UKIP leader Gerard Batten has been shadowbanned by Twitter along with prominent figures from the anti-EU and free speech supporting party, Politicalite can exclusively reveal.
Twitter has shadow banned other prominent Kippers too, including David Kurten MEP, sixteen-year-old UKIP Activist and journalist Reece Coombes and his pro-UKIP blog Kipper Central.
A joint investigation by Politicalite and Kipper Central revealed that all of the accounts listed above are marked with a ‘QFD Ban’ which means ‘Quality Filter Discrimination’ – this causes a user’s tweets to be invisible within the latest section of the search, including hashtags, when Twitter’s quality filter is turned on.
Our investigation found that Twitter does not normally shadow ban sources of news, which is why it’s shocking that Kipper Central has been hit with a ‘QFD’ ban. The UKIP blog regularly has councillors and political figures writing for the site, so Twitter is banning right-wing political content in favour of liberal content.
QFD was ‘officially’ introduced in May 2018 as part of Twitter’s so-called ‘healthy conversation project.’ although the practice was first reported by Project Veritas in January 2018.
Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed this week that the site was banning right-wing voices, a practice that has been known among Conservatives for months.
CREDIT: Rex/Shutterstock
He tweeted that the site had been undertaking ‘Conversational health work’ “Addressing some issues folks are encountering as a result of our conversational health work, specifically the perception of “shadowbanning” based on content or ideology.
Dorsey added: “It suffices to say we have a lot more work to do to earn people’s trust on how we work.” – in layman’s terms, that means ‘Shadowbanning’ or ‘Banning Certain Viewpoints.’
President Trump also tweeted about the platform Shadow Banning Conservatives earlier this week, Mr Trump said his administration would “look into this discriminatory and illegal practice.”
Twitter “SHADOW BANNING” prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2018
Twitter confirmed that the site did indeed shadow ban Conservative voices by claiming a ‘bug’ was making it impossible to search for specific accounts. the social media company said it was “fixing it.”
We have contacted Twitter for comment.
