Posted on 04/08/2018 5:43:53 AM PDT by Michael van der Galien
With all the talk about Twitter shadow banning conservative commentators, National Review's Jim Geraghty wondered whether the social network also had the gall to go after conservative politicians. So he looked at the number of retweets and likes Senator Ted Cruz's tweets receive on average and compared them to California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris.
Harris has only half of Cruz's followers: 1.5 million versus 3.2 million. As such, you'd expect Cruz to be retweeted more often by his followers. Surprisingly, that's not the case. But that's not even the most shocking part. Look at the difference; it's gigantic.
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz has more than 3.2 million followers. You would figure that almost every tweet he wrote would get a significant reaction. And yet, as you scroll through his feed, you find most tweets he writes have, collectively, a few hundred retweets and likes at most. Just in the last few days: 259 retweets, 90 retweets, 62 retweets. Cruz’s most retweeted item in the past few days appears to have been retweeted 416 times.
California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris has 1.5 million followers, roughly half that of Cruz. But almost all of her tweets are shared at a rate three to four times, sometimes as much as forty times, as much as Cruz’s. Her most recent tweets have been retweeted 1,800 times, 1,300 times, 981 times, and 4,000 times.
The number of retweets Sen. Harris' tweets receive is more or less what you'd expect from a politician with 1.5 million followers. Sen. Cruz's stats, however, are extremely pathetic. He should get that number of retweets with a fraction of the followers he has, especially because his supporters tend to be as passionate as President Trump's.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Yes, as a matter of fact it is.
Posting on Twitter is activism. Posting on Free Republic is not.
Exactly!
Judging from posts here, far too many conservatives believe our message is best spread preaching to the choir on echo chamber websites that nobody has ever heard of.
Yes, Free Republic is fun but the real fight is on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Reddit. That's where people are.
Thanks for making my point.
While the left screams about Russian efforts to interfere with out elections, in part using Facebook, they actively support Facebook and Twitter silencing conservative voices.
Yeah, he should have simply tweeted the message.
Harris has better twitterbots
The human race is a massive collective organism, each one of us part of a neural network, influencing the biases of others (we’re each a neuron with connections to others). Restricting the voices of select people is a massive thought control mechanism. They’re literally shaping what influences people by controlling the messaging.
It is evil.
(You may think my neural network analogy is crazy but it is an accurate description of what is really the “war for your mind” - or soul.)
It is a perfect time for a new platform. Deal with the critical complaints of FB and Twitter and provide an ad driven platform with offshoot for people that want to argue about politics. I thought Reddit might be an option, but the censorship and banning their is worse than any of the other sites. Many subreddits ban people just for posting on pro Trump subs. The “news” and “politics” subs are worse than DU.
I suspect Lyn' Ted is upset because he is behind in whatever few polls are done, he is being incredibly outspent (and is still wasting money sending fund raising appeals to me and likely others who made the mistake of giving him money before Trump entered the race). I'd still like my money back or see it donated to a better cause than Lyn' Ted. In the interim, I get the satisfaction of seeing him spend a couple dollars each week or so sending me spam.
Not sure other options. Need one with infrastructure to handle volume, then open endorsement and participation by President Trump. He won't leave Facebook and Twitter, they are too good to him, but if he also jumps on another site, everyone will follow. (Tell me the day before so I can buy stock.)
Are we EVER going to get back to normal and knock off all this BS?? The country is in bad enough shape dealing with all the pukes in Congress without giving a darn who posts what and where - twitter or FB or whatever else is deemed “the thing to do” today. Everything posted is meant to get a negative reaction from others and stir up someone and that is just plain insanity. Is this what you want for our kids/grandkids futures? It IS NUTS! I don’t care if it’s the president or anyone else - it’s totally unnecessary. The old “I do it to keep in touch with my grandchildren” doesn’t work!
I’ve had my say...
“”isn’t that a form of reverse shadow-banning? “”
And can’t we get rid of the cutesy words/terms and get back to plain old English? Latching onto every popular term that comes along is another nutty idea..It catches and spreads like wildfire and it doesn’t make any sense.
“at home I keep it simple, FR and e-mail””
Same here - not even a cell phone to play with in waiting rooms and it sets me off to read about all this social media BS..and the trouble it causes. I can’t believe there are so many NEEDY people in our country. THIS IS what Rush has talked about many times...modern equivalent of “keeping up with the Jones’s.”
I have yet to figure out why tweets are typed out and then we have to see the gobbledygook tweet itself. Isn’t just printing it enough? Why do we have to see what it actually looks like? Who cares?
“”Define gobbledygook: wordy and generally unintelligible jargon””
“”language that is meaningless or is made unintelligible by excessive use of abstruse technical terms; nonsense.””
I lurk on some of the disqus news stories but some of those people have banned me. Pussies.
“”shadow-banned””
Another cutesy term - definition, please!
This is a war on conservatism. google, youtube, FB. They control a high percentage of the internet communications and they are banning and deleting conservative speech every day
They must be broken up like standard oil 100 years ago or apply free speech to their subscribers. I proposed FB slit into 3 pages. Social, religious, and political with no limits of the religious and social, but they don’t respond to my messages. If they apply these principles, I don’t care who owns the sights.
It is where the operator or moderators of a social media site don’t allow your posts to be seen by anyone, but you. You don’t get a notification so essentially you are in a double secret probationary read only status. Happens almost exclusively to conservatives. If one were to look at the President’s twitter feed, it appears there are many more people opposed than agreeing with what he says, through the effects of shadow banning.
“”double secret probationary read only status””
WOW - is that anything like a super duper decoder ring? I’m actually old enough to remember that for xx number of cereal box tops, you could send away for just about anything you desired. In fact, that made more sense than any of this does.
I appreciate your reply but it doesn’t change my mind about the insane practice of twitter or any social media to begin with. I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to look at the president’s twitter feed - nor the desire!
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