Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is scheduled to testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding the criteria used by the company to supervise user accounts. The committee plans to inquire about Twitter’s automated algorithms and policies used to monitor user content. Dorsey’s hearing with the House Committee is scheduled for November 5, 2018.
Republican users on Twitter have raised concerns on the platform “shadow banning” conservative accounts. A shadowban, also known as stealth banning or ghost banning, is when a users account gets banned without the knowledge of the user. In the case of Twitter, being shadow banned would mean your tweets would appear less frequently, or not at all, to other users in the online community. This impacts the visibility, likes and retweets of a user’s message.
Yes and 6days ago I seen this tweet you posted. I believe you might be onto something #Shadowbanning pic.twitter.com/cBCbpJz9Vx
— Matt Cline (@MClineCattle) August 21, 2018
President Donald Trump has weighed in on the issue by stating Twitter has shadow banned high profile Republican accounts which the company flat out denied. A report published by Vice News showed how prominent Republicans such as Ronna McDaniel and Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesman would not come up in the auto-suggestions of Twitter’s search box.
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
Twitter is not the only social media platform that has been called out on censoring conservative content. Facebook has recently censored a number of videos from PragurU, a conservative political organization, without explanation. The company has also begun blocking a number of conservative posts by labeling them as spam. This shows how social media platforms have engaged in an overt operation to censor right-leaning content on their platforms.
This targeting of trump conservatives continues with outright showdown to QFD banning! I was shutdown simply for helping others to find out if they were QFD shadow banned! This is a clear attempt to tamper with our 2018 elections and since it seems all social media is doing the same thing using Russia bot as a cover story you can bet the democrat party is behind it!