infested with techies willing to "ban a way of talking," as engineer Steven Pierre puts it.  How?  Former Twitter Software Engineer Abhinov Vadrevu reveals the company uses a technique called "shadow banning."

Twitter Leaks:  Employees Describe Extreme Social Justice Warrior Climate at Tech Giant.  Twitter has sprung a leak.  In several exclusive interviews with Breitbart, former employees of the company reveal a company dependent on celebrities, hostile to free speech, and silently fuming at President Trump's continued dominance on the platform.  It corroborates the recent Project Veritas exposé of a platform that is hopelessly biased and committed to censoring non-progressive voices.  Our first source, who, like the others, wishes to remain anonymous, described how the company rapidly abandoned its commitment to free speech after former CEO Dick Costolo was replaced by Jack Dorsey, who the source described as "the definition of a social justice warrior."  The majority of Twitter's management, says the source, believes the leftist idea that "hate speech is violence."  They "absolutely" believe in the idea that "abuse scares people off the platform," and that certain types of speech "silence" other speech.

Undercover Videos Expose Twitter's Dirty Secrets.  Shadowbanning is the censorship that social media companies do in the shadows.  It's cowardly and dishonest.  And it's how the big firms get away with covertly censoring conservatives.  "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," Abhinav Vadrevu, a former Twitter employee, explains in Project Veritas' undercover investigation of the company.  "They just think that no one engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it."  Shadowbanning is the perfect metaphor for the big lie of social media.  The big companies claim to empower you while they actually take away your voice.  And they do it without you realizing it.

Project Veritas Bombshell:  Twitter Engineers Explain How They 'Shadow Ban' Conservatives.  No, you weren't being paranoid.  Everything you ever suspected about Twitter censoring right-wing opinions through "shadow bans" is true.  In his latest sting, conservative muckracker James O'Keefe caught eight current and former Twitter employees admitting on camera that they engage in the practice.  Twitter tries to present itself as a politically neutral media platform, but as this latest Project Veritas bombshell video confirms, it is anything but.  Abhinav Vadrevu, a former Twitter software engineer, explained how "shadow banning" works at a San Francisco restaurant on January 3, 2018.

Twitter Engineer Admits to Banning Accounts that Express Interest in God, Guns, and America.  Twitter direct messaging engineer Pranay Singh admitted to mass-banning accounts that express interest in God, guns, and America, during a Project Veritas investigation.  "Just go to a random [Trump] tweet and just look at the followers.  They'll all be like, guns, God, 'Merica, and with the American flag and the cross," declared Singh, who was secretly recorded by Project Veritas reporters.  "Like, who says that?  Who talks like that?  It's for sure a bot."

Twitter Security Engineer Says Company 'More Than Happy' to Give DOJ Trump's DMs.  Big corporations like Twitter and Google wield enormous power over those they disagree with, and in the age of Trump, it's only gotten worse.  As Fox News host Tucker Carlson declared on his show last night, "the federal government is no longer the main threat to your privacy and to your freedoms.  Big corporations are the main threat to your freedom and your privacy."  Carlson pointed out that "the government doesn't own your private emails, Google does."  A new Project Veritas undercover investigation seems to confirm Carlson's point as it regards Twitter to an alarming degree.  The social media platform is unfriendly to conservatives in general but positively hostile to President Donald Trump.  And if one of their senior employees is to be believed, they may be voluntarily violating his privacy to provide his direct messages to the Department of Justice.

Charles C. Johnson Sues Twitter In Landmark Free Speech Case.  GotNews Editor-in-Chief Charles C. Johnson filed a landmark free speech lawsuit against Twitter in California State Superior Court today [1/8/2018].  The lawsuit documents the social media giant's unlawful censorship of Johnson — and the damages it caused Johnson — on several fronts.  Johnson, who is represented by Robert E. Barnes of Barnes Law, details various causes of action demonstrating how Twitter's actions violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act as well as the California and United States constitutions.

Climate Skeptic Censorship by Google, Twitter, and Microsoft LinkedIn.  Twitter has behaved the worst.  If it doesn't like one tweet in a paid promotion, it halts all promotions by the account.  This happened to me twice, and I stopped trying after that.  Twitter bans tweets with "inaccurate content."  Twitter doesn't even bother to phrase it as "content that we consider inaccurate."  It's as if Twitter's management considers itself an omniscient and omnipotent divine power.

How Twitter protects Planned Parenthood from the truth.  "Offensive."  "Inappropriate."  Even "fake news."  Increasingly, media outlets and pro-choice politicians are labeling pro-life groups with these derogatory terms and openly calling on social media outlets to censor pro-life voices, especially those with increasingly large online followings.  They cite how "dangerous" it is that our message is reaching millions of people each day.  This past summer, for example, the Washington Examiner reported that social media giant Twitter prevented Live Action from advertising to build our audience while allowing abortion groups like Planned Parenthood and others free rein to reach out to virtually anyone.  Twitter defended its actions, calling our content "inflammatory."  But what did it deem so offensive?  A picture of a child developing in the womb and ultrasound images like the ones expectant parents hang on refrigerators.

Twitter's purge of far-right accounts sparks backlash, praise and confusion.  The rules that took effect Monday [12/18/2017] broaden the tech firm's hateful conduct policy to permanently suspend any account that displays "violent threats, multiple slurs, epithets, racist or sexist tropes, incites fear or reduces someone to less than human."  The policy also targets groups or individuals that promote violence on and off the platform.  Thus far, suspended accounts include white nationalists like Jared Taylor and his publication American Renaissance, Britain First's Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, a European white supremacist group known as Generation Identity, the American Nazi Party and the New Black Panther Party.

FCC Chairman Blasts Twitter for Censoring Tweets from Pro-Life Groups.  The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has excoriated the social media platform Twitter for censoring pro-life posts and other social conservative viewpoints.  FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says that Twitter is employing a "double standard" in blocking conservative content while leaving liberal messaging untouched.

Twitter Admits It Doesn't Understand Its Own Policies, After Suspending PJ Media Terror Expert.  After President Donald Trump retweeted false videos about radical Islamic terrorism last week, Twitter changed its rationale for allowing the tweets to remain up.  In explaining the new reason, Twitter's CEO admitted that the social media platform had misinterpreted its own policies.  This was a crucial admission, following the nearly week-long suspension of PJ Media D.C. editor Bridget Johnson, an award-winning journalist and terror expert, with no explanation.

Who's Really Censoring the Web?  As [FCC chairman Ajit] Pai suggests, the real threat to an open Internet doesn't come from your cable company but from Google/YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and others.  All these firms have aggressively censored.  For example, Google recently kicked would-be Twitter competitor Gab out of its app store, not for anything Gab did but for what it refused to do — censor content.  Twitter is famous for censoring, as Pai observes.  "I love Twitter, and I use it all the time," he said.  "But let's not kid ourselves; when it comes to an open Internet, Twitter is part of the problem.  The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate."

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Calls Out Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Silicon Valley for Censorship and Internet Content Manipulation.  The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, fired a direct shot across the bow of the technocrats who control social media platforms today [11/28/2017].  Chairman Pai righteously called out Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other platform control agents for being ideologically biased, and using their platforms to target their ideological opposition.  Defending his plan to roll back Obama's one-sided internet rules, the Chairman outlined how he intended to ensure a free, fair and open internet.

Twitter allowing BuzzFeed to dictate which accounts are 'propaganda' accounts.  It's rare that two corporations cooperate on anything, much less the politically charged topic of "propaganda."  But Twitter has apparently given the website BuzzFeed the power to identify suspected "propaganda" accounts on the social media giant that Twitter can then suspend.  I frankly don't care if every one of those accounts is part of a Russian propaganda plot.  That's not the issue.  The issue is two liberal companies cooperating to interfere with the free flow of information.

11-minute Trump Twitter outage prompts company investigation.  President Trump blamed his 11-minute Twitter account outage on Thursday [11/2/2017] on a "rogue employee."  "My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee.  I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact," Trump tweeted early Friday morning.  Twitter launched an internal investigation Thursday after a "customer support" employee, reportedly working his or her last day with the company, briefly deactivated the highly viewed account of the president.

Twitter: Employee 'inadvertently' deactivated Trump's account.  Twitter attributed a brief disappearance of President Trump's personal Twitter account on Thursday night to "human error" on the part of one of its employees.  "Earlier today @realdonaldtrump's account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee," Twitter said in a statement posted to the platform.  "The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored.  We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again," Twitter added.

Roger Stone Says He Will Sue Twitter Over Account Suspension.  Longtime Trump associate Roger Stone Jr. said he will sue Twitter in response to the company banning him from the platform.  "I have retained one of the best telecommunications lawyers in the country and will be bringing a legal action against Twitter over the suspension of my account," he told TheWrap.  "The battle for free speech has just begun."  Stone would not publicly name the attorney until he signed a retainer agreement, which he said he expected to do Monday [10/30/2017].

Twitter Bans Two Kremlin-Backed News Outlets From Advertising.  Twitter announced on Thursday [10/26/2017] that it would ban RT and Sputnik, the two Kremlin-backed international news outlets, from advertising on its platform, intensifying the battle over Russian propaganda on social media and prompting an immediate threat of retaliation from the Russian Foreign Ministry.  The decision marks one of the most aggressive moves by an American social media company against the outlets, which United States intelligence officials have linked to a wide-ranging Kremlin effort, both covert and overt, to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.  Twitter's ban comes as United States authorities are pressuring RT, formerly known as Russia Today, to register as a foreign agent under a World War II-era law intended to curtail Nazi propaganda.

Twitter Suspends Rose McGowan's Account.  Rose McGowan had a hold placed on her Twitter account Wednesday night [10/11/2017], an act that quickly sparked outrage among the many users who have been following her posts ever since news first broke of the allegations against Harvey Weinstein.  The actress, who has emerged as a Hollywood voice after finding herself thrust into the center of the developing story of sexual misconduct, harassment and assault allegations against the movie mogul, took to her Instagram and Facebook accounts to relay the news of her temporary suspension, [...]

Former Muslim, Anti-FGM Campaigner Shazia Hobbs Suspended from Twitter.  A Muslim apostate and high profile campaigner against both female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage has been suspended from micro-blogging platform Twitter, amidst a wider crackdown on right wing voices on the website, and other online platforms like Facebook.  Twitter users noticed the prolific writer and campaigner had vanished from the platform Friday [9/1/2017].

Arrest Of Twitter User Could Have Serious Implications For The World Of Internet Trolling.  John Rivello was arrested Friday months after he allegedly sent a tweet that caused journalist Kurt Eichenwald to suffer a seizure.  This arrest appears to be the first of its kind and presents serious implications for the world of internet trolling, which seeks to annoy fellow users.  Eichenwald's attorney Steven Lieberman and cyber jurisprudence expert Peter Stephenson told The Daily Caller Sunday they are unaware of any similar cases where an internet message or posting causing bodily harm and resulted in an arrest.

Twitter Removing Core Functions, Banning Alt-Right to Create Liberal Safe Space.  Twitter, Reddit and others are going on banning sprees to censor "alt-right" voices.

Twitter Suspended My Account When I Dared To Defend Myself Against A Liberal Reporter's Smear Campaign.  During the election I launched #TrumpCup, a Twitter movement encouraging my followers to write "Trump" on the name of their cups at Starbucks.  The idea was for Trump supporters to stand in solidarity with their candidate against a massive corporation (Starbucks) that had lashed out against him.  It went viral.  For days it was Twitter's #1 trend.  It got massive coverage by all the major mainstream press outlets.  The trend came and went and then, out of the blue, it was being used to label me a white-supremacist.  Did you follow that leap of logic just then?  Me neither.

Is Twitter Throttling Trump Supporters?  [Scroll down]  Mike Keen says that Twitter carries out another form of throttling this on tweets from President Trump.  After Trump's initial Tweet, the first few moments afterwords may show top tweets from Trump supporters, but soon those disappear and all the reply tweets to Trump are negative reactions from leftists.  "Every single Tweet by President Trump has top comments that are 100% negative.  Positive replies are simply not seen.  Twitter is absolutely censoring Pro-Trump replies and Trump supporters from voicing their support of the President."

Actor James Woods quits Twitter over its recent mass censorship and "alt-right" account purge.  The Duran reported the other day on "alt-left" social media platform Twitter, declaring war on "alt-right" user accounts, in what was a massive deletion of profiles Twitter deemed "hateful".  Instead of being a neutral platform where voices and opinions were communicated, Twitter consciously decided to take sides in a wider social debate between right and left.  Politically correct behavior has consumer Twitter, and the damage being done to its bottom line will not go unnoticed by shareholders.

Actor James Woods leaves Twitter over alt-right 'censorship'.  Actor and producer James Woods has decided to quit Twitter, citing censorship concerns. [...] Richard Spencer, head of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank, said in an interview his personal Twitter account and accounts for the institute and his magazine were all suspended this week without notification.

Twitter Holocaust:  SPLC Has Dozens of Alt-Right Accounts Deleted, Then Brags About It.  Twitter has entered a new phase in their war against free expression.  The same place that once claimed to represent the "free speech wing of the free speech party" has now decided to wipe out numerous alt-right accounts at the behest of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group which claims expertise when it comes to so-called hate speech (when in reality they're just a far-left advocacy group). I've long loved Twitter, and somehow I've escaped the death squads so far, but things don't look very good for the future.

Want to Really Make America Great Again?  Stop Reading the News.  Twitter isn't designed to help you get in and get out with the best information as quickly as possible — it's supposed to suck you into either a contentious world of argument and debate or an echo-chamber that reassures you everyone thinks like you do.  Facebook is supposedly one of the largest news sources in the world, and days after the election, it disavowed that the news it shared could have possibly impacted users behavior in a significant way.

Twitter Suspends Activist James O'Keefe After Posting Clinton Video.  Twitter temporarily suspended the account of conservative activist James O'Keefe around the same time he released a video of Wisconsin Democratic senatorial candidate and former Sen. Russ Feingold, saying that Hillary Clinton might use executive order on gun control if she is elected president, according to The Daily Caller[.]

Twitter Forces O'Keefe To Delete Tweet Critical Of Hillary Staffer In Order To Get Account Back.  Conservative activist James O'Keefe had to delete a tweet critical of a Hillary Clinton staffer Thursday afternoon [10/13/2016] in order to regain use of his account after it was suspended for a day.  O'Keefe's account was suspended Wednesday afternoon in the hours before a release of a new hidden camera video which exposed a Clinton ally saying she could use executive action on guns.  The Daily Caller reached out to Twitter about the suspension and a spokesman said, "We don't comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons, but you can review our policy on posting private information."

DCLeaks Website Down, Twitter Suspended After Releasing Soros Docs.  DCLeaks, a website that releases information on powerful political figures, has had part of its website taken offline after releasing a cache of documents on billionaire donor George Soros.  The @DCLeaks Twitter account has also been suspended from Twitter for reasons unknown.  The website had previously released 2,500 internal Open Society Foundation (OSF) documents in order to "shed light on one of the most influential networks operating worldwide."  OSF is one of Soros' networks of organizations.  The leaked documents had resulted in several damaging reports about the organization.  OSF had previously confirmed that the documents were legitimate.

Bias alert:  Twitter bans Breitbart bad boy, but not ISIS-linked London loudmouth.  The Twitterverse has more to fear from a gay conservative than a fire-breathing ISIS recruiter if the social media giant's treatment of a pair of prolific and provocative posters is to be squared.  Twitter banned Breitbart tech editor and openly gay conservative Milo Yiannopoulos for life last month after his followers tweeted objectionable comments targeting African-American "Ghostbusters" star Leslie Jones, but a recent case in London's Old Bailey shows Twitter took a hands-off approach to the poisonous posts of Anjem Choudary.

Twitter suspends 235,000 accounts for promoting terrorism, daily suspensions up 80% over last year.  Twitter suspended 235,000 users in the past seven months for tweets promoting or threatening terrorism, the company announced Thursday [8/18/2016].  The social media outlet has booted a total of 360,000 accounts since the middle of 2015 for violating its terrorism policies, Twitter executives said in a blog post.  The suspensions jump in the aftermath of every terrorist attack, according to the company.

And None So Deaf as They Who Will Not Hear.  Barack Obama bids fair to be remembered as the Florence Foster Jenkins of politics. Like that socialite he can't perform his job for beans.  Like that socialite his friends are covering up for him.  According to a Twitter whistleblower the social media giant's CEO ordered the employees to protect Obama from hurtful Tweets.  "According to a former senior Twitter employee, Costolo ordered employees to deploy an algorithm (which was built in-house by feeding it thousands of examples of abuse and harassing tweets) that would filter out abusive language directed at Obama.  Another source said the media partnerships team also manually censored tweets, noting that Twitter's public quality-filtering algorithms were inconsistent.  Two sources told BuzzFeed News that this decision was kept from senior company employees for fear they would object to the decision."

Tech Companies Apple, Twitter, Google, and Instagram Collude to Defeat Trump.  My dad always told me that conservative candidates have to work twice as hard as their liberal opponents to win elections because they're fighting two opponents:  the Democratic Party and the media.  The usual suspects from left-leaning major media outlets like The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN and even entertainment networks are doing everything in their power to ensure a Clinton victory.  Look no further than to Wolf Blitzer mincing around and drinking wine at the Democratic convention, celebrating Hillary's nomination.  But the propaganda skewing this election runs much deeper than just the media:  our iPhones, iPads, social media networks, Google and even video games are all in the tank for Hillary Clinton — and it's chilling.

Hillary's Celebrity Twitter Horde Could Reach 646 Million Followers.  Social media, especially Twitter, is playing a large role in the 2016 presidential election.  Though Trump has 2 million more Twitter followers than Clinton, Hollywood celebrities on Twitter have handed Clinton a major advantage.  Nineteen entertainment celebrities, who are among the 100 most-followed accounts on Twitter and collectively have more than 645.9 million followers, openly supported Clinton's bid for president.  None of Twitter's top 100 account holders are wielding their social media influence for Trump.

Twitter Shares Drop By 9% As Company Escalates War On Conservative Media.  Twitter shares have dropped by 9% after the release of its quarterly results, which have seen the company's revenue fall well below its expected targets.  The results indicated that the company expects a third quarter revenue of between $590 [million and] 610 million, well below the company's expected revenue target of $678 million.

Conservative Writer Kassy Dillon Suspended From Twitter for Repeating Leslie Jones.  Kassy Dillon, a contributor to Campus Reform and Heat Street and founder of Lone Conservative, was suspended temporarily from Twitter following Tweets made about Leslie Jones.  While Twitter has not yet returned a request for comment, the suspension appears to be related to an experiment in which Dillon repeated Jones' tweets, word for word, in an effort to expose bias.  "The only reason why I tweeted copies of what Leslie said is to show bias," Dillon told Heat Street.  "If this famous actress actress does it, it's okay, but if I do the same thing as a conservative writer, Twitter punishes me for it."

Social Media Censorship:  Legally Justifiable but Philosophically Poisonous.  This is obviously a policy that is extremely broad and in being so leaves much open to interpretation.  It was likely crafted intentionally in such a fashion so as to give Twitter's management sizable control over the content available.  Yet regardless the moment one downloads Twitter and begins using it they are entering a contract with the company that ensures your right to use it as long as you follow the rules, and if you don't the contract becomes null and void; along with your account.

Users Accuse Twitter Of Censoring WikiLeaks DNC Emails Leak.  Users have accused Twitter of censoring WikiLeaks' DNC email release after the related trending hashtag was suddenly pulled before returning to the trending list in a modified form.  "#DNCLeaks" was one of the top trending topics on Twitter this Friday with over 250,000 tweets reported to have been made under the hashtag since WikiLeaks released over 19,000 leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee.

Twitter Does Nothing As Breitbart Contributor Is Flooded With Death Threats.  Despite Twitter's insistence that its priority is tackling threats and harassment, not punishing conservatives like Milo Yiannopoulos, the social media company has ignored the calls of two conservative campus activists who have been repeatedly targeted with threats and harassment on the platform for their political views.  The tweets displayed below are only a sampling of the threats sent to conservative campus activists Ariana Rowlands and Kassy Dillon have received.  Although those responsible have been repeatedly reported to Twitter, no action has been taken.

Users Strongly Reject Censorship on Facebook, Twitter.  Political conservatives have charged in recent months that major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are censoring their points of view.  Regular users of those sites, especially those under the age of 40, strongly disagree with any attempts to close down free speech.

No Action Taken by Twitter After Rapper Calls Black Breitbart Reporter 'Coon'.  Rapper Talib Kweli and some of his more than one million social media followers repeatedly attacked Breitbart News reporter Jerome Hudson with racial epithets on Twitter, but faced no disciplinary action from the platform.

Death Threats Made Towards Republican Senators Remain on Twitter for Weeks Without Deletion.  Numerous death threats made towards Republican Senators on Twitter remained on the platform for weeks before being deleted, despite the platform's consistent record of removing "problematic" opinions within a matter of hours.  Two weeks ago, a user on Twitter threatened to shoot Senator Roy Blunt, claiming that the Missouri congressman was responsible for "allowing someone to murder my loved ones."  The poster, Kyler Schmitz from Virginia, was detained by police after it was ruled that the threat was an illegal violation of interstate communications.  However, his account was only suspended and the tweets deleted once The Hill reached out to Twitter about the threats.

Milo Yiannopolous "Permanently Banned" from Twitter for Calling a Lady Ghostbuster a "Dude".  [Scroll down]  So he got banned for "racism" or something.  How was that racism?  Apparently some of his followers did hector her with more racially edgy stuff — so is that Twitter's policy now?  [T]hat if your followers say something untoward, you get banned?  Why does it seem likely to me this is a special rule meant only for conservatives?  I should note the obvious here:  This isn't just about anti-conservative bias (though it is that, obviously).  It's also about Twitter's entire business model.

Beware of Twitter Robots Telling People How to Vote.  Voting is partially a social endeavor, in which people consider the opinions of others when making up their own minds.  Increasingly, though, they're being influenced by an inhuman force: software robots specifically designed to deceive them.  Lest democracy be undermined, humans need help in distinguishing their brethren from the bots.  Two years ago, in a report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the social networking site Twitter estimated that more than 23 million of its active user accounts were being run by "bots" — software agents or bits of code that act on their own to respond to news and world events.  They interact with real users, never revealing their true nature.

Twitter Makes it Clear to Teen:  "Thou Shall Not Criticize Ghostbusters".  There's a new development in the aftermath of the Leslie Jones meltdown.  One of the first people to be banned, even before Milo, was a 17-year-old high school girl with a deep passion for politics.

Milo Suspended Permanently by Twitter Minutes Before 'Gays For Trump' Party At RNC.  Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos has been suspended from Twitter once more just 20 minutes before his "Gays for Trump" event takes place at the Republican National Convention.  The justification for the suspension is currently unknown, although it could be as a result of Milo's run-in with Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones on the site. [...] In a comment, Milo said "With the cowardly suspension of my account, Twitter has confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and Black Lives Matter extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives."

Computer Repairman Who Threatened Biden's Electoral Prospects Goes Into Hiding.  The only person who burns for revenge more than a Democrat who just lost is a Democrat who just won.  The Dems are getting what they want, a Trump-free White House, and it makes them furious.  Now they're publicly yearning for vengeance against the computer repairman who almost cost them their victory.  And he did so by telling the truth, which they hate like poison.  Just weeks before the election, the owner of a computer repair shop near Joe Biden's home claimed to have a laptop full of incriminating evidence that Hunter Biden had abandoned 18 months ago.  The New York Post broke the story, which set off such a panic that Twitter suspended the centuries-old newspaper and blocked all links to the story.  Of course, this triggered the Streisand Effect, bringing even more attention to a story they were trying to suppress.

Twitter removes 170,000 accounts associated with Chinese misinformation campaigns.  Twitter announced Thursday [6/11/2020] that it deleted more than 170,000 accounts associated with Chinse state-linked misinformation campaigns.  The social media company published an archive of 32,242 accounts related to state-linked information operations including three attributed to China, Russia and Turkey, adding that data from the accounts was shared with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Stanford Internet Observatory.

New App Posing HUGE Threat To Twitter Sees Thousands Sign Up Almost Overnight.  Twitter has done more than its fair share to make many feel unwelcome on the platform.  Between banning and suspending conservatives for so much as glancing at a leftist the wrong way, to taking their sweet time in punishing leftists who break their terms of service in a big way, Twitter has made its bias very clear.  If you're a conservative, you're a target.  As I discussed in a video, Twitter employees even admitted to this while being filmed under-cover.

The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News.  "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it," Jonathan Swift once wrote.  It was hyperbole three centuries ago.  But it is a factual description of social media, according to an ambitious and first-of-its-kind study published Thursday [3/8/2018] in Science.  The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter's existence — some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years — and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor.  By every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter, the study finds:  Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories.

False stories travel way faster on Twitter than true ones do, study finds.  Twitter loves lies.  A new study finds that false information on the social media network travels six times faster than the truth and reaches far more people.  And you can't blame bots; it's us, say the authors of the largest study of online misinformation.  Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at more than 126,000 stories tweeted millions of times between 2006 and the end of 2016 — before Donald Trump took office but during the combative presidential campaign.  They found that "fake news" sped through Twitter "farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information," according to the study in Thursday's journal Science.

Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter.  Massive collections of fake accounts are lying dormant on Twitter, suggests research.  The largest network ties together more than 350,000 accounts and further work suggests others may be even bigger.  UK researchers accidentally uncovered the lurking networks while probing Twitter to see how people use it.  Some of the accounts have been used to fake follower numbers, send spam and boost interest in trending topics.

Exclusive: Twitter Shadowbanning 'Real and Happening Every Day' Says Inside Source.  Rumours that Twitter has begun 'shadowbanning' politically inconvenient users have been confirmed by a source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech.  His claim was corroborated by a senior editor at a major publisher.  According to the source, Twitter maintains a 'whitelist' of favoured Twitter accounts and a 'blacklist' of unfavoured accounts.  Accounts on the whitelist are prioritised in search results, even if they're not the most popular among users.  Meanwhile, accounts on the blacklist have their posts hidden from both search results and other users' timelines.

Say Hello To Twitter's Tweet Police.  Twitter yesterday [2/9/2016] announced it is forming a "Trust and Safety Council," an effort to "ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter."  The council features "safety advocates, academics, and researchers," "grassroots advocacy organizations" and "community groups," all of them emphasizing "safety" of varying degrees and types, in order to allow "everyone, everywhere to express themselves with confidence on Twitter."  This is a rather startling development, chiefly because Twitter already allows its users to either mute or block anyone who is being bothersome or threatening.

The Editor says...
This might be one reason Twitter has stopped growing.

Islam v. Free Speech: Twitter Surrenders.  Apparently, Twitter has opted to join the campaign to crack down on free expression.  And one is left to wonder whether the big Saudi bucks that have come its way are a factor in Twitter's decision-making.

Twitter Reportedly Blocking Links to Phil Robertson Petition Site.  Plenty of Phil Robertson and Duck Dynasty fans have flocked to Twitter to voice their support for the Duck Commander, but it appears that Twitter is now blocking users from posting links to the site IStandWithPhil.com.

Update:
Twitter Apologizes for 'Mistakenly' Blocking Pro-'Duck Dynasty' Site.  On Tuesday, Twitter apologized for "mistakenly" blocking the iStandWithPhil.com website, which meant users who supported the Duck Dynasty patriarch who was suspended from A&E for supposedly "anti-gay" remarks could not link to the site in their tweets.  The petition demands the reinstatement of Phil Robertson and has nearly 250,000 signatures.

Inside a Twitter Robot Factory.  One day earlier this month, Jim Vidmar bought 1,000 fake Twitter accounts for $58 from an online vendor in Pakistan.  He then programmed the accounts to "follow" the Twitter account of rapper Dave Murrell, who calls himself Fyrare and pays Mr. Vidmar to boost his standing on the social network.  Mr. Vidmar's fake accounts also rebroadcast Mr. Murrell's tweets, amplifying his Twitter voice.

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