A Video of Twitter Rolling Back Likes on a Covid Antijab Thread

The Many Ways Big Tech Manipulates You

I set up a twitter account in 2019, but never gained basically any followers. In retrospect that might have been a good thing, as Twitter, having brownlisted me, had no reason to kick me off for questioning “the narrative.” It wasn’t like there was anyone to see my posts anyways.

But there I noticed this thread this morning:

politicallyhomelesstoo @denHolisticmama

A 🧵regarding the news of the CDC’s new guidelines: In no particular order…: I was not allowed to volunteer at my kids’ schools for over a year because I wasn’t vaccinated.

Many of the stories of exclusion and othering of people over their personal medical choices were heartbreaking to read, so I scrolled far, far down, way past the popular posts, down to the people whose stories had zero or one or two likes. And then I noticed that about half of the time when I went to press the heart on the person’s reply, Twitter rolled back my like in front of my eyes. Hence me taking a video of it happening, though really the youtube clip I realize now is a bit blurry.

You can probably repeat the experiment yourself if you are still on twitter. Just find a popular thread that is against the Covid “vaccines,” or facemasks or digital IDs or whatever, and scroll down to replies that only have a few likes. See if they roll your heart emoji back in front of your eyes. It is not the first time I have seen it happening it’s just the first time I have caught it on video.

Of course downgrading likes on someone’s post has a chilling effect on many people’s willingness to speak up about this whole travesty. They think their opinion is unpopular and nobody agrees with them and thus discouraged either move onto inane subjects like kitten videos or get off of the platform all together. When combined with boosting posts that may be made by trolls or people who have a stake in the narrative, it shapes the perception of reality , moving the crowd in fanatical directions.

I have a lot of personal experience with what I call brownlisting across several different platforms. I think it is much more pervasive than blacklisting someone, which is usually reserved for people who already have large followings. That blatant act of censorship can backfire. But manipulating the algorithm to boost some people and make others unseen is more invisible, insidious and easy.

Many years ago I was at the height of my popularity on facebook. I could generate 100 likes for hastily snapped selfies or picture of the family and even would get dozens of likes for something as mundane as a photo of my lunch. My writing didn’t get as many likes or reads but I did pick up some fans who knew me growing up. During this time I shared an article from Natural News about how flu vaccines contained 50 times the safe limit for mercury in fish. It was one of Mike Adam’s best works where he had analyzed the contents of flu vaccine vials in his own laboratory to come to his conclusions. I waited a few days and the article still had zero likes.

I was at a point in popularity on Facebook then where I think I could have snapped a picture of my toilet or had my cat walk across the keyboard writing ljsdgvscx// as a status update and I still would have had several likes. I solved that mystery by checking my Facebook from my husband Oh’s phone, who was logged in under his account. My post about flu vaccines was not on my page from his account, even though it appeared on my screen. This is a grade A example of brownlisting content. Easy for them to do. Hard for you to see.

I want my books off of Amazon due to a similar practice. I had picked up some fans of my more autobiographical style of storytime with Amy works. Generally I got great reviews for them though I sometimes got legitimate criticism from family members for writing about private matters (oddly almost all of my vocal critics have died). I began sharing my partially finished works on Kindle Vella, which I like because it gives essentially free previews. I did this on substack, facebook and twitter (to my basically zero followers on the last one).

According to Amazon’s Vella metrics, I have had a TOTAL of 15 page views across 6 serial books in the past NINE months. I know that number is as fake as three dollar bill because A: I have substack metrics that indicate a few people clicked through to them during times when KDP Amazon said I had no page views B: I got royalties, albeit in very modest amounts, during times I supposedly had no page views and C: I had two or three private messages on facebook regarding my writing during times when I had no page views. Obviously the intent of the stats was to discourage me.

You have no likes. You have no followers. Nobody has read or cares what you think. This subject is off limits. But hey look over here!

It’s not just the laser pointer. It’s the digital brick wall.

Buy me a ko-fi