As Twitchy reported earlier, Twitter is doing some damage control around the week’s earlier findings and reporting on prominent Conservative voices being ‘shadow banned’ on the social media giant’s platform. And as you can probably guess, they claimed they weren’t shadow banning anyone …
Well, not really.
Just kinda sorta.
This is a bizarre and incredibly disingenuous statement from @Twitter. What's the point of following someone if Twitter blocks their tweets from appearing in your time-line? Maybe that's not technically "shadow-banning" but it's heavy-handed manipulation https://t.co/OaHf6qQplF pic.twitter.com/QzyJSajY5S
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 27, 2018
If someone ISN’T shadow banned they show up in the main feed, which is where you get the majority of traffic. They literally described shadow banning by claiming that’s all they’re doing.
Heh.
Jack responded:
We don’t block who you follow on your timeline. We do rank the timeline, so you may not see them there if those tweets are not as relevant as others. You can also turn this ranking off.
— jack (@jack) July 27, 2018
So they decide whose tweets are more relevant.
Huh.
Wanna guess whose tweets are less relevant?
you should make this timeline manipulation an "opt-in" feature, rather than an "opt-out" option
— Mike Scott (@osomike) July 27, 2018
What he said.
How do we turn the ranking off?
— Kimi Schmitz ✨ (@KimiSchmitz) July 27, 2018
This is lousy user experience, Twitter.
https://twitter.com/djuhnk/status/1022866182993584129
Buried.
So they can determine what is and isn’t relevant to their users.
Convenient, eh?
You remove users from the Public feed, searches, and Who To Follow. You base this on whether other users block/mute, not based on content. Saying someone is still visible to their existing followers but hidden from the Public is still banning.
— Mike Valletutti (@marketmodel) July 27, 2018
Bingo.
Besides, Twitter engineers long ago admitted they were doing this on purpose.
We caught a Twitter software engineer RED HANDED when he admitted that Twitter #ShadowBans to our undercover journalist. Twitter will never admit it: "it's a lot of bad press if, like, people figure out that you're like shadow banning them. It's like, unethical in some way." pic.twitter.com/MmBGKohWLj
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) July 26, 2018
Nice try though, Jack.
Oh, and FYI:
Twitter shares plunge 17% as monthly users decline https://t.co/yM3VTfu3rM pic.twitter.com/oThySU2aFL
— Bloomberg (@business) July 27, 2018
Get it together, dude.
Related:
YOU LIE! Twitter “sets the record straight” on shadow banning Conservatives and we call BULLSH*T
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