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Twitter Is Limiting the Visibility of Prominent Republicans In Search Results (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: Twitter is limiting the visibility of prominent Republicans in search results -- a technique known as "shadow banning" -- in what it says is a side effect of its attempts to improve the quality of discourse on the platform. The Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel, several conservative Republican congressmen, and Donald Trump Jr.'s spokesman no longer appear in the auto-populated drop-down search box on Twitter, VICE News has learned. 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. (The accounts appear to also populate if you already follow the person.)
Democrats are not being "shadow banned" in the same way, according to a VICE News review. McDaniel's counterpart, Democratic Party chair Tom Perez, and liberal members of Congress -- including Reps. Maxine Waters, Joe Kennedy III, Keith Ellison, and Mark Pocan -- all continue to appear in drop-down search results. Not a single member of the 78-person Progressive Caucus faces the same situation in Twitter's search. Presented with screenshots of the searches, a Twitter spokesperson told VICE News: "We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box and shipping a change to address this." Asked why only conservative Republicans appear to be affected and not liberal Democrats, the spokesperson wrote: "I'd emphasize that our technology is based on account *behavior* not the content of Tweets."
Democrats are not being "shadow banned" in the same way, according to a VICE News review. McDaniel's counterpart, Democratic Party chair Tom Perez, and liberal members of Congress -- including Reps. Maxine Waters, Joe Kennedy III, Keith Ellison, and Mark Pocan -- all continue to appear in drop-down search results. Not a single member of the 78-person Progressive Caucus faces the same situation in Twitter's search. Presented with screenshots of the searches, a Twitter spokesperson told VICE News: "We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box and shipping a change to address this." Asked why only conservative Republicans appear to be affected and not liberal Democrats, the spokesperson wrote: "I'd emphasize that our technology is based on account *behavior* not the content of Tweets."
Someone with top level DNS control route twitter.com to 127.0.0.1. I'm pretty sure violence would drop and IQ points would bump up.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Oh really? And Maxine Waters is still visible? Perhaps YOU prefer how she expresses her views and what she encourages - along with the twit platform?
Were you really hoping that someone would buy that ludicrous explanation you provided?
See here if you don't know what it means. It's why we call women on food stamps "Welfare Queens"; e..g the word Queen was associated with Black woman and homosexuals, both bugaboos of the right.
These folks are getting banned because they've tip toed a little too close to outright racism and white supremacy. The Dems aren't being Shadow banned because, well, they don't have to use tricks to talk about their message (when they have one that is, the right wing of the party's only message so far has been that we should all feel bad for electing Trump so pretty please vote for us even though we're going to keep doing the same crap that Trump does economically only with more labor imports).
Seriously, our media needs to stop giving equal time to both sides. At a certain point both sides are not bad. One side is legitimately wrong. 20 years ago we figured out that trickle down economics doesn't work yet somehow we forgot that when the name changed to "Supply Side" and Laffer kept shopping around his curve. The result is a tax cut that's gone 86% to the top 1% and is going to cause rampant inflation when the treasury raises interest rates to offset the over reving to the economy that dumping $1 trillion supply side caused. Where the hell is the media to call the Republicans out on this? Oh yeah, they're owned by the same guys who got the tax cut...
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Specifically what behavior?
Insufficiently doing what Nancy Pelosi says to do.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Private companies can do what they want.
However, they should also not lie to the public.
When they say "We are transparent about our political activity and contributions." and "We believe in free expression and think every voice has the power to impact the world.", yet they are "shadow banning" members of a single political party, things don't add up.
Quotes can be found here: https://about.twitter.com/en_u...
He said he didn't have an affair. He told us it was a made up story. Then we saw with our own eyes and ears evidence that in fact what he said didn't happen actually did. This is called a "lie" and some people prefer not to be lied to.
People have come to accept the hard fact that this is about the best you're going to get if you're looking for a politician who will take a stand against globalism and the TPTB.
Politics is a shitty game. Those in power will seek to keep everyone who won't keep them in power, out of power. You typically have to play the game in order to rise in the ranks. They'll weed out decent people, as those folks are a threat to their ill-gotten income and power. The game is rigged to require establishment support or money in order to play. The wild cards are the independent billionaires like Perot and Trump. Perot got death threats and dropped out. Trump's ego allowed him to persist.
Yeah, he's a "flawed vessel". Unfortunately, all of the alternatives were worse. To fix this system requires a complete reset. Cleaning out everyone in power and staring fresh in some manner that doesn't allow money to corrupt it. Good luck.
So, can you explain why this has happened to Judicial Watch then? The only thing "inflammatory and lower the discourse" is that they bring forth embarrassing or criminal acts by the legal system or those in charge of it.
Om, nomnomnom...
I'm sure they already know this, but the algorithm isn't designed to trip up GOP politicians. It says a lot more about how they choose to phrase their message and talk about issues, than any agenda seeking to silence them on Twitter.
When what you post is designed to be inflammatory and lower discourse and a system designed to combat that properly flags it, maybe its working as intended and you should look inwards? No matter where you stand, there are good and bad ways to engage in discourse. On all topics, with all points of view.
That was my first thought but her account didn't really seem that bad.
I suspect the problem is that prominent racists try to avoid saying things that are obviously racist, so there's a lot of subtext and "draw the obvious conclusion" posts that are so hard for an algorithm to reliably flag as racist that you might as well not bother.
So how do you find those prominent racists to shadow ban? Well the trick is that there's a bunch of other racists who are so guarded in their language and are really easy for an algorithm to flag as racist.
So you steal a page from PageRank and realize that if a whole bunch of obvious racists are constantly retweeting someone in a positive context then you've probably found a prominent racist.
The problem that happened here is that White Supremacists really like Trump and the job of the GOP Chairwoman is to promote and defend Trump.
So all of her pro-Trump tweets are now getting retweeted by obvious White Supremacists and indicating to Twitter that she's some prominent White Supremacist, hence the shadow-ban.
I stole this Sig
First, and I can't believe I have to say this, Twitter is not Facebook. This isn't hard, it's right there in the name.
Second, Matt Caldwell is not Ronna McDaniel, or Donald Trump Jr.'s spokesman, or any of the prominent Republicans mentioned in the article.
Third, Facebook (which is not Twitter), apologized for misflagging Caldwell's ad and had it back up within hours of his complaint.
Fourth, Facebook’s advertising policy states that ads cannot “promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition, or explosives." It's not hard to see why a political ad featuring a man shooting a gun and saying that he likes guns might be flagged for further review, with the idea that it could be promoting the use of weapons.
So not only are you lambasting Facebook for a minor mistake, you're using that mistake, Facebook's mistake regarding Matt Caldwell, as a counter to the grandparent's explanation of Twitter's treatment of a bunch of people who are not Matt Caldwell. And the glue that joins these two unrelated events together for you seems to be nothing but a persecution complex.
The grandparent argued that these people who Twitter has shadowbanned might have not been delisted for their content, but rather for the inflammatory nature of their rhetoric. I don't know whether this is true, but you have provided a wonderful example of inflammatory rhetoric.
That is not the topic at hand. The ad was flagged for potentially violating their advertising policy, and ultimately reinstated when they determined that it did not violate that policy. This thread about Twitter is not the place to discuss the merits of Facebook's advertising policy.
For the record, there are many many examples of legal things which companies ban anyway. Pornography, which is perfectly legal, is banned with far greater ubiquity than guns are, and not because companies are trying to make some kind of political statement. If you can't think of a legitimate commercial reason why a company might ban guns, or pornography, or alcohol, or coming onto the premises without a shirt and shoes, even where those things are legal, and you instead just decide that it must be a big persecution conspiracy... then you are making the same lazy assumption that the parent made.
While I don't know USA politics well enough to comment on this said politician, I seconded the sentiment. It appears to me there either is a lopsided algorithm (rules are set by humans after all and their bias can manifest unintentionally) or selective enforcement of rules after tweets have been flagged, or both. It may not even be Democrats vs Republicans but on based on ideal "values".
Otherwise, I don't comprehend why #K|||AllWhitePeople tweets are deemed okay (or at least for a good time being while it trended) but someone called a hunky female celeb a "dude" in the heat of their personal quarrel, and the said party gets banned permanently.
Remember Leland Yee? No? He was a democrat that went out of his way to decry and try to ban violent video games. Know what's special about that? Nothing really, until he was caught trying to illegally sell military hardware to gangs in California, illegally smuggled into the US from SEA. That's still not the interesting part, the interesting part is that the media went out of their way to avoid labeling him with his party affiliation.
On the other hand, let's take Roy Moore is always labeled with republican. And that type of lie-by-omission has been going on for quite a while.
Om, nomnomnom...
Does the /. zeitgeist even have a pulse anymore?
You know it's wrong, even if it favors your political tribe. Really, you do know it.
True, but seeing as the US is in spot #31 on that list and spends more tax-payers money on health per capita than any country above it, you can see something is inherently wrong with healthcare in the US.
Oh really? And Maxine Waters is still visible? Perhaps YOU prefer how she expresses her views and what she encourages - along with the twit platform? Were you really hoping that someone would buy that ludicrous explanation you provided?
Maybe you should buy Twitter, and then it will behave the way you want it to. Isn't private ownership great?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)