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Twitter Is Not ‘Shadow Banning’ Conservatives
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‘Shadow Banning’ Explained
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Trump and Trump-Supporting Republicans Join in False Claims
It was the morning of a day ending in “y” so naturally the President of the United States was tweeting out his current frustrations and lies. Thursday morning President Donald Trump falsely told his supporters and the world that Twitter is “SHADOW BANNING” prominent Republicans. He promised his administration will be investigating “this discriminatory and illegal practice at once!”
(Twitter is not “shadow banning” conservatives, the practice itself is not discriminatory, and definitely not illegal. More on this, including an explanation of what shadow banning really is, below.)
TRUMP CAMPAIGN and GOP JUMP ON FALSE ‘SHADOW BANNING’ CLAIM
Less that three hours later, Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale took to Twitter, asking the company’s founder, who now serves as the social media giant’s Director and CEO, to “control” liberals who oppose President Trump. Like his boss, Parscale has not shown interest in wooing Democrats or independents, but in attacking them and anyone else not part of the cult of Trump. So he felt comfortable claiming those who have not embraced his boss are “punch drunk on conspiracy.”
So now the top two people in the Trump re-election campaign, within hours of each other, have targeted Twitter in an effort to make the social media giant – just as Facebook is under fire from conservatives and starting Wednesday is seeing its stock plunge off a cliff.
But wait, there’s more.
Donald Trump Jr. was only too happy to retweet his father’s lies, broadening it to claim that Twitter is somehow banning conservatives and its harming small businesses “for being conservative leaning.”
Again, this is all false.
Minutes later, The Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee jumped onboard, claiming conservatives’ Twitter accounts are being “buried.”
That’s wrong.
Also in on the false banning of conservatives claim is Congressman and full-time conspiracy theorist Rep. Matt Gaetz:
WHAT EXACTLY IS GOING ON?
On Wednesday VICE published an article claiming Twitter was “shadow banning” conservatives.
The original title was, “Twitter is ‘shadow banning’ prominent Republicans like the RNC chair and Trump Jr.’s spokesman.”
It was, at best, a totally false use of the term shadow banning.
How confident in the article is the author, Alex Thompson?
On Twitter (ironically,) he admitted he knew conservatives would use the article “in bad faith,” which they have. Here’s Thompson responding to a New York Times technology reporter, who Thompson calls “one of the best reporters around”:
SHADOW BANNING, EXPLAINED
So, like most people, all this while you’ve probably been asking yourself, “What is shadow banning?”
A very simple explanation is this: When a troll or someone who is violating the terms of service on a social media platform goes too far, some social media platform administrators opt to “shadow ban” them. Famous for this is Reddit.
What happens is the troll or TOS violator continues to post, and to them they think their posts are still being seen, but in reality they are the only ones who see their posts.
It’s sneaky but effective. It effectively prevents the person from just opening up a new account and starting their bad behavior all over again, and it protects the larger community from their actions.
That is not what VICE claimed is happening.
VICE falsely posited that because some Republicans’ names were not immediately coming up in Twitter’s search box – the drop-down box that suggests or auto-completes your entry – they were being “shadow banned.”
As we’ve just explained, that’s not even close to what shadow banning is.
And VICE also falsely claimed that Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesperson is a “prominent Republican,” which is ludicrous.
VICE even admits not everyone agrees with their theory, by including this:
“This isn’t evidence of a pattern of anti-conservative bias since some Republicans still appear and some don’t. This just appears to be a cluster of conservatives who have been affected,” said New York Law School Professor Ari Ezra Waldman, who testified at the House Judiciary Committee’s April hearing on social media filtering and is the author of Privacy as Trust: Information Privacy for an Information Age.
Waldman does say Twitter has software that minimizes accounts.
But VICE soon changed the title. It now reads: “Twitter appears to have fixed ‘shadow ban’ of prominent Republicans like the RNC chair and Trump Jr.’s spokesman.”
Still wrong.
In case you’re still not convinced this is all a bunch of hooey:
New York Magazine’s Brian Feldman on Wednesday wrote a lengthy piece titled, “Twitter Is Not ‘Shadow Banning’ Republicans.”
ThinkProgress: “No, conservatives aren’t being ‘shadow banned’ from Twitter.”
Image by Esther Vargas via Flickr and a CC license