Letter to Editor: Trump exposes Twitter

400 words.

Context: My Congressman (11th district of NC) is Mark Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus. According to his tech staffer, the Vice piece in my sources below is the best summary of what actually happened to the shadowbanned GOP officials.


Trump exposes Twitter
NEWS-TOPIC
August 12, 2018
http://www.newstopicnews.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/trump-exposes-twitter/article_ca90a550-9caa-11e8-b4c2-1310d354b055.html


President Trump: “Twitter ‘SHADOW BANNING’ prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints” (tweet, July 26).

Twitter is an invaluable messaging service that lets individuals send brief, 240-character messages to “followers.” I “follow” several experts on immigration, diversity and IQ. Their tweets appear on my “twitter feed,” a continuous vertical stream.

Trump learned Twitter had “shadowbanned” prominent GOP figures, including Mark Meadows. A shadowbanned person’s profile no longer appears in Twitter’s auto-complete drop-down search box, making their tweets harder to find. Twitter issued a non-denial denial:

“We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile).”

Translation: You can see the tweets of disfavored people. You just have to work harder to find them. Twitter has since restored search normalcy for Meadows, etc.

Why care? Traditional communications-education industries are left-wing, inhospitable to free speech. The Internet was different, neutral. Trump’s election changed things. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, is a rare tech billionaire who supports Trump. Thiel sees Big Tech today as a “sort of totalitarian place”: “I think somehow Silicon Valley shifted from being quite liberal to being a one party state. Those are two very different things.”

Big Tech’s pressure on nonconforming voices is intensifying. Here is the root cause: In 1965 America unwittingly put itself into mass immigration/multi-cultural mode. The occasion was the Hart-Celler Immigration Act. It opened immigration to the world. Fifty years later to make our evermore multi-cultural nation “work,” the speech of skeptics must be suppressed. The doubters are mainly in the majority being displaced.

During the crackdown on free speech there will be many curious incidents. Trump’s tweet about Twitter’s shadowbanning, for example, was quickly upstaged by the tweets of Sarah Jeong, newest hire for the New York Times editorial board. Ms. Jeong is a Korean-born Harvard Law graduate. Someone exposed Ms. Jeong’s long history of anti-white tweets. The Times and others on the left quickly contrived excuses for Ms. Jeong’s tweets. These rationalizations reveal much about multi-cultural America in 2018. May Ms. Jeong long serve the Times. Perfect fit.

Meanwhile, our “sort of totalitarian” tech monopolies are clamping down on dissident speech. Let’s hope Trump’s spotlight on Twitter triggers serious resistance.

Tom Shuford
Lenoir

SOURCES:

1) DONALD J. TRUMP TWEET: “Twitter ‘SHADOW BANNING’ prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints.” (Tweet, 26 Jul 2018)
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1022447980408983552

2) Twitter’s non-denial denial: “Twitter: ‘You May Have to Do More Work to Find’ People That Definitely Aren’t Shadowbanned,” Breitbart, 27 Jul 2018
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/07/27/twitter-you-may-have-to-do-more-work-to-find-people-that-definitely-arent-shadowbanned/

3) Twitter appears to have fixed “shadow ban” of prominent Republicans like the RNC chair and Trump Jr.’s spokesman
Vice
By Alex Thompson Jul 25, 2018
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43paqq/twitter-is-shadow-banning-prominent-republicans-like-the-rnc-chair-and-trump-jrs-spokesman

KEY EXCERPT:

“Twitter appears to have adjusted its platform overnight to no longer limit the visibility of some prominent Republicans in its search results, a problem that the company said was a side effect of its attempts to clean up discourse on its platform.

“On Wednesday VICE News reported that Twitter’s drop-down search section was not showing the profiles of some prominent Republicans in what amounted to a “shadow ban.” Those affected included RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, Republican Reps. Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, along with Andrew Surabian, Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesman and former Special Assistant to the President. The profiles did populate when entering a full search but not not in the more visible search menu.”

4) “Peter Thiel Says Silicon Valley A ‘Totalitarian Place’ — Slams ‘Political Correctness,’” DAILY CALLER, 03/16/2018:
http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/16/peter-thiel-silicon-valley-political-correctness/

KEY EXCERPT: “I do think there’s something different when it goes from a large majority having one way to it being almost unanimous. When people are unanimously on one side, that tells you not that they’ve all figured out the truth but that they’re in a sort of totalitarian place, that they’re in a one party state, where they’re not allowed to have dissenting views. I think somehow Silicon Valley shifted from being quite liberal to being a one party state. Those are two very different things.”

5) SCREENSHOTS OF SARAH JEONG ANTI-WHITE TWEETS:
https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1025463379799015424