Conservative host “may join the rebels in the shadows”.
APRIL 25, 2019
Michael Savage believes that Islamist terrorists may have been behind the Notre Dame blaze, and he is being vocal about it. In response, Twitter has reportedly moved to shadow ban Savage to stop his opinion spreading.
Savage’s reasoning is that terrorists attempted to set the cathedral on fire as recently as 2016, in addition to the fact that hundreds of churches in France have been desecrated over the past year.
Savage found that after he expressed that opinion, Twitter stopped a lot of other users from seeing his posts.
“It became apparent Sunday after being temporarily blocked last week following the burning of Notre Dame, that now he may join the rebels in the shadows,” wrote Amanda Metzger, who works for Savage on his website.
“Some followers who used to receive notifications of his tweets on their smartphones no longer received them,” she added.
Metzger also noted that Savage “suddenly found his Periscope live broadcast was limited in the number of viewers.” (Periscope is owned by Twitter).
Infowars’ Alex Jones is still permanently banned from Twitter. No explanation was ever given, other than the vague suggestion that Jones ‘violated’ T&C’s.
It appears Savage now finds himself in the Twitter sin bin along with Jones and many others.
“Who is in the shadows deciding who is heard and who is silenced? Someone in a dark room behind a bright screen in a foreign country with no First Amendment?” Metzger asked, adding “maybe it’s an American trying to create a safe space online.”
“I can’t think of anything less safe – anything more damaging – than limiting the exchange of ideas,” she continued. “We’re in a dangerous place when we’ve forgotten the phrase, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”
“We are getting closer to the point where federal regulation of social media is inevitable. The airwaves are regulated. In this case, my plea is that there is some transparency in who is banned, blocked or deplatformed and why,” Metzger urged, adding “I would prefer no one find themselves silenced by another.”
“Maybe you don’t care who was deplatformed last year. You didn’t agree with them anyway and seeing their tweets and posts ruined your day,” Metzger concluded. “But if you don’t stand up for them now, they won’t have a voice to come to your defense when you are silenced.”
In related news, it appears that Twitter is planning to allow users to report tweets that they believe are an attempt to ‘mislead’ people at election time.
What could go wrong there?
In a blog post regarding the change, Twitter declared that “Any attempts to undermine the process of registering to vote or engaging in the electoral process is contrary to our company’s core values.”
The move appears to be an effort on behalf of Twitter to adhere to the EU ‘Code of Practice against disinformation’ which Facebook and Google have also signed up to.
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