Two days after Twitter told Congress that they aren’t politically biased when censoring content, several prominent conservatives discovered that the social media giant automatically includes them in a site-wide “Quality Filter Discrimination” shadowban which prevents anyone not already following them from viewing their posts.
While the filters have been around since August 2016 and were supercharged in May, Twitter’s aggressive censorship of conservative accounts was noticed Thursday afternoon by the Daily Wire‘s Ryan Saavedra, after he said he saw reduced activity following a viral tweet with 3.85 million views in which Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters (CA) calls for attacks on members of the Trump administration. In short order, a flood of influential conservative Twitter users discovered they were shadowbanned also using an account checking tool at shadowban.eu.
Twitter shadow ban test says I am shadowbanned.
I noticed my account was getting a lot less activity after I posted a video about Maxine Waters that went viral.
It's disappointing to see @Twitter @TwitterSupport @Jack @LeslieBerland censoring conservative reporters. pic.twitter.com/54fJHaixme
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 19, 2018
Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) is also shadowbanned, which is absurd, he does nothing wrong. pic.twitter.com/oJmow7BJ6T
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 19, 2018
Vile anti-Semite and Hitler worshipper Louis Farrakhan is NOT shadowbanned. pic.twitter.com/p6LUjf3GGb
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 19, 2018
So I've been shadowbanned. It happened just a day after I livetweeted the Senate hearing on the censorship of conservatives on social media.
It's hard not to notice when your engagement in analytics drops by over half. pic.twitter.com/fD3r24xGg6
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) July 19, 2018
Twitter VP of Trust & Safety, Del Harvey, said that the filtering algorithm look at a number of signals, including how often a user is blocked, muted or complained about vs. receiving positive interactions such as “favorites” and retweets. – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]Twitter has steeply increased the number of suspensions it’s dolling out amid criticism over harassment and fake accounts.
Twitter suspended over 70 million accounts in May and June, and has booted profiles at a similar pace so far this month, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.
The rate of suspensions has doubled since October when Twitter began to receive heightened scrutiny after reports on how much its platform was manipulated by Russian trolls seeking to intervene in the 2016 election. But the platform has long been criticized for its use by terrorists and their sympathizers, as well as prolific abuse and harassment.
Some have speculated that Twitter has been reluctant to kick users, even fake ones off, out of concern of hurting its user growth numbers, which would likely impact its bottom line and stock value. – READ MORE
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