Jack Dorsey may have pushed his apparent anti-conservative agenda just a little too far after evidence mounts – even among the liberal media – that Twitter has been ‘shadow-banning’ various ‘right of socialist’ members on the social media site ( by limiting the number of people who are able to view content from the affected users).
Following CEO Jack Dorsey’s attempt to play down the actions, saying “It suffices to say we have a lot more work to do to earn people’s trust on how we work.”
We’ve heard questions from some of you relating to our work to drive healthy conversation on Twitter. People are asking us 1) about the breadth and precision of our work & 2) the impact of our work on the Search experience. We wanted to address these questions transparently here.
In May, we started using behavioral signals and machine learning to reduce people’s ability to detract from healthy public conversation on Twitter. This approach looks at account behavior & interactions with other accounts that violate our rules.
On 1) We’re always working to improve our behavior-based ranking models – their breadth and accuracy will improve over time. It’s important to note that these behavior signals are not binary, and they are one of many other signals that factor into ranking.
To be clear, our behavioral ranking doesn’t make judgements based on political views or the substance of tweets. We recently publicly testified to Congress on this topic https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pickles-Testimony.pdf
On 2) Some accounts weren’t being auto-suggested even when people were searching for their specific name. Our usage of the behavior signals within search was causing this to happen & making search results seem inaccurate. We’re making a change today that will improve this.
We believe this work is really important to creating a healthier Twitter and we want to continue improving. Your feedback helps us do that so please keep it coming.
And after his son blasted Dorsey…
So now @twitter is censoring @GOPChairwoman?
Enough is enough with this crap. @Jack it’s time for you to #StopTheBias against conservatives and Trump supporters and fix this once and for all. https://t.co/JC6i6y01Ek
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 25, 2018
President Trump has decided to step into this debacle (presumably in an effort to avert Dorsey’s attempt to ‘meddle’ in the midterms), warning that ” We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! “
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
Trump’s tweet comes after his 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, along with Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, wrote a letter in May calling for the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter to address concerns over conservative censorship ahead of the 2020 election, as well as a call for transparency.
“We recognize that Facebook and Twitter operate in liberal corporate cultures,” the letter reads. “However, rampant political bias is inappropriate for a widely used public forum.”
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