Alex Jones is Jack Dorsey’s red herring: I know because my Twitter account was frozen

by bakdor

Recent controversy over Jack Dorsey’s early reluctance to censor right-wing talk show host Alex Jones and his Infowars news program was mere show, a red herring, if you will, to distract the public and the American Senate and Congress in particular from investigating further into Twitter’s censorship of conservative voices. It was essential that, as CEO of Twitter Inc., Jack Dorsey appeared politically impartial when he gave testimony on September 5, 2018, first before the Senate Intelligence Committee and then the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Prior to these hearings on Capital Hill, conservative Twitter users had made numerous allegations of Twitter hindering or banning outright the propagation of their messages in the Twitter sphere. Many conservative users had been feeling unfairly targeted for permanent banning or temporary suspensions. Sometimes users alleged that Twitter downgraded or removed certain functional features on Twitter for conservatives who show behaviour unacceptable to Twitter’s left leaning mindset. Liberal or progressive users did not share the same level of concern about censorship on Twitter compared to their conservative counterparts. Liberal users more often than not had a different narrative about Twitter and other social media platforms. Their narrative was that social media firms put too little effort into removing accounts of the promoters of “hate speech”.

One of the most asinine examples of outright banning of a conservative by Twitter was the suspension of the Twitter account of the Christian blogger Elizabeth Johnston (the Activist Mommy) for criticizing an editor who published an article in Teen Vogue magazine on anal sex for children. The Teen Vogue article was entitled “Everything You Need to Know About Anal Sex; How to do it the Right Way” by Gigi Engle, a sex educator. After the publication of this article, the Teen Vogue editor Phillip Picardi was named one of the 50 Most Influential LGBT’s in media by the magazine Advocate. On August 16, 2017, Elizabeth Johnston tweeted a sarcastic congratulation to him: “Congrats, Phillip. A sodomite mag just awarded you for teaching kids sodomy. Way to recruit there @TheAdvocateMag!” For this behaviour, Twitter froze the account of Johnston for 12 hours until she deleted the alleged offending tweet. Feeling she needed to move on, she eventually did delete the tweet.

My recent search of the Internet turned up no article entitled “Everything You Need to Know About Anal Sex; How to do it the Right Way”. Instead, there is an article on the Teen Vogue web site entitled “Anal Sex: What You Need to Know; How to do it the RIGHT way” with the publication date of May 16, 2017. It is clear that the magazine editors decided to change the title from the original as indicated on Gigi Engle’s author page which shows the original title with a link to the new title.

Impairing the search function on Twitter for specific search words during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election may have had some impact on the course of the voting. On October 31, 2017, during the hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, Acting General Counsel for Twitter, Inc., Mr. Sean J. Edgett testified that Twitter applied algorithms to diminish the likelihood of certain hashtags appearing in searches performed by users on Twitter during the 2016 American Presidential Election. These hashtags included #DNCLeak and #PodestaEmails. The first hashtag referred to the discovery of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee. The second had to do with emails found on the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account. Both hashtags, if allowed free reign, could have decreased even more Hilary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency. Twitter had used the algorithms to weed out suspected bots or potential perpetrators of political interference during the lead up to the 2016 election. Edgett admitted that these algorithms had the effect of hiding from user searches about 25% of those Tweets containing the #PodestaEmails hashtag and about 48% of the #DNCLeak hashtag. Bottom line: Twitter’s algorithms hid certain hashtags that showed Trump in a better light than Clinton from user searches. Mr. Edgett justified Twitter’s filtering of searches: “These steps were part of our general efforts at the time to fight automation and spam on our platform across all areas.”

Evidence of Twitter employees’ use of shadow banning to censor conservative Twitter users were uncovered recently, most notably by James O’Keefe as part of his investigative reporting program Project Veritas. He published his video findings in January 2018. Shadow banning is the blocking of tweets from viewing by other users on Twitter but at the same time the creator of these tweets are unaware of them being blocked. The targeted users would continue to think they are active on Twitter but no one else can view their tweets. The viewers may also be limited to only those people who are the followers of the targeted users instead of an outright shadow ban to hide all tweets from view.

Project Veritas journalists recorded undercover videos of conversations with former and current software engineers and staff at Twitter. Some of these employees confessed that an anti-Trump mindset permeated the workplace at Twitter. Software engineers admitted that, through a combination of computer algorithms and human value judgements, Twitter shadow banned tweets that violated Twitter’s standards and rules. One software engineer clarified that they did not ban a political mindset but “a way of talking” (at 1:00 – 1:11 mins of Project Veritas video). They applied key words that defined their idea of the behaviour of a “red neck”. The political views of these Twitter employees would likely influence what they consider as bad behaviour and therefore as violations of the Twitter Rules. These revelations reinforced the earlier testimony before Congress in April 2018 of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that Silicon Valley is extremely left leaning. After a July 25, 2018 Vice article on shadow banning, President Trump jumped into the fray over shadow banning. He wanted an investigation into this allegation of shadow banning bias against conservatives. The outrage of conservatives nudged Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey into agreeing to testify before the Senate and Congress committees on September 5, 2018.

Of current interest is Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s hesitancy to suspend conservative journalist Alex Jones and his Infowars media outlet in August this year when several large social media companies Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify limited or banned Alex Jones from their media platforms almost simultaneously. No doubt, Alex Jones tends to be on the far right of the conservative spectrum and controversial for promoting questionable conspiracy theories. Initially, Twitter did not penalize Alex Jones for breaking the Twitter Rules, and the media loudly chastised him for not following suit. Mark Rivitz of the Guardian wrote:

…Jack Dorsey effectively gave Alex Jones, a conspiracy-peddling hate monger a slap on the wrist and a license to continue to use his platform as he has for the last several years: to harass the parents of kindergartners killed at Sandy Hook, to paint Las Vegas shooting victims as actors and to threaten the special counsel. It will probably serve not as a deterrent, but an accelerant.

Eventually, Jack Dorsey did suspend Alex Jones’s account but initially for only one week. This was not enough to placate the left leaning crowd’s call for stronger censorship against Alex Jones. This controversy followed Dorsey right through his testimony before the Senate and Congress committees, like a giant but silent elephant in the room. It served him well.

This recent display of reluctance to shut down Alex Jones and not follow in the footsteps of the other large social media firms would convey to the Senate and Congress committees the impression of Jack Dorsey’s commitment to free speech principles and to impartiality that is free of any political bias. I say this recent controversy over Jack Dorsey’s reluctance to censor Alex Jones and his Infowars show was a red herring.

The weeks leading up to Jack Dorsey’s testimony before Congress, articles criticizing him for dilly dallying around his lack of censoring conservative voices popped up on the Internet like fireflies. The subtitle of a Vox article proclaimed as much: “Twitter’s reluctance to ban Spencer had long been a source of controversy”. Richard Spencer, a widely known white nationalist, also had been controversial on Twitter ever since 2016. Twitter staff initially banned Alex Jones in 2016 but Jack Dorsey overrode the ban. Other publishing outlets such as the Verge and the Huffington Post ran similar articles chastising Jack Dorsey for not censoring right wing folks like Richard Spencer and Alex Jones. Dorsey denied these allegations but the image of him as a CEO reluctant to censor a controversial right-wing talk host resonated in the popular imagination.

Just before Jack Dorsey’s September 5, 2018 testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Senate Intelligence Committee, more news came out about Jack Dorsey reiterating a policy that appeared to be in favour of free speech. According to a prepared statement, Dorsey testified that Twitter “does not use political ideology to make any decisions”. He emphatically contradicted the current conservative suspicions and uproar over Twitter’s alleged censorship of conservative voices: “We must ensure that all voices can be heard”. Next day Dorsey continued this narrative during the committee hearings on Capital Hill.

One of the reasons why I feel Jack Dorsey’s public display of reluctance to censor Alex Jones is disingenuous and a red herring is my own experience with Twitter freezing my account for what is clearly an innocuous tweet.

On June 15, 2018, Twitter Support accused me of a violation of the Twitter Rules. The text of the tweet in question is, “@KimKardashian I used to have in the back of my mind that Kim Kardashian is some kind of dumb bimbo. I was wrong. I now sincerely apologize to you, Ms. Kardashian West, for my mistaken thoughts.”

This tweet is not a promotion of violence. It does not threaten or harass any person at all. At worst, it is an apology for having a sexist thought against Ms. Kardashian. There was no threatening behaviour on my part, just an apology for a mistaken thought. It was from the start an ironically worded praise for Ms. Kardashian obtaining early release for a Black grandmother serving an inordinately long prison sentence. Her crime was a non-violent drug trafficking offence. The worst sounding phrase in the entire text is “dumb bimbo”. Yet there are other worst tweets allowed on Twitter such as this one from Anthony E. Haire Sr (@RabbitSr1):

“Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop settles lawsuit over false vaginal egg claims”Another Prime Example of Idiotic Dumb Assed Bimbo’s buying a BS Scam from another BS SCAMMER: IDIOTS ALL “VAGINAL EGGS” GIVE ME A F’N BREAK!! SUCKERS BORN EVERY SECOND IN AMERICA!

A glance over his tweets indicates Mr. Haire is left leaning and does not like Trump very much.

A far more sexist and vulgar tweet comes from Brandon (@Bflakes1919): “@KimKardashian funny how you only got famous for Sucking Dick! Shut the fuck up you dumb bimbo”. Brandon is a self-described “#Liberal”. Another more violently threatening Tweet is this one from Taylor Downing‏ (@Sports_r_beast): “@KimKardashian kill thyself you dumb bimbo. You have enough money already”. All of these tweets violate the Twitter Rules.

The tweets of the New York Times editor/journalist Sarah Jeong is by far more sexist, bigoted and violent in tone than my tweet. In 2014, Jeong tweeted: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants“. Her tweet is directed not to a particular person or Twitter troll but to an entire race. Another tweet in 2014 of hers but of an even more violent tone is “.@RepDanMode White people have stopped breeding. You’ll all go extinct soon. This was my plan all along.” Today, four years later, these bigoted and racist tweets remain on Twitter for everyone to view if one is so inclined to search for them. Even when revelations resurfaced about these racist tweets when the New York Times recently hired Jeong to their editorial staff did not changed Dorsey’s resolve to keep them posted on Twitter. It is also obvious that Jeong hates Trump when she compares him to Hitler.

When Candace Owens, a Black conservative, recently tweets out a text identical to some of Sarah Jeong’s racist tweets, except replacing the word “white” with “Jewish” or “Black”, Twitter suspends Owens’s account. Only after a big public backlash does Twitter apologize. The Twitter staff then reactivate her account.

Why did Twitter freeze my account for my tweet that was in praise of Kim Kardashian but allowed other more bigoted, threatening tweets to remain active? Even though Twitter allowed me to direct message, I could not find my way to do even this. Twitter simply did not even allow me to log into my account. Whenever I tried logging into my Twitter account, I would get the same warning message from Twitter. The only way I could browse Twitter to see my tweets was to log out and google my handle or name along with the word “Twitter” and click on a result link with the URL, twitter.com. The effect of Twitter’s penalty on me was to render me useless on Twitter except to just browse around while logged out of it. As with Elizabeth Johnston the Mommy Activist, I eventually deleted the tweet as instructed by Twitter.

Here is the image of the warning message that I got from Twitter whenever I tried to log into my Twitter account:

Figure 1: Image of message warning of violation of Twitter Rules

I appealed twice to the Twitter Support Team through the link at the bottom of this warning message (Figure 1), and pointed out that at worst, my tweet was an apology. It was a back handed praise of Ms. Kardashian for getting Alice Marie Johnson, a Black grandmother, out of prison. Many believed that Ms. Johnson got an inordinately long prison sentence during the war on drugs. Kim Kardashian managed to convince President Trump to grant clemency for an early release of Ms. Johnson. I thought that was impressive so I took to Twitter to express my amazement at Ms. Kardashian’s tenacity and persuasiveness in this case. I thought she was smarter than that public image of her as a “dumb bimbo”. What better praise than to admit we were wrong about this celebrity? So, I donned the persona of a former naysayer and used an “apology” as a rhetorical device to praise her intelligence.

Both of Twitter Support’s two emails in reply to my appeals sounded like a canned text that may have been a computer-generated response. Both were identical in wording. Both accused me of hateful conduct. So what was the criteria for singling out my tweet for punishment while other more hateful tweets were allowed to remain on Twitter?

The key criteria for my suspension from Twitter seems to be in the context of the tweet. The Twitter Rules state that this is the case explicitly: “Context matters when evaluating for abusive behavior and determining appropriate enforcement actions”. What then was the context of my particular tweet? I was replying to a Twitter thread headed by a tweet showing a photo of President Trump at his desk along with Kim Kardashian. It was headlining the clemency and release of Alice Marie Johnson. In addition to the hashtag #bimbogirl, the other hashtags in my tweet were pro-Trump in some way or another: #AliceMarieJohnson #compassion and #RepublicanParty. I also directed my tweet to @realDonaldTrump so that other followers of Trump may see my tweet. I understood that followers would include people who may not be politically aligned with Trump but follow him just to know what is in the political news.

In order to get my Twitter account fully functional again, the Twitter Support Team required that I delete the allegedly offensive tweet and then I must wait 12 hours for it to become fully functional. This brings me to the big harm Twitter is doing to free speech. Jack Dorsey is indeed a bright guy and aware that any suspension or shadow banning of a big name conservative would bring down to bear on Twitter huge public outcry in the real world. He has allowed the accounts of such big name conservatives with a big following to be classified as “newsworthy” and permitted to be active on Twitter despite violations of the Rules. Dorsey makes sure that the controversy slants in favour of himself as a defender of free speech. His persistence of allowing right-wing celebrities like Richard Spencer and Alex Jones to have a presence on Twitter presents a facade to the world that Jack Dorsey does not silence conservatives. But the big harm is to little folks like me, who have a small following. Jack Dorsey is hesitant to do anything about the big names like Alex Jones or Candace Owens but he can stifle easily the voice of the little conservative guy or gal.

Jack Dorsey demonstrates a slick sleight of hand when he introduces the concept of “healthy conversations” on Twitter on March 1, 2018. It is as vague as the concept of “hate speech” as promulgated by the social justice crowd. It is an excuse to control conversation on Twitter. His excuse that Twitter is culling bad behaviour, not censoring political views, is as they say, just semantics. Appearing before the Senate and House committees, he makes himself as the hero fighting foreign interference in American elections by way of social media. All the fuss of Jack Dorsey protecting the rights of Alex Jones to be on Twitter is a red herring to distract the public from his agenda to cull or limit the voices of conservatives on Twitter. Or at best, he ignores his software engineers suspending or limiting the activity of conservatives. He claims that his policy is to encourage healthy conversation on Twitter, not to discourage any particular political view. He claims his strategy to achieve the goal of healthy conversations is to curtail bad behaviour, not silencing political views. This is simply Orwellian newspeak. One of his software engineer is caught on the Project Veritas video (at 40-50 secs) confessing that “red necks” are filtered using data on how they behave on Twitter. Bad behaviour is likely defined by their tweets, likes and replies. The freezing of my Twitter account makes this clear in the context of my reply tweet on a Trump positive thread and my hashtags favorable to President Trump.

The September 5, 2018 hearings before the Senate and House committees turned out to be somewhat lacklustre. It was only towards the end of the 4 ½ hour Congressional hearing, did Jack Dorsey face any heat on bias against conservative voices from two Republican Congressmen Markwayne Mullin and Jeff Duncan. Mullin pointed out the inconsistent responses from Twitter towards Sarah Jeong’s racist tweets towards white folks and Candace Owens’s identical tweets with the word “white” replaced by “Jewish” (or “Black”). The four minutes allotted to each Committee member was evidently not enough to dent Dorsey’s cool demeanour. Mullin was just gearing up on his interrogation of Dorsey when his four minutes was up.

Nothing new of anything significance is learned on Capitol Hill on September 5, 2018. The status quo is maintained. All is well with Jack Dorsey now. He can relax. The full weight of the anger of Republicans does not descend on him. No drawn-out inquisition about shadow banning. All in all, a successful day on Capital Hill for Jack Dorsey. The next day Thursday, Jack Dorsey bans Alex Jones permanently from Twitter. The red herring obviously has served its purpose.