Constitutionalist Author Says Twitter “ShadowBanned” Him

By Kurt Nimmo

Back in September, well before “fake news” and the election of Donald Trump, a popular constitutionalist said he was “shadow banned” on Twitter.

Shadow banning is also known as stealth banning. It is the practice of blocking content on social media. The practice makes a user’s posts invisible to all other users, but visible to the person who made the contribution.

A M Perez, the author of Flat Out Unconstitutional, wrote on September 24:

Twitter has shadowbanned my account, @A_M_Perez.

What does this mean?  I have been completely censored.  People at Twitter apparently don’t like what I have to say.  I primarily tweet and debate only two major topics.  The U.S. Constitution, which I swore an oath to protect and defend, and atheism, because I don’t like being forced to pay for children to learn atheist religious beliefs in public schools against the wills of parents.

The shadowban placed on my account disables all of my tweets from being seen by anyone who does not go directly to my Timeline.  If you go to my Timeline, you will see my tweets, but if you open them you will be unable to see any threads or other tweets mine were replying to.  If you reply to my tweets, you will not see my response.  All you can see is what is right on my Timeline.  If I tweet you directly, you will never see it.

I am fairly certain there are different levels of shadowbanning.  Prior to this complete shut down of my speech, my tweet outreach seemed throttled back more and more.  As the number of my followers grew, my tweet activity should have shown increased impressions.  Basically, this how many times tweets are put out there on other people’s timelines.  This was not the case.  I was getting 5 million impressions a month when I had 30,000 followers.  I was reaching far fewer than that in the past several months.  Now I have practically zero impressions.

Here is what it looks like when your tweets get throttled back, but you aren’t completely banned yet.  Notice the last two days.

There were several other indicators, such as the number of retweets I would get.  When I had only 10,000 followers it wasn’t uncommon for me to get several hundred or 1000 retweets.  Before this full scale shadowban I was barely getting more than 50 retweets on similar tweets.

Even if you go to my timeline and retweet me, no one sees your retweet, because it is my tweet.  If you “quote tweet,” your followers may see it.

Here is 100%, ironclad proof that I am shadowbanned. Click this link:

https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from%3AA_M_Perez&src=typd

This link does a search for tweets by the account in the link.  I have highlighted my name in the link red.  Try the link with any Twitter usernames you like.  My tweets are censored. Note: to try this on yourself, you can’t be logged in to Twitter. Either log out of Twitter or do it from another browser or device you aren’t logged in to Twitter on.  This only shows if you are completely shadowbanned, not if your impressions have only been partially throttled back.

I have not broken a single Twitter rule that I know of.  It’s impossible to know for sure, because Twitter Support will not acknowledge my requests for help or my questions about what I may have done wrong.  Rather than let me know how I may have broken a rule, so I can correct my behavior and avoid future infractions, they simply shut me up.  They gave me absolutely zero recourse to appeal or even learn why this has happened.

I have tried to send a tweet to Jack Dorsey (@jack), the CEO of Twitter to request his help.  Since I am shadowbanned, I doubt he can even see my tweet.  I don’t think Jack should have to waste his time on things like this anyway.  Twitter support should have people who can objectively judge a situation without bias and hold a dialogue with you to work things out.  If I have broken any Twitter rules, I would like to know about it, so I can learn what to avoid and not make the same mistakes.  The rules are arbitrary and extremely hard to understand.  Twitter can say you’ve broken the TOS without giving you any example of which rule you broke or how. They have the god-like power and you have to do what they say.  The worst part of it is, they say nothing.  They leave you in the dark.  They simply ban you and you can’t do a thing about it.  I’m sure it’s something to laugh about around the Twitter water cooler.  Someone like me who generates millions of impressions on Twitter, gets no voice.  Literally no voice.

If the real reason behind shadowbanning were about rules infractions, Jack Dorsey and the rest of Twitter would want to provide a way for people to recognize their own misbehavior and correct it, so Twitter can grow and keep a reputation of open and uncensored discourse.  But that is not how they operate.  You are shut up and shut up hard, if they don’t agree with you and your voice is too loud.  It doesn’t matter how many countless hours you have put into Twitter.  Even with 111,000 followers, I am but mere scum, deserving no degree of fairness.

I am a conservative.  I was just recognized by Brandwatch as being one of the top 20 conservative influencers on Twitter, even while my tweet influence was throttled back.  Here is the link: @A_M_Perez is the number 12 Conservative Influencer on Twitter.  Roughly 24 hours after this recognition, which I was stupid enough to mention on Twitter, I was completely shut up.

I would like to hear from Twitter.  They are free to DM me.  I’d gladly apologize for anything I did wrong and to whomever I did it to.  Perhaps I did break a Twitter rule.  If so, I am a human being and can make mistakes.  I can learn from them too.  I need to know what they are, though.  I just want a little compassion from Twitter to hear me out and even more I want to hear them out.  I would love to be able to report that everything turned out great and amicably.  I am actually quite scared that bringing this up will only bring down more wrath on me.  It’s such a shame.  There is no social media platform I like better than Twitter.

Update 25 Sep. 2016 : Here is the list of top 20 Republican/Conservative Influencers on Twitter from Brandwatch listed by who has been shadowbanned so far.