As we told you last night, Vice has a story up stating that “Twitter is limiting the visibility of prominent Republicans in search results,” a practice also known as “shadow banning.” A Twitter spox claimed this was just a side effect of some new technology that they’re rolling out to make the user experience better (yeah, right) but that explanation apparently was not good enough for President Trump:
Twitter “SHADOW BANNING” prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2018
Now, the Trump administration has met with Twitter before on this so we’re not sure what exactly will come of the president’s tweet:
https://twitter.com/TonyRomm/status/1022448472535060481
But a little transparency on this would be a good thing, even though the practice is not actually illegal:
With the caveat that I'm fine with @Twitter being asked to publicly explain their algorithm a bit more clearly to explain what's going on with the alleged "shadow banning", I'm not aware of how this would be "illegal" if it was happening. https://t.co/IcfvUeVsMb
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) July 26, 2018
And we’ll see what happens to Twitter’s stock price today, which is already under pressure after Facebook announced horrific earnings on Wednesday:
Twitter is already down 3% this morning pre-market, on Facebook echo. $TWTR https://t.co/ixfdkdo7R8
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) July 26, 2018
Libs, however, are mad at Vice for even doing a story on this in the first place:
Great job Vice! https://t.co/GJ2V1WStq9
— Brandon Hardin (@hardin) July 26, 2018
Congratulations @vicenews & @AlxThomp for helping Trump and the GOP continue this charade of victimhood. https://t.co/JVKIpdG2sD
— Melissa Ryan (@MelissaRyan) July 26, 2018
To be continued…
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Related:
Twitter CEO finally addresses "shadow banning" of conservatives, aka "conversational health work" https://t.co/NijhL6CPV8
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 25, 2018
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