Originally posted at ILGunRights.com.  Used with permission.

Anti-2nd-Amendment Advocates have, since the very beginning, done nothing but search for underhanded ways to fight against the Gun Rights movement.  It’s not a surprise, then, that they’ve found a way to utilize technology in order to silence the voice of the pro-gun world, and limit, or in many cases, even block out completely, the voices of 2nd-Amendment Advocates.

Introducing WOT.  It stands for Web Of Trust.  Basically, WOT is a free tool that you can download for your web browser that tells you which websites you can trust – and more importantly – allows you to vote any website you choose to visit as trustworthy or suspicious or not trustworthy.  The approach to WOT, originally, was that a community of like-minded individuals could be used to rate the internet in terms of safety, so that other users wouldn’t inadvertently click on a link and download a virus.  (basically…)

But, as usual, some people come along and screw up a good thing.  We’ve all seen how fickle the internet can be – and we all know what the mob mentality looks like.  So it should come as no surprise that when a bunch of like-minded individuals get their hands on a tool like WOT, they’re going to use it similarly.

And use it similarly they have.  But before we get to those examples, and how to fix it, let’s see “why” this is important.  Insert Social media giant: Facebook

Today the WOT team is giddy with excitement to announce a major cooperation with Facebook, the daddy of all social networking platforms. After nearly a year of meeting, talking about and testing WOT data, Facebook has integrated WOT’s community-powered reputation ratings into their security system to provide extra protection for their 500 million plus users.

And since Facebook is open & honest about filtering content with complex algorithms to “reduce the spread of” what Facebook considers to be “low quality content”, and we know that WOT scores are one rating in that determination that web authors have very little control over, we arrive at the core of this underhanded censorship issue.

What does all of this mean?

Simple:  A website with a “low” rating gets less exposure.  A website with a “not trustworthy” rating gets NO exposure.  So – anti-gunners are attacking pro-gun pages with WOT and pro-gun Facebook pages are absolutely feeling the sting.  There is no oversight.  There are no watchers.  A small group of active WOT raters can stifle an entire webpage, completely cutting it off from delivery on Facebook.

One of my favorite sites of all time, GunsSaveLife.com, has felt the sting.  I had a conversation with a member of of Guns Save Life where he had informed me that they’ve noticed a significant decrease in hits to their website from the Social media giant in the last 4-5 years, which makes complete sense.

Facebook partnered with WOT back in 2011 and, as many Facebook Page owners will tell you – back in those days, organic reach was marvelous.  Today is quite a bit more stifled by comparison, but even so, to notice a significant drop in web clicks is not without reason – and while WOT rating may not be the sole indicator of a drop (other factors from changes at Facebook HQ should be taken into consideration) still, the anti-gunners have selected GSL’s own website as one of their targets.

But it’s not just social media.  Plenty of entities are utilizing WOT to limit user exposure to dangerous sites.  Which is fine & dandy, but this is a tool being used by ideologues to limit the spread of information.  So this form of censorship can spread far beyond Social Media, according to WOT its self:

WOT reputation ratings are used by a variety of companies like search engines, browsers, advertising platforms and security services, but Facebook is the first social networking platform to integrate WOT data into their safety system.

And as far as stopping abuse, WOT has merely paid the idea some basic lip service.  Attempts to fight against abuse with WOT always end in failure, despite clear, obvious infractions of WOT policy, such as these, which appear on the site conservativepost.com:

Despite WOT’s claim to encourage fair ratings practices, with their terms

Be tolerant with others’ opinions
WOT is a multicultural community where religions, politics and world views may vary. Please keep this in mind when rating, commenting, and interacting with other users and site owners.

There is still a remarkable amount of abuse that violates just about every one of their “guidelines” for usage, but WOT remains “neutral” and refuses to reverse the politically motivated ratings.  One need no better example than to look at the scorecard of the National Rifle Association to see just how this tool is being exploited to try and silence political opponents…here’s a small sampling of those types of examples:

I Get It!  But How Can I Help Fight Back?

Fighting back is actually quite simple.  But you have to keep one thing in mind:  WOT treats ratings very similarly to Yelp.com.  You can’t just go give one or two different sites a good rating and be done if you want your votes to count.  You have to engage in many votes, over a period of time, before their servers begin calculating your opinions into the equation.  So if you want to really help have an impact, you’re in this for the long haul.  To begin:

Download the WOT extension for your particular web browser.  You can click here to view a list of compatible browsers and download the plugin for your particular browser of choice.  I use Google Chrome.

And since I understand some can be leery that something like WOT is not even affiliated with Facebook, but you can confirm the partnership here.  WOT is legitimate – and it IS being exploited by leftists as a tool to stifle the voices of their political opponents, including but not limited to:  2nd Amendment Advocates.

Next:  Watch this video.  It gives you an overview of how the plugin works and how you should use it.

Now – you just start using it on every website you visit.  The goal is for all trustworthy sites to display a dark green circle.  Light green, yellow, orange, and red are the ones under attack.  I would like to throw in one final request, however:

Please do not sink to the level of a leftist.  Don’t go downvote leftist websites, and don’t “upvote” dangerous websites that might have opinions you agree with.  Lets be honest, some websites host malware, spyware, and all kinds of nasty stuff, and use headline tricks to draw people in.

If a site is already rated red, you should proceed cautiously.  The point of THIS informational post is to serve as a trumpet to fight back against political censorship.  Lets not act like them.  Let’s be dignified & honest in our approach.

Here’s a few pro-gun sites that have ratings deemed “suspicious & be cautious”.  You can start with those and help boost their ratings where they belong.

Guns Save Life

Armed Females of America

Conservative Post

Useful Tip:  When you perform a Google Search using the browser that you have WOT installed on, the search results will all show you the WOT rating so that you do not have to “click” on each link to see if you need to provide a better rating.  Click here to view an example