New Revelations of Twitter, Facebook Censoring

A Clean House: A Message for the Shepherds of the Church
July 26, 2018
Founder’s Quote
July 27, 2018

Twitter shadow-bans Republicans and Facebook algorithms limit conservatives.

By Nate Jackson, Patriot Post, July 26, 2018

The leftist bias of social media giants isn’t news. But here and there we do find more evidence to support the charge. Both Twitter and Facebook are themselves news this week for more of the same.

Twitter is reportedly “shadow-banning” prominent Republicans. In this case, a shadow ban is hiding someone from autofill search lists. According to Vice News, no conservative ally to be sure, “Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel, several conservative Republican congressmen [including Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, and Matt Gaetz], and Donald Trump Jr.‘s spokesman no longer appear in the auto-populated drop-down search box on Twitter. … 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.”

So is this merely an innocent algorithm issue? Nope. Vice adds, “Democrats are not being ‘shadow-banned’ in the same way.”

A Twitter spokesman blamed the discrepancy not on “the content of Tweets” but on “account behavior.” In other words, Twitter aims to crack down on “troll-like behavior,” which, to these thought police, apparently means expressing conservative viewpoints.

Twitter’s not alone. There is evidence that January’s algorithm changes on Facebook’s news feed are also reducing the visibility of and interaction with conservatives and Republicans, while having far less detrimental effect on leftists and Democrats. Facebook explains the effort as being focused on emphasizing friends and family over media organizations, businesses, or politicians. But as we’ve said before, if we’ve chosen to “like” a page, that means we want to see it. We don’t need or want Facebook determining that for us.

Moreover, in order to post some political ads, Facebook now requires submitting Social Security and driver’s license numbers for an individual on the account. The Patriot Post encountered this roadblock just this week. Given the serious questions about what happens to user data on Facebook, why would anyone submit to this scrutiny?

The bottom line remains that social media giants consider Republicans to be racist trolls and conservative news organizations to be “fake news.” And they’re doing whatever they can to silence that side of the debate. Maybe that’s why Facebook stock is dropping like a rock.

 

https://patriotpost.us/articles/57352-new-revelations-of-twitter-facebook-censoring