Posted on 07/31/2018 10:33:48 AM PDT by Starman417
Twitter, like its Facebook cousin, now claims to have “fixed” the “error” involving the failure of prominent conservatives such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to not appear in Twitter’s search box and denies it engages in the practice known as “shadow banning”:
Twitter has denied shadowbanning, saying that the apparent suppression of autocomplete search suggestions for Republican congressman Matt Gaetz is an “error.”A Twitter spokeswoman denied shadowbanning exists, and told Breitbart News that the issue with Matt Gaetz’s search results is being fixed:Yes, Virginia, shadow banning exists as Twitter plays “trick or tweet”with conservatives. As a shadow banned Twitter user, I have seen my tweets suddenly become “unavailable”, followers suddenly “unfollow” en masse, Twitter analytics stats suddenly flat line and set to zero, and attached photos or explanatory graphics suddenly become “unavailable”. If you are a prolific Twitter conservative, you will be accused of “automated” behavior and have your account locked or even suspended. Once I was suspended for “aggressive following behavior” just for following all conservative accounts Twitter suggested I should follow.As we have said before, we do not shadowban. We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box, and [are] shipping a change to address this. The profiles, Tweets and discussions about these accounts do appear when you search for them.
Users on Twitter have the option of “blocking” accounts they do not wish to hear from or find offensive. Liberals intent on shutting down debate on Twitter, just like they have done at major universities, find a willing accomplice in Twitter’s algorithms, enabling them to get Twitter to do their dirty work. As Jim Hanson writes at Fox News Opinion:
When I check I often find that a user who has blocked me is someone I have never interacted with. So why the block? Often, it’s due to being on a block list created by a liberal activist group. Twitter supports block lists and makes it easy for users to mass-block entire universes of people they don’t even know.Shadow banning takes many forms and, as social media icons Diamond and Silk can attest, is only “fixed” when prominent names get caught up in the censorship. Tens of thousands of not-so-famous conservatives on Twitter and Facebook can attest to disappearing tweets, mysteriously static or dwindling follower and friend numbers and the uncertainty that once a tweet or post is made if anybody is allowed to see them.But Twitter now uses factors such as the number of people who have blocked an account to determine whether to classify it as “low quality” content. The company also uses the number of complaints or reports on the account. If the number of these exceeds certain thresholds, an account can be deemed low quality and access to tweets from that user are severely diminished.
The “error” affecting conservative lawmakers such as Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, and Devin Nunes appears to be in retaliation for the increased focus on the censorship of conservatives by social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook:
Twitter’s censorship goes beyond just targeting pro-Trump accounts, they are now actually targeting lawmakers who support the President.Coincidence? I think not. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams has apologized for any role Twitter may have had in President Trump’s victory and accumulating evidence suggests that ever since Twitter has been trying to make amends:Last week, Rep. Gaetz shredded Twitter during a hearing about the censorship of conservatives on social media in the House Judiciary Committee. So now he’s wondering if this is why the social media giant moved to shadowban his account.
Gaetz tweeted: BREAKING: @Twitter deliberately targeting @RepMarkMeadows, @Jim_Jordan, @DevinNunes, & me to be #Shadowbanned.
Is it only a coincidence that these allegations would arise the week following my heated exchange with Twitter Executives before the Judiciary Committee??
(Excerpt) Read more at Floppingaces.net...
LOL.
I first noticed Twitter was doing this... FOUR years ago.
Their first victim was Sarah Palin.
All the Palinistas’ tweets were shadow banned from one another as well, even in our own timelines.
Palin should sue the stuffing out of them for misrepresenting their “product” and lack of our consent as users.
Totalitarian propagandists.
They probably just call it something else.
I am sure they are technically not lying, they have their own internal term for shadwobanning.
Let’s see what Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has to say when he’s hauled in front of Congress—or even worse the Federal Trade Commission.
it is fraud.
they are lying about their service.
Class action
Once it gets proven, you can talk about a class action suit and their stock price will tumble (today at 32.02). You could be looking at a stock in the $18 range in eight months.
Now, if this were me and I just felt an urge to do it...I’d go and stage a ‘put’ on the stock (betting that it’ll drop in six months). I’m not going out to suggest this, but it wouldn’t take very much to stage a court action and say they invented a fraud out of thin air.
It’s getting more and more ridiculous that the supposedly free-market oriented right has not stood up an alternative to Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Instagram/etc.
"...shadow banning..."
Given how Twitter’s stock is performing I would say the shadow banning is Twitter’s revenge upon itself.
[It’s getting more and more ridiculous that the supposedly free-market oriented right has not stood up an alternative to Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Instagram/etc.]
The free-market oriented right is creating such alternatives. So many of the people I follow on Twitter and YouTube have set up presences on alt-tech platforms (to use during the times they get suspended or banned) that I have to maintain a spreadsheet to keep track of them.
The first problem that alt-tech faces is that when someone gets banned from Twitter or YouTube and has to move to Gab or BitChute, their potential audience drops by a factor of several thousand; and no one will hear them but their die-hard fans. The second problem is that the big-tech companies are natural monopolies and unless they screw up badly enough to kill themselves, they won't be unseated. That, however, may be happening now.
What twitter does not seem to understand is that its revenue will drop to zero the instant Trump chooses something else to tweet on
It would be more of a situation where Twitterers were used as a guinea pigs, without consent, while Twitter capitalized on our data for commercial reasons, and did not disclose that they were purposely politicizing the site for their political biases.
In other words, Twitter sees itself like an interactive Polling service, without giving users the understanding of what they are doing with our data.
Amen.
I’ve tried gab, but it isn’t very user friendly
"...www.Gab.ai..."
I would agree with that, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Barring that we have to get viable alternatives.
That’s great and I have an account there, but this problem probably needs a big high profile solution starting with a massive amount of capital.
Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has reported variations of this, such as shadow banning a fraction of his tweets but not to the same people each time. (They say they blasted it by a third to half don’t see it.)
Another tactic is the false notice “this attachment is not available” though you can see the attachment if you click that notice.
They are intentionally setting up hurdles to limit distribution of conservative content.
We either need to break them up as a monopoly or regulate them as a utility.
Big tech is so big that they control the public square and so bigoted that they are systematically oppressing everyone except the far left.
Exactly. We have the numbers and this is all done to prevent us from organizing, even if only in philosophical solidarity on Twitter.
They hate it that we are in the majority and they are in the very small, albeit controlling and deceitful, minority.
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