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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNew York Magazine: Twitter Is Not 'Shadow Banning' Republicans
Twitter Is Not Shadow Banning Republicans
http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/07/twitter-is-not-shadow-banning-republicans.html
July 25, 2018 4:36 pm
By Brian Feldman @bafeldman
The concept of the shadowban has existed practically since the inception of the web forum. The idea is simple: Instead of banning a user outright and informing them of such punishment, a shadowban makes a users post visible only to themselves. In other words, they think that theyre still part of a community, but nobody is able to see or interact with them. The shadowban is useful in that rather than someone immediately being locked out and possibly retaliating by, for example, making a new account, the user fades away gradually due to the lack of interaction from other users.
As forums have evolved into social-media platforms, the shadowban and its descendants have come along with them. Facebook argued that the best way to dispel misinformation from places like Infowars, which argues that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was a staged hoax, was to secretly minimize their distribution in the sites News Feed a similar but not identical tactic. I myself have previously argued tongue in cheek that Twitter should shadowban (or hellban) President Donald Trump, who most recently threatened a cataclysmic war against Iran. The idea being that he gets the feeling of communicating with his followers while his actual posts are hidden from the (volatile) world.
More than anywhere else, though, the shadowban has persisted among the conspiracy-minded, as a great weapon of censorship, generally thought to be perpetrated by liberal Silicon Valley operatives at the expense of conservatives. That right-wing voices are being shadow banned by Twitter and Facebook has become all but an article of faith among internet-native conservative activists and publishers despite little evidence to support the claim.
Its no surprise, then, that a Vice article claiming that Twitter is shadow banning Republicans has already taken hold in the minds of the most online right-wingers. At issue, though, is not banning but Twitters search mechanism. Usually, Twitter will automatically complete a search query and suggest an account when a user begins typing in Twitters search bar. If you type in Donald, for example, brings up Trumps account as an easily accessible hyperlink, so that you dont have to click through to the results page; if you type in Hillary, youll get a similar autocomplete suggestion of Hillary Clinton....................................
dalton99a
(81,570 posts)under "The Great Suffering of Republicans"
Demsrule86
(68,667 posts)reported both posts. I don't know what happened to him but the posts were deleted.
MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)They can turn anything into oppression.
As a member of a minority in this country, I have to be impressed by that.
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)are "fake" Christians. They ALWAYS call foul and "play" victim. They are the worst that America has.
Vote them out and for GOD's sake get rid of t-rump, pence and the rest by removing them from the WH and sending them all to jail.
Baitball Blogger
(46,757 posts)and that you only get posts from the same 26 people from your Friendlist.
I have noticed a change since I began posting articles that are left-leaning. At first, my trickle of left-leaning friends responded to them, and after that not only have I not heard from them, but I'm not getting any of their posts, either.