Conservatives skeptical of Twitters latest shadow-banning …

July 27, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) Twitter has released an official response to the latest round of shadow-banning allegations, but the statement has failed to impress conservative, Christian, and pro-life voices affected by the practice.

On Thursday, LifeSiteNews covered a Vice News report accusing the social media company of hiding the accounts of several prominent Republicans from its drop-down menu thats supposed to simplify searching for specific people. The victims Democratic counterparts did not appear to be affected. Twitter denied any political intent, and fixed the issue within a day.

Twitter has since published a blog post by Trust & Safety lead Vijaya Gadde and product lead Kayvon Beykpour, flatly denying that they engage in shadow-banning (the unofficial term for limiting a profiles visibility without notifying the profile holder).

The post explained that Twitter simply rank[s] tweets and search results to ensure content is immediately relevant and addresses bad-faith actors who intend to manipulate or detract from healthy conversation. The first two criteria for this process are relatively straightforward: the interests of the searcher and the popularity of particular tweets.

The third criterion, however, is much more subjective: assigning lower rankings based on whether a Twitter user intend[s] to manipulate or divide the conversation. Such tweets are determined based on whether an account appears to be a real person (as determined via email addresses, profile pictures, etc.), whom it follows and retweets, and how other accounts mute, follow, block, or retweet it.

As for the wrongly-affected Republicans, Twitter claims their disappearance from the drop-down search was an unintentional result of communities that try to boost each others presence on the platform through coordinated engagement.

We do not shadow ban, Gadde and Beykpour declared. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly dont shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.

Their explanation did not convince many conservatives, with many highlighting the more work to find them line for ridicule.

Twitters latest explanation for their algorithm amounts to bury[ing] Republicans for something totally out of their control, the Daily Callers Peter Hasson noted. Twitters algorithm likely suppressed the Republican congressmen because the wrong accounts engaged with theirs, they said.

At Breitbart, John Nolte wrote that Twitters explanation effectively admitted that, although you have gone to the trouble of following someones Twitter account, and have done so specifically because you want to read their tweets, Twitter is interfering in this process.

How are you supposed to know to look at somebodys profile to check on their tweets when Twitter is shadow banning their tweets, banning from your feed the tweets you specifically requested to see? he asked. How are you supposed to know you are missing what you cant see, what you dont even know is out there? How are you supposed to find new people to follow, expose yourself to new ideas?

Both Hasson and Nolte faulted Twitter for essentially playing a semantics game, avoiding the shadow-banning charge by defining shadow-banning more narrowly than it is commonly understood. Many observers agreed [language warning]:

This is far from the first allegation of political censorship to hit the social media platform, and in fact Twitter insiders have previously been caught on video admitting that they shadow-banned conservative users. Twitter insiders have also admitted to Congress to censoring hashtags of interest to conservatives during the 2016 election.

In addition, the company has attempted to block a number of pro-life advertisements, allows left-wing groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and pro-homosexual GLAAD to advise it on trust and safety issues, and enlists the anti-Christian group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to help weed out hateful conduct and harassment.

On Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-FL, told the Daily Caller that hes currently mulling whether to file a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against Twitter for their actions.

I am contemplating a complaint with the FEC, because if my political opponents have better access to the Twitter platform than I do, thats no different than a private company giving my political opponents access to a billboard or television time or radio time, he explained. That wouldnt be equal. So I believe that Twitter may have illegally donated to the campaigns of my opponents by prejudicing against my content.

More here:

Conservatives skeptical of Twitters latest shadow-banning ...