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World Panics after Death Of Last Remaining Adult
Relatives of the world’s last living adult Frank Barnstaple have confirmed that the 93 year old grown up has passed away, leaving the residents of the world frightened and bewildered.
“When I was a kid there were adults everywhere making sure the world ran smoothly,” said terrified Gwawley Bay app designer Felicity Coughlan. “Who’s going to organise for all the food to get to the supermarkets, stop us having wars with each other and fix all the leaky taps? Certainly not my generation.”
Barnstaple, known for wearing a suit unironically, was found slumped down at the kitchen table in the middle of filling out some important looking forms with a serious looking newspaper by his side.
“Adults basically ran the world up until about 1980,” said historical blogger Pete Kristopherson. “They can often be seen in grainy old black and white photos standing in front a half completed dam or something wearing a hard hat and holding plans in their hands. They would be pointing at something and the all the people around them would be listening to what they had to say.”
“It’s a mystery why all the adults started dying out and not being replaced,” said medical diagnostic robot Dr Jane Summons. “It appears to be some kind of virus targeting the DNA sequence that codes for informed decision making and knowing not to eat too many lollies.”
Frank Barnstaple’s funeral will be handled by some kind of burying people facilitator who hopefully knows how to arrange for a hole to be dug and locate an organ player.
Peter Green
http://www.twitter.com/Greeny_Peter
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Starmer STILL silent on ICJ genocide judgment against Israel
Friend of war crimes just ignoring damning order against murderous regime
‘What judgment?’: Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer’s reaction to the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) damning judgment yesterday, which put Israel formally on trial for genocide – with even the Israeli judge agreeing on two of the points – and ordered the occupier regime to stop killing Palestinians in Gaza and take a list of measures to protect them, has been deafening silence.
Starmer, who has previously declared himself an unconditional Zionist, has supported Israel’s ‘right’ to commit war crimes and has helped the Tories (blue version) to defeat parliamentary efforts to call for a ceasefire. And as Israel ranted and raved and most of the world applauded South Africa’s stand for humanity and against mass murder, Starmer’s social media account hasn’t even acknowledged the existence of the court’s findings, some thirty hours after they were announced.
But he has found time, as Israel continued to slaughter and maim hundreds of civilian women and children, to tweet about Holocaust Memorial Day and blether repeatedly about anti-social behaviour (especially in ‘hotpots’):
Starmer’s latest nauseating post is a claim that it is a ‘privilege to reaffirm Labour’s commitment to “Never Again”’ – clearly that should end with ‘unless you’re Palestinian’. Coward and genocide enabler.
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Revealed: Government Advises MPs and Staff to Turn On ‘Disappearing Messages’ Citing Security Concerns
The Government is explicitly encouraging MPs and staff to take advantage of the ‘disappearing message’ feature on WhatsApp to “limit the length of time messages are saved on your device", Byline Times can reveal.
As Scotland's First Minister Humza Yousaf announces a review of the Scottish Government's use of private instant messaging systems, this newspaper can shed light on advice issued last June, called "ten tips to make your phone more secure".
Published by the parliamentary security department, section nine focuses on ‘messages’. It states that "by turning on 'disappearing messages’ for important personal contacts, you will limit what an attacker gets access to. Admins of group chats are often able to set this for the group as well".
The issue of deleted WhatsApp messages has become a matter of national debate as concerns of a 'culture of secrecy’ in government mounts. Both the Scottish and UK Governments have been criticised for incomplete disclosure of WhatsApp communications relevant to the COVID Inquiry.
Such deletions seem even more likely in the future as politicians fear the consequences of saved messages falling into the public domain.
Recently leaked WhatsApp messages, for instance, revealed strained relations between former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, with Sturgeon describing Johnson as a "f***ing clown" in one message.
The June 2023 guidance issued to MPs and parliamentary staff
The use of the deletion mode already appears to be widespread.
At the COVID Inquiry in Edinburgh, Scotland's senior clinical advisor, Professor Jason Leitch, recently testified about overseeing a WhatsApp group named 'Star Chamber', which was configured to automatically delete messages. This group discussed lockdown measures for local authorities. Prof Leitch maintained that his deletion of messages was in accordance with Scottish Government advice, despite claims that this was contrary to proper record-keeping.
The Inquiry appeared to criticise this practice, suggesting that it might be seen as an enthusiastic adoption of message deletion policy, potentially to avoid Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. Prof Leitch disagreed with this interpretation.
Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, Sir Gregor Smith, also said that the Scottish Government's advice was to not retain information longer than necessary, recording only the "essence" of pertinent information on government systems.
However, it has become increasingly difficult to establish under FOI what is retained and what is deleted.
In 2021, the advocacy group All The Citizens took the Government to court over its refusal to release WhatsApp messages under the FOI Act. In that case, Sarah Harrison, the Chief Operating Officer for the Cabinet Office, gave a witness statement about WhatsApp groups that the Prime Minister was included in.
“Anything relevant to public record would be saved either through the Prime Minister’s Private Office support team (who provide 24 hour administrative assistance), by actions being formally commissioned by officials through government channels and/or the box process, in accordance with the No 10 WhatsApp Policy," she wrote.
When Byline Times asked how many WhatsApp messages relevant to the public record were saved by such teams in 2021, the Cabinet Office refused to say.
It would neither confirm nor deny that any such messages had been saved, arguing it was not in the public interest to do so. Byline Times requested an internal review of this refusal in June 2022, but did not hear back from the Cabinet Office.
This newspaper also wanted to know how many No 10 WhatsApp messages were shared with Sue Gray for her report into lockdown-breaching parties in Downing Street. This was also refused. To admit that WhatsApp messages had been given to Gray, the Cabinet Office argued, would “reveal information about the investigative methods and information gathering techniques, and assist a person to avoid detection in the future”.
A refusal by the Cabinet Office to admit that its staff and MPs use WhatsApp adds a further barrier for the public to establish what messages are being deleted.
In recent days, the Government launched a new WhatsApp channel to provide public information, allowing users to opt-in to receive important updates directly to their phones. This channel will, the Government has claimed, disseminate information on various topics such as public health, tax deadlines and government services, and is separate from the national emergency alert system, focusing on amplifying information rather than urgent alerts. To date, 13,000 people have signed up to the service.
Why the Study of History Belongs to the Public
For many museums and archives, social media has already become a space to share more widely images and information from their collections....
Elon Musk’s War Against Science, Evidence and Objective Truth
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It is no secret that X (formerly known as Twitter) is shedding users and revenue since Elon Musk bought the social media network. The exodus is most pronounced among a particular community that used to call the platform its home: Scientists.
“From a purely scientific perspective, it was a great place to discuss scientific papers and 'meet' other scientists”, says Professor Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher who used the platform for communicating science to the public. He met many future collaborators there, for example producing cutting-edge science on the Zika virus that ended up published in the journal Nature. “That, truly, was the best of Twitter, because those collaborations wouldn't have happened otherwise”. A few weeks ago, he deleted his account with over a hundred thousand followers for good. He was not the first, but among the last few holdouts.
“The loss of science on Twitter is a contemporary mass extinction event”, says Professor Edward Holmes, who recently was awarded the prestigious Croonian Medal by the Royal Society. He has also deleted his Twitter account recently. “Twitter used to be THE place where you shared ideas, data, preprints and papers. Now it’s a post-Apocalyptic hell hole.”
When Elon Musk took over the platform in November 2022, he instigated a barrage of erratic and incompetent changes, from firing most staff to going through the embarrassment of re-hiring critical functionalities; changing the “blue check” verification system into a pay-for-play marker of shame, getting rid of Twitter’s trust and safety team, and inviting back white supremacy activists, racist influencers and political propagandists such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. With every wave of change, the situation has gotten progressively worse for scientists.
“I think most of my network on Twitter has left - the view is that it has become a total cesspool. Musk obliterated their capacity to moderate, he invited superspreaders back onto the platform, spreads election disinformation himself and frequently boosts false accounts”, says Professor Sander van der Linden, a misinformation researcher from the University of Cambridge. Additionally, Elon Musk has removed API (Application Programming Interface) access for researchers who used to study mis- and disinformation on Twitter, thereby reducing transparency and making their work harder. Van der Linden thinks that “amongst misinformation researchers there is a fairly unanimous consensus that the quality of information and engagement has gone down dramatically”. Now, he observes “It's largely been taken over by trolls and misinformation spreaders dominating the discourse.”
Responsible for the latter is largely the change in curation, lack of any moderation, subversion of trust markers and amplification of the worst conspiracy theorists, grifters and disinformation spreaders.
“Twitter was never perfect and has always been under threat by trolls and bots”, the now embattled vaccine scientist Dr Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School for Tropical Medicine at Baylor College in Texas, admits. But it had been at least possible to “present serious and evidence-based pandemic science for the public.” With the transition to X, he says, “the propaganda and threats against us became unrelenting”.
X has not only buried relevant, accurate and truthful information under a barrage of junk information, it has invited exploitation by media manipulators and combatants that treat information as a tool for warfare. And scientists have found themselves in the middle.
“Information has become a battlespace, like naval or aerial”, Carl Miller, Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, once explained to me. Information warfare impacts how information is used, shared and amplified. What matters for information combatants is not the truth, reliability, relevance, contextuality or accuracy of information, but its strategic impact on the battlespace; that is, how well it manipulates citizens into adopting desired actions and beliefs.
Information combatants include a wide array of actors and entities, from powerful industries to political campaigns, from troll farms to militaries, from religious movements to activist communities, from profiteering influencers to eccentric billionaires, including the new owner of X himself. They all aim to shape public discourse in their favour.
While all the big social networks struggle with containing information warfare, X under Elon Musk is actively facilitating it. As a recently published Code of Practice on disinformation report by European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) network notes “the inescapable conclusion of this document is that Elon Musk’s Twitter failed every single indicator [out of 156] and gave every impression of blatant non-compliance”
X’s facilitation of disinformation was one of the main reasons why the European Commission opened formal infringement proceedings against X on 18 December 2023. So at least within the EU, citizens can hope for improvements.
Meanwhile, the free reign of information combatants on X has put a target on scientists. The scientific method tends to interfere with popular sentiments, political myth-making or powerful interests. Science has the inherent authority to create, assert, dispute, and correct information, thus it is the ultimate arbiter of solving informational conflicts, confusions or contradictions necessary to build shared reality based on shared facts.
Yet when any notion of objective truth itself is under attack, speaking up for an evidence-based worldview can quickly become a risk to livelihood and personal safety for scientists, journalists and citizens alike. Surveys recently conducted on biomedical scientists show two out of three scientists reported harassment after advocating for evidence-based science. Doxxing, lawsuits, character assassinations, and credible death threats have been following many scientists ever since becoming the target on X.
As a result, many scientists get effectively bullied off or silenced from public conversation. Some feel forced to disengage because they worry about the safety of their family, others self-censor online to avoid getting targeted. Exact numbers are hard to come by, within six months of Musk taking over, almost half of environmental scientists had left the platform, many quitting social media entirely.
This scientific exodus from public conversation might however be problematic for democratic society, which researchers argue relies on a shared body of knowledge among citizens. One of them, Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychology researcher at the University of Bristol, sees the rise of anti-science activism and sentiment as a hallmark of democratic backsliding.
He and others look with worry towards this year of global elections.
The most important message, he argues, is that “Public spaces must not be under the control of billionaires – public spaces belong under public control with public accountability.”
The trouble with posting graphs and statistics on social media
Reflecting on a salutary lesson in how not to post statistics on social media, Jonathan Portes discusses the limitations of posting statistics and data visualizations online and how simple visualizations can often take on unintended meanings. When I tweeted this, as part of a 14-tweet thread on the November migration statistics (reproduced in full here), … Continued
Bluesky Codes (updated w/ new ones)
If you’re interested in trying out the social media platform, Bluesky, which is Twitter-like in its format, below are some invitation codes.
There are a good number of philosophers using it.
I’m on there as @dailynous.com. Regular Bluesky users: feel free to share tips in the comments about using it, or who or what to follow.
Each code can be used once:
bsky-social-nz72v-vd5nj
bsky-social-fsyiz-g56dp
bsky-social-h23da-63fxk
bsky-social-y3rmc-v7rsr
bsky-social-2yz44-3f6cm
bsky-social-pimpj-mte5r
bsky-social-zesbm-gdltw
bsky-social-kartx-7q62v
bsky-social-cbyan-4ff7m
bsky-social-kqr3v-biyhp
bsky-social-5elyk-c6ahc
bsky-social-244km-orem2
bsky-social-ck6bz-4xnwt
bsky-social-r52zi-dull3
bsky-social-6zja6-w54ba
If I can, I’ll update this post with new codes a few times today, crossing out ones that have been used.
If you have Bluesky invitation codes you’d like to share, you’re welcome to put them in the comments on this post.
UPDATE (4:40pm): That’s all I’ve got, but again, others can offer them up in the comments here.
The post Bluesky Codes (updated w/ new ones) first appeared on Daily Nous.
Israel and media ‘Hamas rape’ claims collapse under scrutiny
‘Eye-witness’ accounts contradict evidence – and earlier claims of the eye-witnesses – as yet another atrocity propaganda campaign falls apart. Warning: potential triggering or distressing content
The outraged reaction of the family of an alleged ‘Hamas rape’ victim to a newspaper’s con is just one of the ways in which the ‘Hamas rape’ narrative now being pushed hard by the Israeli regime and its apologists has fallen apart hard – like every other piece of atrocity propaganda Israel has tried to use so far to justify its genocide in Gaza.
The New York Times has published an article claiming to have evidence of the weaponisation of rape by Hamas during the 7 October raid, but the centrepiece of its claims was supposed ‘evidence’ that Israeli woman Gal Abdush was raped and murdered by Hamas fighters, quoting extensively from an interview with her family.
But her family has furiously insisted that there is no evidence that Ms Abdush was raped – and slammed the paper for misleading and manipulating them by telling them the interview was for a memorial about her and her husband and not mentioning anything about rape.
Speak Up, which fights violence against women, condemned the NYT investigation as ‘disgraceful’ ‘weaponisation’ of sexual violence for propaganda
The family – who appear to be hardline right-wingers perfectly prepared to propagate the already-discredited Israeli lines about beheadings and dismemberments, and therefore not inclined to discredit the rape report out of support for Palestinians – responded after the article was published. They pointed out, among other things, that there were only a few minutes passed between one message from their sister’s husband that they were at the Gaza border and another saying she had been shot – no time for the rape claimed by Israeli authorities and the NYT:
Gal Abdush’s family’s statement (translation by David Sheen and Electronic Intifada)
In fact, the family’s comment – though they don’t seem to have joined the dots – suggests that Ms Abdush and her husband were killed by Israeli forces determined, under the ‘Hannibal directive‘ of killing potential hostages rather than allowing them to be taken, since ‘at the border’ the Hamas fighters would only have been interested in getting them into captivity – and Hamas had no weapons capable of leaving bodies ‘totally burned’, while Israeli planes and helicopter gunships armed with missiles did and it is now well known in Israel, if ignored by UK and US media, that IDF forces killed Israelis in their determination to eliminate Hamas fighters holding them.
Another element of the atrocity propaganda to collapse are the lurid tales from supposed eye-witnesses who claimed that Hamas fighters – while trying to flee with their captives or fight Israeli troops – stopped to rape and dismember a woman and play catch with her body parts.
The ‘eyewitnesses’ have changed their stories. One was interviewed earlier and neglected to mention the claims of beheadings and games; another – coincidentally an Israeli ‘security consultant’ – had earlier admitted that he saw nothing because he was hiding with his head down the whole time, yet now claims he saw the same as the other witness.
Haaretz, 8 Nov 2023
Not only that, but Israeli lists of victims and their means of death do not claim to have found people at the site in question who had been beheaded or mutilated.
Another ‘eyewitness’ to a different supposed rape, Raz Cohen, happens to have recently been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, training DRC soldiers. While he claims to have seen the rape and to be haunted by the victim’s ‘screams without words’, shortly after the Hamas raid he filmed himself talking about the incident and published it on TikTok – where he seems upbeat and doesn’t mention any of the claims now attributed to him. Journalist Max Blumenthal analysed the changes in Cohen’s testimony:
While much of the NYT “mass Hamas rape” report relies on innuendo, it also purports to contain several credible eyewitness testimonies. One was delivered by a survivor of the Nova electronic music festival named Raz Cohen, who also happens to be an Israeli special forces vet who trains Congolese soldiers. Since his first interview on October 9, Cohen has altered his testimony several times.
Cohen told the NYT he personally witnessed a white van filled with Hamas militants pull up a mile from the Nova music festival, gather over a woman, and gang rape her: “I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.” He said they then butchered the woman with knives.
When Cohen was interviewed on October 9 about the attack on the music festival, however, he did not mention any act of sexual assault committed by Hamas militants. See here: https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/sta… And here: http://tiktok.com/@lior.shapira9…
A day later, Cohen began to introduce vague suggestions of sexual assault into his testimony, but did not indicate that he witnessed any such acts taking place. “The terrorists captured women and hurt them in any way possible, and when they were done with them, they started butchering them in front of their friends,” Cohen told an Israeli publication: http://ashkelnayes.co.il/%D7%97%D7%A8%D…
Cohen was also interviewed by Canada’s CBC on October 10, but was not quoted about witnessing any rape: http://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/20…
The same day, Cohen offered lurid new details to PBS, claiming that “the terrorists” not only slaughtered women after raping them on October 7, but engaged in necrophilia as well: “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed — and after they raped, they — they did that.” http://pbs.org/newshour/show/…
Testimony he provided to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on October 11 differed slightly, and remained vague: “We see from there a lot of people and girls screaming and murdered by knives. And the girls, the terrorists rape them,” he stated abruptly and without apparent emotion. http://tiktok.com/@abcnewsaus/vi…
By this point, no Israeli media had reported that any rapes occurred on October 7. Cohen quickly fell off the media’s radar. He would not be heard from for over two months, when the Israeli government launched an international propaganda campaign accusing Hamas of mass rape in a transparent bid to maintain international support for its genocidal military assault on Gaza.
At this point, when the NY Times’ Jeffrey @gettleman interviewed Cohen, likely reaching him with assistance from the Israeli government, the “IDF” special forces soldier summoned for the first time a vivid account of a shocking gang rape on October 7.
How and why did Cohen’s story transform so dramatically over time, providing explosive new details at a moment of political urgency for the army in which he served? Was it plausible that a group of hardened Hamas commandoes suddenly paused their surprise attack, which was focused on taking as many captives as quickly as possible, stood in a circle and gang raped a woman, one after another, while Israeli forces mobilized to attack them?
Why did Hamas militants use knives to kill their victims, as Cohen alleged, when they carried rifles and grenades? Why did he drop his earlier allegation of necrophilia when speaking to the Times? And why did he mention seeing “a lot of people and girls” being raped to the ABC on October 11, but alter his testimony to refer specifically to a single female victim when interviewed by the Times?
Perhaps most importantly, why did Cohen’s friend, Shoam Gueta, who took shelter with him on October 7, not describe witnessing a gang rape when interviewed by the Times?
In his very first interview, with a US news station only two days after the Hamas raid, Cohen appeared mostly relaxed – and didn’t mention anyone being raped, as this clip aired recently on Grayzone shows:
Other Israeli mouthpieces have tried to bypass the eyewitnesses altogether, claiming it would be wrong to expect eyewitnesses to come forward and that ‘the corpses tell the story’. But they don’t, because the bodies were buried without evidence being taken, using Jewish burial practices to justify the failure to collect evidence – just as the huge number of cars incinerated by weapons Hamas does not possess were scrapped and buried without collecting evidence. Not one piece of actual evidence appears to have been put forward by Israel, yet the atrocity propaganda continues to be repeated by the so-called ‘mainstream’.
Yet again, Israel’s attempts to demonise Palestinian resistance to justify genocide have fallen apart under scrutiny – scrutiny that the so-called ‘mainstream’ press and broadcasters are simply not doing, or even reporting facts that media in Israel have already acknowledged, such as the mass killing of Israelis during the raid by Israeli media.
For full analysis and more video highlighting the collapse of yet another Israeli atrocity propaganda narrative, watch this video by Electronic Intifada and this by Grayzone.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
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Exclusive: police try to gag Greenstein, invade privacy through bail conditions
Human rights activist arrested by anti-terror police for a single tweet faces censorship and snooping for speaking out against genocide
Image: S Walker
Brighton-based Jewish left-winger and human rights activist Tony Greenstein faces censorship and an assault on his privacy after he was arrested last week for a single tweet supporting Palestinian resistance in Gaza against Israeli genocide.
Greenstein was bailed until spring after a nine-hour detention and the confiscation of his electronics, but Skwawkbox understands that the bail conditions imposed upon him represent a severe invasion of his privacy and an assault on his freedom of speech:
- Greenstein must reside at his flat and sleep there every night – a significant issue when he has a son with special emotional needs living at a separate address
- He is banned from commenting on Twitter/X about Gaza and Palestine
- If he buys a new phone – his previous one remains with police – he must notify police of the phone number and also of the IMEI number of his handset
Phone manufacturer Blackview strongly recommends that anyone with a mobile phone keep their IMEI number – the unique 15-digit identifier of the physical handset – private and do not share it with anyone untrustworthy(!), because of the grave security risks, because possession of the IMEI allows a third party to:
- Track your phone. If your phone is stolen, the person who stole it can use your IMEI number to track your phone’s location [even if it is switched off or the SIM card is swapped]
- Block your phone from being used on a network. If you report your phone as stolen, your phone carrier can block your IMEI number from being used on their network. This will prevent the phone from being used to make calls, send text messages, or use the internet.
- Use your phone to commit fraud. Some criminals use stolen phones to commit fraud, such as making unauthorized calls or sending spam messages. They can also use your phone to access your personal information, such as your bank account details.
- Clone your phone. It is possible to clone a phone’s IMEI number. This means that the criminal can create a duplicate of your phone that has the same IMEI number. This can be used to commit fraud or to track your movements.
Of perhaps even greater concern is the ban on posts about Gaza and Palestine. As one of the UK’s most outspoken Jewish advocates of Palestinian rights and Israel advocates’ war on freedom of speech in the UK and elsewhere – and a fearless critic of Israel’s fake news and invented evidence used to justify its genocide in Gaza – Greenstein’s importance to the political debate is considerable – which may well be a contributing factor to his targeting by police, presumably acting on complaints from pro-Israel right-wingers.
Greenstein was given a suspended sentence in September after a farcical trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court in which he and fellow Palestine Action activists were convicted of criminal damage against Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit despite no damage being done, and so faces the imposition of that sentence if convicted of the latest accusation. The pro-Israel lobby, however, has no qualms about seeing troublesome opponents jailed for speaking out against mass murder and apartheid.
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Owen Jones finally felt shadowbanning. Others have been there a long time
Guardian journalist has put out a video about his shadowbanning by Facebook, with an appeal for funds – Skwawkbox and others have been on the sharp end of that since 2017
Guardian journalist Owen Jones has published a video complaining of being shadowbanned by Facebook since he started covering Israel’s genocide in Gaza – and saying that this sudden ‘falling off a cliff’ of his reach has never happened to him before, forcing people to have to click specifically onto his page to find anything. He accompanied his announcement with an appeal for donations.
This is happening to Jones now – but it has been happening to Skwawkbox for more than five years, when the social media companies attacked Skwawkbox and other new left media after Jeremy Corbyn came within an inch of government. This site was also targeted by tech attacks to try to prevent followers accessing its content.
The shadowban is still happening, Skwawkbox regularly receives messages like this:
Jones’s output on Gaza has been decent and nobody should be shadowbanned – but as he noted himself, it has never happened to him before. In the days of his flipflopping over Corbyn – including in the run-up to the 2017 general election – perhaps he wasn’t inconveniencing the Establishment seriously enough.
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