by Daniel John Sobieski
The liberal censors at Twitter, who have joined other social media outlets like Facebook in censoring conservative news and thought and defending liberal orthodoxy, have now stooped to censor the victims of Hollywood sexual predator Harvey Weinstein. The latest victim of Big Brother’s wrath is actress and Weinstein victim Rose McGowan:--------
Rose McGowan had a hold placed on her Twitter account Wednesday night, 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.Twitter most recently exercised its power to censor thought it doesn’t approve of by banning a prolife ad from Tennessee GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn because it considered Blackburn’s pro-life rhetoric and denunciation of Planned Parenthood “inflammatory”, just as it decided McGowan’s condemnation of Weinstein and the Hollywood culture he represents violated Twitter’s holier-than-thou standards which depend on whose ox is being gored:
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 suspension, writing cryptically that: “TWITTER HAS SUSPENDED ME. THERE ARE POWERFUL FORCES AT WORK. BE MY VOICE. #ROSEARMY.”…
Since the bombshell accusations, including multiple rape allegations, about Weinstein were reported by the New York Times and The New Yorker, McGowan has used Twitter to excoriate the disgraced producer, as well as board members of The Weinstein Company, including co-founder Bob Weinstein, along with a number of prominent actors, such as Ben Affleck and other "A-list golden boys" who she feels were aware of what was going on….
The Times first reported that McGowan reached a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein after an encounter in a hotel room at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997. McGowan did not participate in the Times exposé but quickly called on the entire TWC board to resign and for Hollywood actors and actresses to speak up. "Men in Hollywood need to change ASAP," McGowan told THR in an interview over the weekend. "Hollywood’s power is dying because society has changed and grown, and yet Hollywood male behavior has not."
Twitter has decided to change course on a controversial Senate campaign advertisement by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and will allow the ad to run, even though the social network initially claimed it violated ad guidelines.Twitter has even gone after the likes of the iconic Matt Drudge, former Breitbart news editor Milo Yiannopoulos, and Dilbert creator Scott Adams, as well as engaging in a practice called “shadow banning” to limit the access and exposure of largely conservative accounts.
Blackburn confirmed on Fox News' "The Story with Martha MacCallum" Tuesday night that Twitter will allow her ad to be promoted on the social media platform.
Twitter said that they made the decision after reconsidering the "context of the entire message," according to a report by Recode.
Blackburn said she believes Twitter reversed its decision because "the American people rose up."
"I think what has happened, the American people rose up. They are sick and tired of the liberal elites and the liberal media telling them what they're going to listen to, and what is going to be pushed forward and broadcast and what is not, and in this example it was Twitter," Blackburn said.
Milo Yiannopoulos is familiar with the suppression of free speech and the First Amendment by the politically correct left, having a speech at UC Berkeley canceled after violent riots by the politically intolerant left. Pundits have dubbed the suppression of conservative speakers on campus the “heckler’s veto” which allows the arbiters of political correctness to deny a forum to those they disagree with.Yiannopoulos is also familiar with another form of suppression of free speech, this time in social media forums such as Twitter called “shadow banning.” Tweets of the kind President Trump is famous for are banned from being seen by other than a given account’s followers, limiting visibility. Twitter and its support team claim it is merely spanking temporarily those that violates their rules and terms of service, but Yiannopoulos thinks it is political correctness run amok with the goal of, as at Berkeley and elsewhere, of silencing conservatives:
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.Yes, it is Twitter’s sandbox and, yes, there are spammers uninterested in any real dialogue. Yes, there are porn bots and photos any reasonable person would find offensive. There are Twitter equivalents to yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre. But Twitter has gone beyond enforcing rules of civility to enforcing its view of political correctness, punishing conservatives who use social media, particularly those who are good at it.
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….
The pattern of shadowban reports, which skews towards the alt-right, the populist right, and cultural libertarians, follows close on the heels of Twitter’s establishment of a “Trust and Safety Council” packed with left-wing advocacy groups, as well as Islamic research centre the Wahid Institute....
With shadowbans now confirmed by an inside source, there is little room for doubt that the platform is intent on silencing conservatives. Furthermore, it has demonstrated a complete lack of regard for transparency, concealing its shadowbanning system from users and hiding its political bias behind a veneer of opposition to online abuse….
Even Matt Drudge found himself caught up in Twitter’s censorship, further confirming the fact that Twitter shadow bans those on the right side of the political spectrum. As Breitbart reported:
Earlier today, users on Twitter reported that tweets from the official account of the Drudge Report were being hidden from users behind a “sensitive content” filter.Indeed, with Twitter it depends on whose ox is being gored. Is Scott Adams, the creator of the cultural icon of all cubicle dwellers, Dilbert, a Twitter troll or spammer of offensive tweets? Or was it his support of Donald Trump that got him in Twitter’s censorship crosshairs? In a blog post, Adams suggested that Twitter has shadow banned him and other conservatives for political reasons:
A screenshot published on the British news site Westmonster revealed the filtering of the Drudge Report, one of the largest and highest-profile conservative sites on the web….
The censorship was lifted later in the day, and tweets from the Drudge Report are now visible, even when users opt-in to Twitter’s “sensitive content” filtering. However, Twitter has not explained why the Drudge Report was placed behind the filter in the first place, and has not responded to a request for comment from Breitbart News at this time.Twitter started experimenting with labelling entire user accounts as “sensitive” earlier this month. Recently, we reported that the social media company is using IBM’s “Watson” supercomputer to identify “abusive” accounts on Twitter. Twitter’s bias against conservatives is well-known. The company frequently bans or locks the accounts of conservative users who have not broken its terms of service, while allowing threats of violence against the President and First Lady to run rampant on the platform.
The Constitution guarantees every citizen the right of free speech. But what happens when the most effective channels for that speech are corporations such as Twitter and Facebook? Does the government have an obligation to make sure those companies are not limiting free speech for some classes of users?...Twitter’s alleged standards are really rules designed to enforce political correctness and those whose accounts are shadow banned or suspended are more likely to be Twitter victims due to their effectiveness rather than offensiveness.
…shouldn’t the federal government get involved if a few monopoly corporations start to control the national conversation by filtering out voices that disagree with them?
That seems to be the situation right now. For example, Twitter is apparently “shadowbanning” me because of my past Trump tweets, or so I assume. That means my tweets only go out to a subset of my followers. The rest don’t know I tweeted. My followers tell me this is the case. They have to visit my timeline to see my tweets….
I can’t be 100% sure that Twitter is shadowbanning me to limit my political speech. They might have a bug in their system, for example. But it would be a big coincidence if they are not, given how many Trump supporters were targeted by Twitter in the past year.
Unlike Hollywood hypocrites like Ashley Judd and other actresses who sold their souls to Harvey Weinstein in exchange for their career success, Rose McGowan is not being silent. She has attacked those hypocrites who, while attacking President Trump for his alleged callousness and sexist attitude towards women as a result of the Access Hollywood tape, kept silent about Harvey Weinstein and his very real war on women.
Hopefully Rose McGowan and others who have been silenced for various offenses against political correctness and liberal orthodoxy will have their voices restored. Twitter has to decide whether the sensitivities of sexual predators and their defenders are more important than proclaiming the truth about them. And if prolife views are inflammatory, Twitter’s standards and rules need serious revision.
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason
Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/10/twitter_protects_weinstein_suspends_victim_rose_mcgowan.html
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