Posted on 07/26/2018 9:23:45 AM PDT by Red Badger
Twitter is "shadow banning" elected Republican Party representatives and spokespersons on top of tons of prominent right-wing voices, but no prominent Democrats are being similarly censored according to a new report from VICE.
VICE reports:
Twitter is limiting the visibility of prominent Republicans in search results -- a technique known as "shadow banning" -- in what it says is a side effect of its attempts to improve the quality of discourse on the platform.
The Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel, several conservative Republican congressmen, and Donald Trump Jr.'s spokesman no longer appear in the auto-populated drop-down search box on Twitter, VICE News has learned. It's a shift that diminishes their reach on the platform -- and it's the same one being deployed against prominent racists to limit their visibility. The profiles continue to appear when conducting a full search, but not in the more convenient and visible drop-down bar. (The accounts appear to also populate if you already follow the person.)
Democrats are not being "shadow banned" in the same way, according to a VICE News review. McDaniel's counterpart, Democratic Party chair Tom Perez, and liberal members of Congress -- including Reps. Maxine Waters, Joe Kennedy III, Keith Ellison, and Mark Pocan -- all continue to appear in drop-down search results. Not a single member of the 78-person Progressive Caucus faces the same situation in Twitter's search.
"The notion that social media companies would suppress certain political points of view should concern every American," McDaniel told VICE News in a statement. "Twitter owes the public answers to what's really going on."
Presented with screenshots of the searches, a Twitter spokesperson told VICE News: "We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box and shipping a change to address this." Asked why only conservative Republicans appear to be affected and not liberal Democrats, the spokesperson wrote: "I'd emphasize that our technology is based on account *behavior* not the content of Tweets."
[...]Type in the names of McDaniel, conservative members of Congress like Reps. Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz, and Trump Jr.'s spokesman Andrew Surabian, for example, and Twitter's drop-down search bar does not show their profiles. The search menu also does not display the verified profile of Rep. Devin Nunes of California, only his unverified one that he seldom uses to post.
Kooks run twitter so more Kooks.
SO...liberals are opposite of tolerating viewpoints which are different than their own.
Yup.
Anyone on the other side shadow banned?
Didn't think so...
Nope..................
This is really serious stuff. Like it or not, social media is the communication tool of the future and Twitter is an industry leader.
They all intend to silence conservative speech. Censorship is one of their main weapons, one they pull out instinctively, so they are really good at it. It’s in their DNA. If we do not fight this war vigilantly, we will be at a huge disadvantage going forward.
Okay, so now we all know it’s happening. Now what?
This is a private company, they don’t have to be fair or open. This is not news to anyone who’s been paying attention.
Unless Twitter and Facebook are receiving special tax treatment from the Government, there is not very much that can be done, outside of public shaming.
Public shaming only works when the guilty party has some sense of shame or guilt.
Neither exists in this case. They sincerely, do not give a F if conservatives use Twitter or not. Ask them. They are not like most of us. Am I missing some other form of leverage?
None of them matter much, but the shadow bans on many outspoken pro-Trump conservative analysts and thought-leaders on Twitter is what’s concerning. It’s like putting a muzzle on Hannity or Lou Dobbs vs. Shep Smith.
#JachbootDorsey
Those sniveling little trendies need their financial nuts cut off.
Now that’s leverage!
Our only weapon, one that can cut very deeply.
A publicly traded company has to have a good business persona or people won’t buy their stock............................
Note the hit it took a 10 am.
That was Trump...............
I have heard that, in addition to blocking "right-wing" videos, YouTube has also blocked parodies of "right-wing" videos that were created by leftists. This suggests that their censoring is being done by AI that is being fooled because of Poe's Law.
Interfering in time to affect the election.
Go after them per FCC regulations. If you’re a utility, you have to provide service to all, especially political figures.
If you’re a neutral internet service provider, you don’t get to pick and choose who you filter - freedom from liability only applies if everyone is free to USE the site. Censor content, and you can be sued for what you do and don’t censor.
BOOM!
If it can be proven that these leftist nut jobs who shoot people with differing political views (congressional baseball shooting/BLM Dallas shooter/etc...) subscribe to or follow other lunatics on Twitter who advocate violence then there is a case to be made that Twitter is COMPLICIT in the act. If they are providing a monitored, edited and curated platform for a specific type of belief system (non-conservative) and that specifically monitored, edited, and curated platform entices some of the users to violence then they need to be held to account.
It would be no different than if there was a Neo-Nazi magazine with a "letters to the editor" section that contained calls to violence against minorities. If a regular subscriber were to act on these calls to violence and it could be proven that they were influenced by what they read, the magazine would be held accountable. Several Neo-Nazi organizations were shut down in the 80's and 90's for just this sort of thing.
And if after these shooting, Twitter is taking down the perp's pages and erasing their posts, that is obviously evidence tampering and an attempt to cover up Twitter's complicity in the act.
[ Presented with screenshots of the searches, a Twitter spokesperson told VICE News: “We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box and shipping a change to address this.” Asked why only conservative Republicans appear to be affected and not liberal Democrats, the spokesperson wrote: “I’d emphasize that our technology is based on account *behavior* not the content of Tweets.” ]
Liberals have absolutely no problem in lying to protect or hide their agendas. Right to your face. Just like Barack Hussein Obama.
[and an attempt to cover up Twitter’s complicity in the act]
Yes, it’s quite obvious.
What about having to five equal amount of time when it comes to politicians?
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