After the latest Twitter Files investigation revealed that the company blacklisted prominent conservative Twitter accounts — including Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, and Libs of TikTok — the shadowbanned users quickly voiced their outrage with the social media platform.
The second batch of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” was released on Thursday through former New York Times reporter Bari Weiss, which revealed that conservatives were shadow banned under the company’s “Visibility Filtering” policy.
For example, Kirk’s Twitter account was tagged with an “NSFW View” marker and a “Do Not Amplify” tag. Bongino’s account was marked with the same NSFV tag but also added a “search blacklist” marker, according to internal documents Weiss released.
5. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.” pic.twitter.com/dOyQIVdsW2
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
The popular Libs of TikTok account was marked “NSFW View,” had a “High Profile” indicator, a “Notifications Spike” tag, and was labeled “Trends Blacklist.”
The Twitter Files shadowbanning revelation comes after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claimed the platform did not shadowban conservatives.
“we do not shadowban according to political ideology or viewpoint, or content, period,” Dorsey told Hannity in 2018.
Throwback to 2018. Jack Dorsey to Sean Hannity: “we do not shadowban according to political ideology or viewpoint” pic.twitter.com/Jlmw0ZRBsg
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 9, 2022
Hey @jack, just wanted to follow up on this pic.twitter.com/J9QZitycia
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 9, 2022
After Weiss reported on the Twitter Files, Kirk called Twitter a “digital tyranny.”
“We will never know how much damage Twitter’s censorship of my account and others’ has done to the public discourse, the marketplace of ideas, my work at TPUSA, or the 2020 Presidential election,” Kirk tweeted. “Twitter may be a private company, but this was digital tyranny, full stop.”
We will never know how much damage Twitter's censorship of my account and others' has done to the public discourse, the marketplace of ideas, my work at TPUSA, or the 2020 Presidential election. Twitter may be a private company, but this was digital tyranny, full stop.
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 9, 2022
Kirk also told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Thursday evening that Twitter treated his account with “more scrutiny and censorship than the prime minister of Iran, than Hamas, than people that do actual terroristic type damage.”
Here's my interview tonight with Tucker Carlson about being "Blacklisted" and placed on the "Do Not Amplify" list by Twitter. Thank you, Bari Weiss and Elon Musk for exposing the true extent of Twitter's censorship regime.
Let ALL the truth come out. pic.twitter.com/6jN1OzcLbN
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 9, 2022
Libs of TikTok also spoke with Carlson on Thursday and said the shadowban revelation proves that leftist ideas do not stand up to scrutiny when widely spread.
“Well, I think it’s clear that their views, when spread, they don’t stand up to scrutiny,” the creator of the Libs of TikTok account told Carlson. “And when I spread their views in their own words, they don’t want you to see it because they don’t stand up to scrutiny, and it makes them look bad. And that’s what they’re really scared of.”
.@libsoftiktok Joins Tucker Carlson To React To The Twitter Files Part Two Exposing The Level Of Suppression Used Against Her Account
"The Craziest part of this whole thing is that they admitted that I'm not even violating the policies, & they still suspended me seven times." pic.twitter.com/Ki0zRX0VOL
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) December 9, 2022
“All I can keep thinking is that I must be doing something right for them to go to these great lengths to censor me. I promise you, I will never stop,” Libs of TikTok tweeted after the reports on shadowbanning.
Bongino also spoke with Fox News’s Sean Hannity after the Twitter Files revelation and called Twitter’s shadowban practice “some Soviet-style bullshit.”
“Let me give you the big picture first. This is some Soviet-style bullshit right here. There’s the big picture right here. There’s unfiltered Dan Bongino. I’ve known this the whole time, just so you know, when it was called a conspiracy theory,” Bongino told Hannity.
Dan Bongino @dbongino reacts to having been blacklisted by Twitter:
"This is some Soviet-style bullsh*t right here." pic.twitter.com/eQrLV4jgUx
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 9, 2022
Bongino continued:
And now I find out I’m on a Not Safe For Work shadow ban list on Twitter because I’ve committed the thought crime of being a conservative. Please audience look me in the face and tell me now, all you media clowns and goons and nuts who told me I was the crazy conspiracy, theorists tell me we live in a free country where three of the largest social media platforms, that are the new public space we can all talk in, when an opinion guy like me cannot speak on these platforms or is restricted from doing so, or banned in the case of YouTube, shadowbanned In the case of Twitter, tell me again how we live in a free country?
Weiss announced that Matt Taibbi, the journalist who reported on the first batch of Twitter documents, will report on the next installment of the Twitter Files.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
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