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UPDATED 09/12/2020 SEE BELOW - Twitter, has got to be said, is less and less a platform for public debate, and more and more a media outlet with a unique editorial line. Whatever makes Jack tick, or takes his fancy, that's what goes. In the mold of Facebook, where the other idiot reigns, Twitter's Terms of Service (ToS) are vague enough to give plenty of subjective room to Twitter's bots to decide what can and can't be posted in the platform. In the last week this site's Twitter account (@infodi0) has been locked three times. The first for posting names and IDs of El Safadi brothers (associates of narcos), which anyone can find in Venezuela's public electoral roll; the second for posting -last December- an open invitation to Rafael Ramirez for an interview, either in the UK -given his use of UK mobile numbers-, or in Rome -where he lives in a flat bought by one of his partners in crime; and the third was posting a thread about Jon Urruzuno, a UBS "banker" from Venezuela, who actively participated in money laundering in connection to Ramirez criminal clan, and shut his @jurruzuno Twitter account when we exposed him!
Twitter does not give its users any viable options to dispute its ludicrous editorial decisions. Once the block is imposed, good luck challenging it and getting any sort of reply / explanation. Once a block is imposed, Twitter's expectation is that user will delete very quickly the "ofending" tweet that caused someone to complain somewhere.
Venezuelan thugs, and their community managers, have noticed that Twitter's phenomenal censorship tools (ToS) are way more effective -with respect to this site's work at least- than hacking, DDoS attacks, lawsuit threats, break ins, etc. All that is needed to eliminate from Twitter legitimate and publicly sourced information about corruption is, simply, to file a complaint -however baseless- about private personal information having been posted by a user, and that's it: summary and immediate deletion of information, followed by block, which if challenged will not be answered or resolved, and the real possibility of permanent suspension (as Twitter did with my verified @alekboyd account in August 2019 following a completely false claim from 'ambassador' Vanessa Neumann).
We have been wondering how many platforms of independent investigative journalism get the sort of treatment that Twitter dispenses to us. Within Venezuela's context, this site is unique in level, periodicity, and method of attacks it gets. This, we believe, is probably due to this site's target audience and readership: U.S. federal agencies and, increasingly, banks compliance departments. We see in our stats how most of the world's top banks keep on reading and researching Venezuelans that have either been already onboarded or about to, and we can infer this is generating no small amount of headaches to chavistas / facilitators wanting to launder ill gotten proceeds. Hence how relentless attempts to silence us have become.
Earlier this year, after a massive DDoS attack that crippled not only this site's server but many more, we were asked to leave by one of the largest webhosting companies in the world. We managed to remain online thanks to the amazing work of some extraordinary people. Alas platforms that are meant to help spread critical information about corruption, like Twitter, are becoming part of the censorship arsenal used by the thugs we expose. It is quite difficult to keep up with this battery, and we would like to ask our readers to keep reading and, if possible, to help spread what we publish here.
We will slowly phase out use of Twitter altogether, as it has become very difficult to tolerate its whimsical censorship, though there's a huge amount that we have in the pipeline, and 2021 promises to be very fruitful. Best support that can be given to Venezuela, in our opinion, is to visit this site and help popularise well sourced, investigative stories about those who brought the country to its current state, for the corrupt need to be fought as relentlessly as they try to hide their criminal deeds.
UPDATE 09/12/2020:
@jack's army of @twitter bots continue waging war against this site, not on doxing, but on common sense. Today's Exhibit 1 (below) is a demand to delete a tweet about misappropriation and misuse of Americans taxpayers money administered by USAID. The background story is here. In short, Yon Goicoechea, an utterly corrupt Venezuelan politician, used an NGO he controls to get USAID funds earmarked for humanitarian aid. No one knows, because Venezuelan politicos are completely unaccountable, what the funds were spent on.
Exhibit 2, another demand today, was related to Luis and Ignacio Oberto Anselmi, Rafael Ramirez, Nervis Villalobos, PDVSA, Banco Espirito Santo, EFG Bank, Compagnie Bancaire Helvetique, and a truly spectacular array of the worst thugs Venezuela and other latitudes have produced, in a $4.25 billion money laundering scheme, currently under criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Swiss law enforcement.
Exhibit 3 is the best from today's set. It is related to Victor Vargas, a true maverick of Venezuelan corruption. Vargas, basically made away with $900 million worth of depositors money. Curaçao's Supreme Court found against him. Well, @jack's not having it...
