“Up yours, Twitter.” I know that doesn’t sound kind and gracious. But Twitter is not kind and gracious and does not deserve to be treated as such.
Twitter exists to make money for its founders and shareholders, AND to shape the culture of the world into the image of their board of directors. As such, they see certain users of their platform as problematic and employ a tool to marginalize those users’ influence. It’s called “shadow banning.”
Twitter is based in San Francisco. My radio career and the books I’ve written pulling the rug out from under the climate change crowd were all birthed in ultra-liberal San Francisco. During the run-up to the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, my radio program drew the rabid ire of the left (both locally and nationally) because I dared question Obama’s place of birth. I am convinced I was shadow banned by Twitter soon after joining their platform in 2009, as I will explain.
The term shadow ban originates from a time where internet communities primarily existed in individual, isolated web forums. Rather than outright ban a user, a forum moderator would “shadow” ban them. Those banned could read posts and even make their own as usual. But unbeknownst to them, nobody else in the community could see their posts or even know that they tried to say something.
For what it’s worth, Wikipedia’s definition is an especially good one: “The act of blocking a user or their content from an online community such that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned.”
I joined Twitter in 2009, concurrent with both my promotion to the helm of the popular KSFO Morning Show and the release of my book, Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam (which instantly became a national bestseller). Within short order I had over 5,000 followers. Ten years later I barely have 6,000. Such puny growth makes no sense. In addition to my books (which also include, Eco-Tyranny: How the Left’s Green Agenda Will Dismantle America), for the past couple of years my radio program has been one of the most-streamed local shows in America. Could it be someone at the Twitter HQ here in San Francisco doesn’t like my message?
Over the years I’ve been contacted by Twitter employees who say my suspicions are spot on, but I realize the snakes in the Twitter nest will never allow any of this to be known,
In either case, as Pete Franklin (a guy who I loved listening to on the radio in San Francisco in the Nineties) might have said: “Up yours, Twitter. Up yours where the sun don’t shine!”
And with that, you’ll never see me on Twitter again.