The latest drop of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” revealed something Fox News contributor Dan Bongiono “always knew,” that the woke social media platform is a “suppression machine” of conservative voices.
The second installment of the “Twitter Files” revealed that employees created blacklists to limit the visibility of “disfavored tweets” to keep them from trending, and secretly blocked entire accounts and topics from being searchable by users without their knowledge.
Free Press founder Bari Weiss and her team of five other journalists took the baton from Substack reporter Matt Tiabbi, who released the first installment of the Twitter Files last Friday.
“Twitter once had a mission ‘to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.’ Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected,” Weiss she posted Thursday evening.
She tweeted out screenshots of accounts attached to Bongino, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, the Libs of TikTok, and Stanford University’s pandemic lockdown opposed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who had all been “shadow banned” by a secret cabal of Twitter executives.
Bongino was “slapped with a “Search Blacklist” designation that included his multiple accounts and suppressed their notifications from spiking.
“We ALWAYS knew we were a target of the Twitter suppression machine. ALWAYS,” the conservative commentator tweeted in response.
“Yet liberals insisted it was another “conspiracy theory.” Tonight is vindication, yet I expect no apologies from liberals. They live to abuse power and they’ll make no apologies for doing so.”
Bongino went viral with 10.2K tweets about him on Thursday night after the reveal.
He posted a screen capture of the “Trending in News” stat, along with the caption: “Isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think?”
Bongino appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” after the titular host called to get his reaction about what Twitter did to him.
“Let me give you the big picture first, this is some Solviet-style bulls–t right here,” he hissed, clearly incensed. “You want to hear it, there’s unfiltered Dan Bongino.”
“I’ve known this the whole time, just so you know it was called a conspiracy theory,” he began.
“I’ve been told forever, ‘it’s so weird that I can’t find you on Twitter. You’re a check mark verified account, Bongino’s not a common last name. It’s not Joe Brown or John Smith, how come you don’t come up?”
“When I spoke about this on my show, I was called a conspiracy theorist and a wacko,” he detailed. “I’ve become public enemy number one.”
“This is just the beginning,” he remarked. “You don’t even know what’s happened to me, because I don’t whine about it all day, like whiny leftist snowflakes.”
Bongino said that his website was banned by Google ads and he was banned from YouTube for “suggesting that cloth masks don’t work,” even though it has now been proven true.
“And now I find out that I’m on a not safe for work shadow ban list on Twitter, because I’ve committed the thought crime of being a conservative,” he fumed.
“All of you media media clowns and goons and nuts, who told me I was a crazy conspiracy theorist,” Bongino spat. “Tell me we live in a free country.”
On the same show, Charlie Kirk told Carlson that the Turning Point USA Twitter account was “fourth most engaged” on the planet with 115,000 retweets a day, but their account interactions went “off a cliff” immediately after they opposed pandemic lockdown measures.
“I was called a conspiracy theorist, I was smeared,” he commented. “Now you see actual verified documents where my Twitter account was labeled as do not amplify NSFW (not safe for work), and threat tags.”
“They’re treating my Twitter account with more scrutiny and censorship than the Prime Minister of Iran, Hamas, then the people who do actual terroristic type damage.”
He believes that the social platform saw his opinion as a “direct threat to the regime” and questioned if they were instructed to shut him down by the federal government.
“Was my tweet somehow able to create viral counter messaging in to what hey wanted to see happen in 2020. We may never know.”
Kirk told Carlson that he reached out to then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2018, who personally assured him that “shadow banning wasn’t happening.”
After the accounts interactions went down 95%, Kirk was unable to get in contact with anyone at the company in 2020, when he alleges the company became like “a Democrat super PAC.”
Weiss reported that Dorsey, along with Vijaya Gadde, Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust, and Yoel Roth, the Global Head of Trust and Safety, were part of a secret group that handled the censoring of high profile accounts like Bongino and Kirk’s.
“This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. ‘Think high follower account, controversial,’ another Twitter employee told us. For these ‘there would be no ticket or anything,'” Weiss wrote.
“I’m happy Elon Musk and Bari Weiss have confirmed my account was targeted, but every Twitter user deserves to know if they too were targeted in some way,” Kirk tweeted on Thursday night.
“Twitter should publicly release ALL information on shadow bans, no matter how large or small the target was. Let the truth out.”
He confirmed that Musk announced the upcoming release of a software update that will allow users to check if their account is “being throttled and why.”
The new update will also give users “clear instructions” about how to appeal any strikes on their accounts.