I have not been an X (Twitter) user for very long. I’ve held a personal account but haven’t even signed into it for years. I do have a blog account on X in addition to my personal account. When I started this blog, I figured it was probably a good idea to keep abreast of what people were saying. I am a leftist. I am not a Democrat but a leftist, and I trust very few people politically. So, I made a blog account and looked for people who seemed to hold similar stances as I do. That is fine for general knowledge that is collected from people I don’t personally know. In order to augment that information, I wanted to reconnect with a couple of people who are still around and have been active in leftist/indepenent politics. I know their stances very well and trust their observations. When I made my new X account, I looked up the profiles of two of my former compatriates. So far, so good. I did find them fairly easily and clicked “follow”. I was immediately shown a notice on each account that the accounts in question were “protected” accounts and that I would need to get permission from the account holders before I could follow them.
Okay, I thought that was fair. I figured that they had been bombarded with ‘troll’ accounts, as is common with leftists’ accounts. Then, I thought they would have no idea who I was because the new account was one they had never heard of before. So, I decided to log into Facebook (which, truthfully, I detest but know is a good place to reach people and so maintain a blog page along with a little used personal page), where I knew I could get ahold of at least one of them to let them know that account was mine. Sure enough, the first one I tried answered fairly quickly. But the response was not what I had expected.
Most people know that X has been banning accounts for some time. Some think the banned accounts are mostly conservative accounts, and some believe they are leftist accounts. There have been reports that sometimes X locks users out of their own accounts while not allowing them to log in to that account. What many probably don’t know (I didn’t know) is that X is also shadow banning accounts. My friend’s answer was that they could not log into their accounts. X had locked them out. But that is not what X said. They tried to give the impression that these accounts were ‘protected’, but it turned out that the only thing they were being protected from was their owners. I found this very deceitful and hypocritical of a platform that has ostensibly made an effort to “protect free speech”.
It should come as no surprise to me. I have been in leftist circles for a good while and have seen the censorship, belittling, and vitriol to which the left is constantly subjected. I have seen platforms delete accounts, remove posts, and lock profiles. But at least they SAID that was what they were doing. X, not so much. So be aware. This could happen to you or someone you know, so plan accordingly and question everything, now more than ever.
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