Is Social Media Shadow Banning Conservatives?
by Shari Dovale
The headlines this week were filled with reports of “Shadow Banning” by the technology gurus in Silicon Valley. Not only are they shutting down conservative news, but they are also stopping the information flow from conservative politicians, such as your President and other elected officials.
The controversy seems to be focused on the actual definition of the term “Shadow Ban”. This is an argument that equates to Bill Clinton and his skating around the definition of the word “IS”.
Yet they go on to say “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). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.“
This tells us that, though they do not completely block a user, they are perfectly happy throttling someone back so their posts do not show. You can find the posts, but only after spending time looking for their home page. The user will not know this is happening unless they watch their numbers closely.
Facebook says “We tell our algorithms that this is probably not something we want to see distributed widely.“
Why not? It is not up to Facebook to tell me what I should be reading or watching. I am an adult, and I am perfectly capable of making these decisions for myself.
You Tube just shuts you down. Ask Alex Jones.
According to cnet.com “Instead of kicking someone off, shadow bans make a person’s post visible only to the user who created it. The idea is to protect others from harmful content while eventually prompting the shadow-banned user to voluntarily leave the forum due to a lack of engagement.“
Harmful Content? Again, let’s see how they define harmful content. Facebook calls Infowars “atrocious”, yet they never asked me if I found it atrocious. There are a lot of people in this country that like to hear what Alex Jones has to say. Whether they believe it or not is completely up to them… or should be.
In other words, the Social Media giants are playing games with you. They do not intend to stop what they are doing because they have a specific agenda. They will keep the headlines on what the definition is, so they do not have to discuss how this may violate “Free Speech” or “Free Press”.
They try to legitimize the practice by calling select sites “Fake News”. They will determine what they feel is “Fake” without your input. But what is fake news, and who defines it?
Is it Satire? Is it conspiracy? How about partisan? What about mistakes? Do you call everyone that makes a mistake a fake news site? That would include a lot of Main Stream Media (MSM) or Left-wing sites.
Sharyl Attkisson has gathered a long list of mistakes, errors, and plain bad reporting from the MSM on their coverage of President Trump. These sites include the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, CNBC, NBC, Newsweek, and many more. Why haven’t these sites been labeled as “Fake News”?
It seems the techno-experts in Silicon Valley have decided that anything that does not go along with their narrative is to be labeled as fake. And they will disseminate the information based on proven left-wing radicals like Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) or Snopes.
So, if you like satire, like the Onion, you will not be able to see it on Facebook or Google. If you like Conspiracy theories, Alex Jones might prove hard to find. And if you like real news that the MSM does not want you to see, you will have to bookmark your favorite sites, like Redoubt News.
If the MSM thinks that it is all perfectly normal, and the technology leaders from Silicon Valley are so sure this is appropriate, why don’t they prove it by practicing these algorithms on CNN, NBC, Washington Post, Hillary Clinton, or the New York Times? Let them try it on a few Left-Wing Radicals and see how well it works out for them.
Be sure to keep sharing your favorite sites and articles, as that is the only way to combat this agenda-driven takeover of your mind.
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