Breitbart Reports on My Shadowban

Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari reports on Twitter’s ongoing shadowban of my account:

There have been widespread reports that Brian Niemeier, a Hugo Award-nominated sci-fi author, has been “shadowbanned” on Twitter, with his tweets no longer appearing in peoples’ notifications or feeds.

According to Niemeier, his followers are reporting that “they aren’t getting notifications when I retweet or reply to them. People also aren’t being notified when I follow them.” One user also reported that “he can’t even follow conversations since my tweets don’t show up.”

Niemeier agreed to carry out a test, in which I tweeted him to see if his replies showed up on my feed or in my notifications. They didn’t. Instead, I could only view the author’s replies to my tweet by navigating to his profile and scrolling down his feed.

The mysterious disappearance of an author’s tweets, especially an author affiliated with the Sad Puppies, is another source of concern for those worried about Twitter’s descent into partisan bias. With the recent suspension of Milo Yiannopoulos from the platform, and the campaign to get him reinstated, Twitter is now facing yet more allegations that it is censoring opponents of social justice warriors.

We have reached out to Twitter for comment.

As other commenters have pointed out, Sony likely had a monetary interest in silencing Milo, whereas my shadowban can only be ideologically motivated.

I’m not angry at Twitter, though. The shadowban has been demonstrably good for my blog traffic and book sales.

As people like Milo, and to a far lesser extent, myself, are proving, getting censored by Twitter is becoming a new way for writers to break out. It’s already helped my career more than signing with a Big Five publisher would have.