Friday, April 6, 2018

Twitter: "We're So Arrogant, We're Even Shadow-Banning Sitting U.S. Senators!"

Before the Fall

Jim Geraghty:

"There’s a contention that Twitter “shadow bans” certain accounts it doesn’t like based on user reports and algorithms. The company won’t tell you if you’re in this quasi-detention and your account won’t be suspended; your tweets just won’t show up in the feeds of certain people. You’ll be walled off from the rest of Twitter, kept in a limited realm of existing followers who aren’t bothered by you.

To test this, I decided to compare two of the higher-profile members of the U.S. Senate.

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz has more than 3.2 million followers. You would figure that almost every tweet he wrote would get a significant reaction. And yet, as you scroll through his feed, you find most tweets he writes have, collectively, a few hundred retweets and likes at most. Just in the last few days: 259 retweets, 90 retweets, 62 retweets. Cruz’s most retweeted item in the past few days appears to have been retweeted 416 times.

California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris has 1.5 million followers, roughly half that of Cruz. But almost all of her tweets are shared at a rate three to four times, sometimes as much as forty times, as much as Cruz’s. Her most recent tweets have been retweeted 1,800 times, 1,300 times, 981 times, and 4,000 times.
Is it just that Harris’ tweets are so much more interesting? Are her followers, constituents, and fans so much more likely to share her tweets, compared to his? Are conservatives just less likely to retweet something than liberals are?

Or are some of Cruz’s followers just not seeing his tweets?
Remember, a Twitter contractor managed to shut down the president’s account for eleven minutes...ask managers of social media networks — do your companies’ policies or algorithms ever limit a user’s audience and reach without informing them? And what is the criteria for this sort of secret semi-ban?".......

The criteria is "'Shut-up', they explained."

Meanwhile, Facebook is also shadow-banning and censoring conservatives.

Also spying on everyone and selling it to the highest bidder, whether the Obama Campaign or Cambridge Analytica.

Also failing to inform users that the Dark Web was accessing their info.

Also going after your medical records.

For starters, the law should mandate that all default settings be "opt-in", not "opt-out".

Sherman Act Anti-Trust action is long overdue--if not the RICO Act.
"I believe that monopolies, unjust discriminations, which prevent or cripple competition, fraudulent overcapitalization, and other evils in trust organizations and practices which injuriously affect interstate trade can be prevented under the power of the Congress..."--President Theodore Roosevelt, State of the Union, 1902

Arrogance--UPDATE:

Facebook to Diamond and Silk:“The Policy team has came to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community. This decision is final and it is not appealable in any way.”

Twitter CEO Shares And Raves About Article Calling For Dem Victory In Second ‘Civil War’
 The article recommends One Party-Rule because California's works so well. California has a third of the nation's welfare cases and runs Mexico's prison system for them. Twitter's CEO recommends the article, even as Twitter is shadow-banning sitting Republican senators.

Question: Isn't it fraud to lure users by offering them an open platform while secretly shadow-banning them?

And isn't it fraud to sell ads to advertisers without telling them that you are banning a class of your own users because you don't like their politics?

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