X bans account promoting a forthcoming documentary about FBI’s role in Whitmer ‘kidnapping plot’
[Note: The following was originally published on the Decensored News website on Sunday night. The account in question has now been restored after significant outcry, and without explanation. This team’s investigative work seems worth learning about and keeping an eye on regardless. Likewise for the broader trend of censorship on X that’s discussed and documented in this article.]
In yet another example of how alleged “free speech” platform X (formerly Twitter) is anything but, a small team of independent documentary filmmakers have had their account “permanently” suspended this week as they prepare to release a documentary that they’ve been working on for over a year.
The topic: The 2020 “plot to kidnap and kill” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and the FBI’s extensive involvement therein.
Here’s the trailer:
The account was set up to promote the film, entitled Kidnap and Kill: An FBI Terror Plot, 14 months ago, in January of 2023.
“I paid for the account for over a year and even paid to promote the trailer on X buying twitter ads,” said director Christina Urso (also known as
) in a post on Saturday.“No email – nothing saying we violated TOS. We only used it to promote the trailer for the documentary.”
A screenshot of the now-banned @KandKFilm account as of May of 2023 confirms the account’s creation date and paid status:
It’s now been completely wiped out, and replaced with a vague message that says, “Account suspended… X suspends accounts that violate the X Rules.”
“They are saying ‘after a careful review,’ of the account which violated no rules they are totally deleting and censoring it,” notes Urso.
“This was not an ‘accident,’ it wasn’t the algorithm making a mistake. Someone [CHOSE] to censor it.”
The most careful of review processes
As another example of just how “careful” (i.e., farcical) X’s alleged “review” process is:
A few weeks, ago the Decensored News account was hit with two sensitive content warnings.
The “sensitive” material?
1. A post from 4 weeks earlier criticizing Rep. Ro Khanna and quoting the AP/NPR
2. A post that’s literally just 3 screenshots of a Reuters article and a link to that article (Topic: Undercover Israeli troops assassinating someone in a hospital in 2015)
X said: “…if you think we flagged your post by mistake, you can appeal the warning by clicking on each post.”
Clicking the Khanna one yielded an error message: “This page is down.”
Clicking the second one did indeed open up an appeal form, allowing us to explicitly tell them the same thing you just saw and read above: “This is literally just three screenshots of a Reuters article and a link to that article.”
An hour or two later, their “careful review” process was complete, and the results were in:
A pattern of deliberate censorship
“In order to really build trust, you have to have transparency,” said Elon Musk—then CEO of Twitter and now executive chairman and CTO of X—in April of 2023.
“It can’t be that here’s this black box, something’s happening in here, we won’t tell you what it is, trust us. I think that’s BS.”
Except that’s pretty much exactly how their moderation and “review process” works, as seen in the examples above.
As anyone who has followed our reporting since Musk originally took over as CEO of the platform in late 2022 knows, these are not isolated incidents.
Despite his frequent platitudes about free speech, he made it clear from early on that he planned to “max deboost” (censor) content that was “negative” or “hate[ful]”—an absurdly vague standard that the company has selectively enforced ever since.
This has included, for instance:
Suspending a prominent Elon Musk and Tesla critic who was using FOIA requests to make court filings and public records easily searchable, some of which “revealed details about Tesla’s troubles and tactics.”
Suspending a video editor who makes informative music videos about Musk, Gates, Thiel, Wexner, Nygard, Savile, Operation Northwoods, PNAC, DARPA, and many other subjects
A search ban and shadowban on journalist Matt Taibbi’s account after Musk essentially accused him of disloyalty to Twitter
Censoring hundreds of tweets in Turkey at the behest of the Turkish government one day before a major national election
A partial search ban on Gab CEO Andrew Torba’s account after he debunked Musk’s attempts at justifying the Turkish censorship
Repeatedly shadow-banning Decensored News and others
Deterring people from visiting sites with incriminating information about the Israeli government with a vague “link may be unsafe” warning, including an investigative report by popular Israeli news outlet YNet
Suppressing posts by an American journalist doing on the ground reporting from the West Bank
Suppressing a post/video criticizing the US State Department with a bogus “sensitive content” warning, seemingly because the State Department spokesperson was tagged
Suppressing posts asking big influencers about speech suppression on X
Locking radio host and political commentator Garland Nixon out of his account indefinitely
Suspending Alan MacLeod, Ken Klipperstein, “Zei Squirrel,” and numerous other high profile critics of Musk, Israel, and US foreign policy, then quietly reinstating them after many users protested.
As another recent example, journalist
was suspended from the platform just a few weeks ago:
After a fairly substantial amount of pushback, X “clarified” that his suspension will expire in May, after an arbitrary three month period, while once again citing vague alleged “violations” of the Terms of Service.
Klarenberg’s suspension came just two days after Maram Susli (aka “Syrian Girl”), another prominent critic of US foreign policy and Israel, was locked out of her account.
“You will be next”
Time will tell if the “permanent” suspension (“after careful review”!) of the Kidnap and Kill account sticks, or if it’s ultimately overturned. In this selectively-enforced system, it usually comes down to how much of an outcry one can elicit from other users.
For her part, Urso has been trying to draw attention to her situation for the past 48 hours, with mixed success.
“To everyone helping us try to get answers on the preemptive censorship by X of our documentary film on the Gov. Whitmer Fednapping hoax, thank you for fighting for us,” she wrote on Sunday.
“To the journalists, content creators, and fellow film makers who have been silent – you will be next eventually.”
Update (3/11/24): X has now restored the account with no explanation:
For more reporting like this, please follow Decensored News on your favorite social media platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack. Image credit: Tony Webster (CC BY 2.0). Modified from the original.
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