Wikipedia had some interesting commentary on this subject on their site that I thought was worth noting. I won’t go into all of it but just a little so folks that don’t know can see what it is.
The Wikipedia article noted: “Shadow banning…is the act of blocking or partially blocking a user or their content from an online community such that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned. By making a user’s contributions invisible or less prominent to other members of the service, the hope may be that in the absence of reactions to their comments, the problematic or otherwise out-of-favor user will become bored or frustrated and leave the site.”
In other words, they ban, or almost ban, your material in such a way that you will hardly notice it has been done. They do this by making your material, your articles, comments, or whatever you post “less prominent” to those who have been used to seeing it out there on a regular basis.
I have several friends that follow the material I post on my blog spots. Awhile back, (and I may have mentioned this once) one sent me an email telling me I had been shadow banned. At the time, I had not even thought of such a thing. Naïve of me, I know, given the nature of those people that I usually write about. I occasionally used to get hate mail from some who disagreed with my perspectives, but hadn’t seen any of that in quite awhile and so did not have this kind of thing in my mind.
Anyway, my friend did some of the research I had not even thought about and explained to me how he figured it out. He put the names of my blogs up on a search engine (maybe more than one) and explained to me that, in most cases, all he could find in relation to my blog articles on most of them was one direct entry into my sites and every other entry was from an article of mine posted on someone else’s sites, so that if you were looking for one of my articles you could only find it on somebody else’s site, not directly on mine. This cuts traffic to my site down considerably. Though most of the people that use my articles do list my blogs as their source, if you read the entire article on their site then you have no need to click onto my site.
Please understand, I am not complaining about the good folks that post my articles on their sites. The vast majority of them do that to help me get the word out and, for that, I am grateful to them
There was a time when my articles were listed, both from my own sites and others combined, on as many as a dozen pages on search engines. Those days are gone. Now you are fortunate if you can find listings on three pages, so something has happened.
The other night I typed out the blog address for one of my blogs on a search engine and there was not even one direct listing for my site. Everything was via someone else’s site. The same day I got a notice from a friend of mine in New England telling me that when he tried to click onto my site for the latest article I had sent him, he got a notice telling him my site was “not safe” and so he was hesitant to forward my article, as he usually does, to others.
I have received that same type of warning about a handful of sites I usually check out over the past few years. I went into those sites anyway and kept going back into them and eventually those warnings ceased. There was nothing “wrong” with any of those sites except that they tended to comment in areas that were politically incorrect and so someone was attempting to warn people away from those sites lest they get to read and digest information the Establishment would rather they not see.
“Big Brother” is always watching. All the blather about internet security and “privacy” for all is a joke! We are all watched, checked on, monitored, and if we continue to post stuff someone doesn’t approve of, well, they work to do something about that. I have now talked to a dozen other people that have had this or similar problems with what they send out and receive.
I have a friend in the Southern Heritage Movement who used to include a little picture of a Confederate Battle Flag on each email he sent out. All of a sudden, one day, his emails started bouncing back to him as “undeliverable.” He couldn’t figure out what the problem was–until he started to connect the dots and realized what it was. So he took the little Confederate Flag off the emails he was sending out and, guess what–all of a sudden his emails started getting through again. What a coincidence! So please don’t insult me by telling me no one is watching what we do. They watch everything we do. Everything we send out or receive is watched by somebody.
I have had similar experiences, where I have used the word Secession in the title of an article and when I would go to send it out the email would not work and the article would go nowhere. However when I changed the word secession to something a little less obvious the articles would, somehow, manage to get mailed. You can’t make this stuff up–you learn by experiencing it.
What has escaped me for awhile is why anyone would want to bother trying to blunt what little influence I might have. I can see them going after InfoWars or Drudge or Zero Hedge or some of those other sites that reach millions most every day. Those kinds of sites reach more people in one day than I will in the next ten years! Why are they worried about me or others like me that will never have huge audiences?
The conclusion I have come to is that the Deep State, the Establishment, Big Brother, or whatever you want to call this Leviathan, is afraid of people finding out the truth. The real truth scares them because if it ever got to enough people who could really grasp it, their positions of power and control would be in severe jeopardy and so they have to attempt to shut down any and all attempts to tell people what really goes on. Even really small efforts like those of myself and others that I know personally!
The Wikipedia article noted their attempts to drive “problematic” and “out-of-favor” users toward boredom and frustration so they would just hang it up and quit. That may work for some, but not all. In the final analysis, it is the Lord that directs people to our sites and He will direct to our sites those He wants to see what we have to say, be they many or few. That’s up to Him. Jesus started out with 12 disciples and look what, in His Father’s providence, He accomplished. None of us will ever do what Jesus did but I think the Lord has certain people out there that He wants each of us to reach and if we remain faithful He will see to it that we are able to do that–and Big Brother won’t be able to do anything about it–and I think he realizes that and it frustrates him no end.
April 25, 2019
~ The Author ~
Al Benson Jr. is the editor and publisher of “The Copperhead Chronicle“, a quarterly newsletter that presents history from a pro-Southern and Christian perspective. He has written for several publications over the years. His articles have appeared in “The National Educator,” “The Free Magnolia,” and the “Southern Patriot.” I addition to that he was the editor of, and wrote for, “The Christian Educator” for several years. In addition to The Copperhead Chronicles, Al also maintains Revised History.
He is currently a member of the Confederate Society of America and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and has, in the past, been a member of the John Birch Society. He is the co-author, along with Walter D. Kennedy, of the book “Lincoln’s Marxists” and he has written for several Internet sites as well as authoring a series of booklets, with tests, dealing with the War of Northern Aggression, for home school students.
He and his wife now live in northern Louisiana.
Mr. Benson is a highly respected scholar and writer and has graciously allowed Kettle Moraine Publications to publish his works. We are proud to have his involvement with this project.