Thread by @frodofied

I believe @jack when he says that he thinks that @Twitter does not engage in shadow banning.

But I don't for a second believe that it doesn't.

There is too much evidence from their own analytics to suggest otherwise.

It happens to me, and a few others I know, quite often.

1/

Shadow banning is the practice of limiting the exposure of a users published tweets within their own and outside areas of influence. It affects where tweets & placed on others ' timelines and can be used to, if not fully censor them, then certainly greatly limit their impact.

2/

It also a joke that Jack believes that Twitter does not engage in political profiling.

Again, the evidence to suggest otherwise is too plentiful.

Many of us have watched in utter disbelieve as conservative trolls were not even cautioned for egregious TOS violations.

3/

Meanwhile I was suspended for the attached tweet.

In the offending tweet I rather tongue in cheek suggest misogynistic white males on left punch themselves in the face for me.

They suspended me for encouraging self-harm.

Really?

Really.

Because clearly it could cause thousands to start spontaneous self-punching globally.

And my little tweet would have been the obvious cause.

When I think of the kinds of things people like #AlexJones got away with and @AnnCoulter still does it makes me crazy.

5/

We also know that some part of the @twitter algorithm works to isolate certain users from others who might be impacted by a user's output or who might extend the reach of a user's output by retweeting and commenting aggressively.

6/

I used to see the tweets of @joanWalsh, @JoyAnnReid, @docrocktex26, @tomwatson, @neeratanden, @VABVOX, @Karoli, @BreeNewsome, @Only4RM, and @KaraCalavera, regularly. More like constantly. This is but a small sampling of mutual follows whose tweets never make my feed anymore.

7/

I have to physically search for the other users and scroll their personal timelines in order to see that they've tweeted or engaged.

And despite being a strong supporter of @HillaryClinton's I literally never see her tweets unless someone ReTweets them into my timeline.

8/

Yet, I doubt there is a tweet of Trump's that I don't see. Or of Cilizza's.

It doesn't make sense for Jack to make such claims unless he honestly believe them to be true.

But jack doesn't write the algorithms or work the front lines of support where such decisions are made.

9/

Who knows how many rogue elements have engaged the social media career path for the singular purpose of promoting a certain political viewpoints?

But why does it matter if I see cerrtain tweets?

Potential reach.

Reach is the limit of exposure of your tweets.

10/

If User A has 6,000 followers that is the extent of their personal reach.

So, potential reach? Let's say that User A's tweet is seen by one of their followers, User B. User B, has a personal reach of 10,000 so when she RTs User A's tweet the potential reach becomes 16,000.

11/

In one RT user A has more than doubled the reach of their tweet.

This is how word spreads, ideas are shared, and networks grow.

But only if that exposure happens.

If I see a tweet by @JoyAnnReid I 'm almost certainly going to interact w/ it in some way. Guaranteed.

12/

Whether it's a comment or an RT I have just exposed Joy's tweet to an audience beyond the limits of her own. Even if a user w/ only ten followers does the same it still widens the circle of influence.

But if the algorithm is able to detect such patterns, which it is...

13/

then it can also be programmed to prevent such connections.

By preventing me from seeing Joy's tweet it prevents my audience from seeing it as well.

Imagine the ways an idea could be limited in this way.

14/

The shadow ban incidents that I experience occur almost always after writing particularly harsh criticisms of Trump or particularly positive ones about Clinton.

And Twitter's own analytics always gives it away. I normally have around 140,000 - 220,000 impressions a day.

15/

It usually works out to about 5-6 million monthly.

But after threads like I've described are published my daily impressions will fall to between 40,000 - 90,000 daily.

That makes no sense ceteris paribus, unless Twitter is in fact intervening.

16/

If the pattern wasn't so obvious and consistent another explanation might suffice.

But I've written variations on this thread before.

And undoubtedly will again.

Note the rather marked reduction in impressions.

This follows the same pattern as always.

#Resist