UNDERCOVER VIDEO: Twitter Engineers To “Ban a Way of Talking” Through “Shadow Banning,”

www.projectveritas.com ^ | 01/11/2018 | Staff

[Red Badger]

Steven Pierre, Twitter engineer explains “shadow banning,” says “it’s going to ban a way of talking” Former Twitter software engineer Abhinav Vadrevu on shadow banning: “they just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it” Former Twitter Content Review Agent Mo Norai explains banning process: “if it was a pro-Trump thing and I’m anti-Trump… I banned his whole account… it’s at your discretion” When asked if banning process was an unwritten rule, Norai adds “Very. A lot of unwritten rules… It was never written it was more said” Olinda Hassan, Policy Manager for Twitter Trust and Safety explains, “we’re trying to ‘down rank’… shitty people to not show up,” “we’re working [that] on right now” “Shadow banning” to be used to stealthily target political views- former Twitter engineer says, “that’s a thing” Censorship of certain political viewpoints to be automated via “machine learning” according to Twitter software engineer Parnay Singh, Twitter Direct Messaging Engineer, on machine learning algorithms, “you have like five thousand keywords to describe a redneck…” “the majority of it are for Republicans”

(San Francisco) In the latest undercover Project Veritas video investigation, current and former Twitter employees are on camera explaining steps the social media giant is taking to censor political content that they don’t like.

This video release follows the first undercover Twitter exposé Project Veritas released on January 10th which showed Twitter Senior Network Security Engineer Clay Haynes saying that Twitter is “more than happy to help the Department of Justice with their little [President Donald Trump] investigation.” Twitter responded to the video with a statement shortly after that release, stating “the individual depicted in this video was speaking in a personal capacity and does not represent of speak for Twitter.” The video released by Project Veritas today features eight employees, and a Project Veritas spokesman said there are more videos featuring additional employees coming.

On January 3rd 2018 at a San Francisco restaurant, Abhinov Vadrevu, a former Twitter Software Engineer explains a strategy, called “shadow banning,” that to his knowledge, Twitter has employed:

“One strategy is to shadow ban so you have ultimate control. 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. So they just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it.”

Twitter is in the process of automating censorship and banning, says Twitter Software Engineer Steven Pierre on December 8th of 2017:

“Every single conversation is going to be rated by a machine and the machine is going to say whether or not it’s a positive thing or a negative thing. And whether it’s positive or negative doesn’t (inaudible), it’s more like if somebody’s being aggressive or not. Right? Somebody’s just cursing at somebody, whatever, whatever. They may have point, but it will just vanish… It’s not going to ban the mindset, it’s going to ban, like, a way of talking.”

Olinda Hassan, a Policy Manager for Twitter’s Trust and Safety team explains on December 15th, 2017 at a Twitter holiday party that the development of a system of “down ranking” “shitty people” is in the works:

“Yeah. That’s something we’re working on. It’s something we’re working on. We’re trying to get the shitty people to not show up. It’s a product thing we’re working on right now.”

Former Twitter Engineer Conrado Miranda confirms on December 1st, 2017 that tools are already in place to censor pro-Trump or conservative content on the platform. When asked whether or not these capabilities exist, Miranda says, “that’s a thing.”

In a conversation with former Twitter Content Review Agent Mo Norai on May 16th, 2017, we learned that in the past Twitter would manually ban or censor Pro-Trump or conservative content. When asked about the process of banning accounts, Norai said, “On stuff like that it was more discretion on your view point, I guess how you felt about a particular matter…”

When asked to clarify if that process was automated Norai confirmed that it was not:

“Yeah, if they said this is: ‘Pro-Trump’ I don’t want it because it offends me, this, that. And I say I banned this whole thing, and it goes over here and they are like, ‘Oh you know what? I don’t like it too. You know what? Mo’s right, let’s go, let’s carry on, what’s next?'”

Norai also revealed that more left-leaning content would go through their selection process with less political scrutiny, “It would come through checked and then I would be like ‘Oh you know what? This is okay. Let it go.’”

Norai explains that this selection process wasn’t exactly Twitter policy, but rather they were following unwritten rules from the top:

“A lot of unwritten rules, and being that we’re in San Francisco, we’re in California, very liberal, a very blue state. You had to be… I mean as a company you can’t really say it because it would make you look bad, but behind closed doors are lots of rules.”

“There was, I would say… Twitter was probably about 90% Anti-Trump, maybe 99% Anti-Trump.”

At a San Francisco bar on January 5th, Pranay Singh details how the shadow-banning algorithms targeting right-leaning are engineered:

“Yeah you look for Trump, or America, and you have like five thousand keywords to describe a redneck. Then you look and parse all the messages, all the pictures, and then you look for stuff that matches that stuff.”

When asked if the majority of the algorithms are targeted against conservative or liberal users of Twitter, Singh said, “I would say majority of it are for Republicans.”

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe believes the power over speech Silicon Valley tech giants has is unprecedented and dangerous:

“What kind of world do we live in where computer engineers are the gatekeepers of the ‘way people talk?’ This investigation brings forth information of profound public importance that educates people about how free they really are to express their views online.”

Project Veritas plans to release more undercover video from within Twitter in the coming days.

Mr. O’Keefe has just completed a book about this series entitled “AMERICAN PRAVDA: My fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News.” The book will be released by St. Martin’s Press on January 16, 2018.

[PMAS]

Gotcha, but they may have more legal problems because of shareholders and the SEC with their practices

[Elsie]

Talk to the hand...

https://youtu.be/mOC1ucrVc44

[Red Badger]

Advertisers pay for the ads, of course, but they aren’t affected by the banning........

[reed13k]

Sure they are if they post things associated with their account that Twitter deems unacceptable.

[Red Badger]

If you are paying me big bucks, it’s acceptable...............

[Elsie]

 

"The telescreen recieved and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it;

moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard.

 

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.

How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.

It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever the wanted to.

 

You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

-1984, Book 1, Chapter One, George Orwell

 

 

[ctdonath2]

Yup. On Twitter.

[HLPhat]

Should a publicly traded collective be allowed enjoy the the privilege of corporate charter when it so blatantly operates antagonistically against the public interest represented by spirit of the 1st Amendment?

[CottonBall]

Is it? Well then that should change everything

[Red Badger]

They will continue as long as the stock price increases.................

[2harddrive]

Can someone tell me WHY this same article was deleted from Breaking News when I posted it there, about 9:30 central time this am?

[PMAS]

Yes on the NASDAQ - Twitter, Inc. (TWTR)

[Red Badger]

Because it had already been posted at 0811 CST and was subsequently pulled out of there by the mods.......

[Hotlanta Mike]

And so it begins...

BREAKING: Chuck Johnson starts “Make Twitter Great Again” crowdfunding campaign to sue Twitter for censoring conservatives.

“This is your last chance to stop Twitter from stealing the next election by stopping them in court.”

https://twitter.com/NewtTrump/status/950585140031508480

[BelleAl]

Seen on the Donald reddit board—
“Jack is using machine learning to reduce the influence of Trump supporters. This makes Twitter a political Superpac. Superpacs fall under strict regulations. Be careful @Jack”

More—
“also, if Twitter decides to ‘curate’ user content are they not then responsible for the content that stays up? Like if there are Twitter accounts calling for assassinations or such and Twitter does not take those down while they are taking other content down isn’t Twitter supporting/endorsing the assassination content? I am sure another pede can put this in the proper legal terminology, but I remember this point coming up when Spez was editing user comments and pedes were saying that Spez just opened the door to being accountable for all of the content posted on Reddit. They basically forfeited their neutral position of just being a public board with no control over content.”

And more—
“Suppressing conservative voices on Twitter clearly amounts to a “gift in kind” to the leftists

The value to the left would be huge $$

This angle is VERY important to push. Huge legal, $ ramifications here”

[lapsus calami]

 

 

Twitter, continue to do things like this, and your brand and business will be as well remembered in 30 years as Betamax is today...

 

That and worse, particularly for Google, who as we all know, is also an active party in the public/private axis of technological fascism. Google was great - I could put in whatever phrase, name, description and - BAM - a pile of accurate results to choose from, with exactly what I was looking for typically in the first five results. Have noticed in the past few years that now there's feeble, irrelevant or gibberish results turning up, without any terms I was searching for even present or bolded. Evidently they have filtered and tampered with the search algorithms so much that searches are fouled up. Like Twitter they are in the business to provide a service and in their rush to be activist and go outside the range of their expertise they are sabotaging the primary reasons for their existence. They all need to back off the filters, restore their original unfettered algorithms, get out and stay out of politics - probably wishful thinking but that's what they need to do to rehabilitate their image and preserve their business models.

 

 

[rx]

I understand butterdezillion's account here was suspended from posting for one week five hours or so ago, for no stated reason.

[Fedora]

Not to mention violating the terms of service of individuals and businesses who paid to advertise on Twitter.

[2harddrive]

But WHY would the Mods pull that first posting? It is not like it is not VERY IMPORTANT news.

[Red Badger]

I guess it didn’t rate ‘BREAKING NEWS’ with them!................