Shadow Banning is the term given to social media backroom activity that uses computer algorithms to shrink user account engagement without informing the user.  The process involves putting friction upon the account to block amplification and control engagement.  The user doesn’t see the process, they just notice a severe drop in the engagement by other users on the platform.

Last year, Elon Musk promised to start letting the account holders see what level of friction they were assigned to by letting the users see their shadow ban status.  However, that promise was never fulfilled.  Musk was questioned about why the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, has not followed through on the transparency pledge.

Continuing the process of pretending not to know things, Musk says transparency is hard.

(Washington) –  The long-hated process of shadow-banning on X, formerly Twitter, soon will change, according to owner Elon Musk. 

At the Viva Tech conference this week, the billionaire said he plans to address the issue soon. He said the company is working on a plan that will let people see if their account was affected by the Twitter system. 

“Sorry it’s taking so long,” Mr. Musk posted. “There are so many layers of ‘trust & safety’ software that it often takes us hours to figure out who, how and why an account was suspended or shadow-banned. A ground up rewrite is underway that simplifies the X codebase dramatically.”

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There really is no other phrase that seems to adequately describe the future for online life in the United States than to describe it through the prism of the previously discussed shadow banning that takes place on the X-platform for specifically wrong-thinking users.

It is important to begin with the end in mind.  Perhaps some people are unaware that internet services, meaning the actual experience of using the internet for communication and commerce, are not the same in every nation.  In fact, it is quite a different experience depending on where on the globe you are located.  The differences are driven by internal controls, the intranet of the regional internet per se.

The internet in China is not the same as the internet in Europe, which is not the same as the internet in Australia, which is not the same as the internet in North America, which is not the same -at all- as the internet that now exists within Russia.  Even in some continents, the internet traffic flows are controlled at different levels within each nation. The “world wide web” is a format, but when you get down to the national level, things change.

This baseline helps to understand that internet freedom is defined by access to information and commerce.

To the extent the information or commerce is defined as against the interests of the authority structure, or potentially a threat to the national security interest of the government therein, the internet content is filtered, modified, censored, removed or just simply blocked from view.  This is one layer in the information control system.

Another layer is the flow of commerce that floats atop the flow of information.  This is where advertising, product sales, purchasing and general e-commerce takes place. This layer represents another option for control; therefore, this e-commerce layer should be considered running in parallel to the information, albeit perhaps indirectly attached.

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This is the fifth in a row of recent polls showing the complete collapse of Ron DeSantis.  Fortunately, there may be no further reason to discuss his election viability, and it may be well worth just waiting for his campaign withdrawal announcement.

As CTH suspected, DeSantis has followed a similar path as former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  Both candidates were driven by the financing of billionaire donors behind them.  A campaign created around the shell of a candidate  – devoid of personal intent or internal purpose for running, while being driven only by shallow self-interest and attached to the policy of the funding mechanism – is always a structure for failure.

[Daily Signal] – […] With support from 60% of Republican primary voters, Trump commands a 47-point advantage over his nearest competitor in Scott Rasmussen’s latest national survey.

The poll from RMG Research Inc. was in the field Aug. 11-14, before news of Trump’s indictment in Fulton County, Georgia. The margin of error for the full sample is +/- 3.1 percentage points.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who tallied 13%, made the biggest gains over the past two months, rising from 3% in Rasmussen’s June 21-22 poll. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is third in the new poll with 8%, dropping 7 percentage points since Rasmussen’s Aug. 7-8 survey. (read more) 

DeSantis never had the skills to be a strong presidential candidate.  Additionally, he’s not that smart, and once the facade around him started to fall away, people saw the real person, the weakness, not the carefully fabricated image his handlers tried to create over the prior 3 years.

The most unfortunate outcome is not that DeSantis is failing, it’s that speaking from a position of freedom and liberty, Florida was a better place prior to his election in 2018.  While he managed the COVID-19 pandemic reasonably well, the state he governed has been messed up by DeSantis’ total control of the state legislature just to give him the illusion of social policy ‘wins’.  I don’t like the thought of what comes next in the big gov takeover using the tools he created. It’s a hot mess.

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Using the X platform, formerly called Twitter, Tucker Carlson interviews Robert Kennedy Jr about his campaign, U.S. foreign policy, Ukraine, Russia, NATO, Bio-Labs and who killed his uncle. {Direct Rumble Link}

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The Fulton County clerk of courts is putting out the third public statement trying to explain and justify why they posted the grand jury indictment of Donald Trump before the grand jury had even met to vote on the indictment.   This latest explanation is so incredulous it’s almost impossible to believe they are making this public:

According to the story above, the original indictment before the jury met, was a trial run upload, made of a totally fictious construct, with totally random charges, that just happened to line up with the exact same charges, in the exact same sequence, as the indictment after the jury voted.  👀🤔…

Yeah, when you are trying to get out of a hole this deep, it’s best to stop digging.

I wonder if Suspicious Cat believes the clerk?

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Donald Trump continues to dominate the field in New Hampshire, with the competition for first loser position taking shape.  At this point, none of the other GOP candidates are in a position to win any delegates, and the second highest polling lane is Undecided with 13%.

Undecided passed by I Don’t Know shortly before the Iowa fair.  Apparently, putting sticks in eggs as a skill exhibited by the Florida governor was not enough to convince the Live Free or Die people of his leadership.  It seems Chris Christie, who did not need the optics of being surrounded by multiple food stalls, benefited the most since the last poll within New Hampshire.  [DATA HERE]

Together with the 8% egg handler, Mike “I don’t care” Pence seems to have lost the most support in New Hampshire, dropping to 1%, and will now put all his efforts into Iowa. Randhawa and Ramaswamy are holding steady at 4% and 3% respectively. Lisa Murkowski’s BFF is smiling big with 6% hoping to catch the meatball.

New Hampshire – […]  Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie surpassed DeSantis for second-place in the Republican field: 9% of voters support his 2024 bid, while 8% support DeSantis. 

“DeSantis has been the alternative to Trump in Emerson polling this presidential cycle. This is the first time we have seen DeSantis drop out of second place in our polling, and fall back into the pack of candidates,” Kimball said. (link)

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Sometimes revealing a communist is a little like taking off a Band-Aid. You’ve got to pick at the edges a little bit until you can get enough gripped to rip it off.

It has been a decade since Jonah Goldberg and I had our back-and-forth editorial debate about “modern republicanism.”  [He lost both a massive number of readers and credibility.] In the years since, we are both exactly the same people; the only difference is – his mask has completely dropped and he’s no longer pretending.

In this brutally perfect appearance on his new network gig, CNN, Jonah Goldberg, the pontificating pustule of totalitarian elitism, declares the “small donor” influence in the Republican Party, ie. MAGA and working class grassroots support, is the problem for those (private club) corporate officers who have high-minded control.

...”I just also think that we are dealing with a time, where for a lot of people, there’s a lot of people cheering and self-congratulation about the rise of small donors a decade ago. And now small donors are actually one of the biggest problems for, well, democracy in the GOP. Because, um, large donors have a strategic view about moderation, who can win and who can’t. Small donors really are just venting their spleen with their credit card, and they lock candidates into positions that can hurt them in the general election.”…

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There is a particular brand of GOPe hypocrisy around a worldview that spouts unbridled capitalism as the solution to all the economic woes [NOTE: in reality, they really don’t believe that, but they pretend not to be advocates of massive conglomerate corporatism], and yet they rail against the unwashed masses having a voice in the democratic process.

As our “Last Refuge” of liberty noted years ago, the ushers in conservative media were/are really closeted communists. Identically aligned and elite minded sanctimonious frauds, loading sheep onto intellectual cattle cars. The professional Republicans don’t believe in conserving anything other than the power structure that produces their affluence and influence.

Peel the skin off a professional Republican, and you will find a communist demanding you sit quietly, then insert vote, pull lever, take your pellet, shut up and leave the building.  That’s who they are.

The best, and I do mean absolutely the best and greatest thing about Donald J. Trump, is how he forced all the professional Republican snipers to reveal their positions.

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President Donald J. Trump has announced an 11:00am ET press conference for Monday, August 21st, to highlight evidence of Georgia election fraud.  The Republican apparatus in Georgia is going to go bananas.

[SOURCE LINK]

It’s not the Democrats and totalitarian leftists that are going to go bananas…. It’s the Republican Party apparatus, fraught with fear that their constructs are about to be revealed, who we will see going on the attack.

Corrupt Republicans are far more vicious than ordinary corrupt leftists and communists.  The corrupt Republicans have far more to lose.  Watch what happens.

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Many casual political observers have been wondering about why the Georgia republican apparatus, including Brian Kemp, doesn’t just get involved and shut down the nonsense coming from Fulton County and political prosecutor Fani Willis.  It’s an understandable reference point and curiosity, but if you understand Georgia republican politics you understand why the political leadership actually support Fani Willis.

Former House Speaker, Republican John Boehner (far left), and current Georgia Republican Governor, Brian Kemp (far right), attend a Stop Trump political strategy session in Sea Island, Georgia, May 2023.  The strategy session was how to align with Democrats to destroy the MAGA insurgency.

Republican and Democrat politics is a club structure. Factually, voters are irrelevant in the system the two private corporations have constructed.  Whether you align with Republicans or you choose to align with Democrats, the main thing to always remember is – they don’t care. Voters are not part of the RNC/DNC party construct. Voters are irrelevant.  The interests of voters are not part of any discussion that takes place inside the private corporations.

On a scaled basis of control, the Georgia republican apparatus is near the top of the GOPe structure for total operational control.  Georgia voters are even less relevant than other states. Georgia voters, much like Texas voters, are the least important part of the party process.

Georgia and Texas are closed party states. Much like “districts” in the former Soviet era, Texas and Georgia are under the control of private party officers. If you live in either of these states, and if you try to effect political organizing that impacts the party apparatus, you are an annoying gnat to be removed.

We the people do not have voting processes in these states (Arizona, Nevada and more recently Alaska are examples), we have the illusion of the voting process.

Control is the key in these totalitarian illusions of democracy.  If Fani Willis is targeting the group who organize against the interests of Brian Kemp and the Republican club leadership, she is doing them a favor.  Brian Kemp and his Republican party crew support corrupt district attorney Fani Willis, just like former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell supported U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in the targeting of the Tea Party (2011, 2012).  The alignments are exactly identical.

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The Fulton County clerk of courts has uploaded a 98-page criminal indictment against President Trump and 18 alleged coconspirators. [PDF HERE]

First thing to notice, the released indictment is identical to the one the clerk said was not accurate earlier today.  Meaning, two things: (1) the indictment was generated before the “special grand jury” voted; and (2) the Fulton County clerk of courts lied.  👀 Nice way to start the review, huh?

Defendants include, Donald Trump, Rudy Guiliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Jeffrey Clark, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and a host of villainous villains who did allegedly perpetrated villainy in the Peachtree state.

[read 98-page indictment at this link]

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