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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If the pattern wasn't so obvious and consistent another explanation might suffice.
But I've written variations on this thread before.
For a few days when I'd sleep I was either having nightmares about #Kavanaugh or, and this was a first, having nightmares about having nightmares about #Kavanaugh.
My poor puppies didn't know what the hell was going on...
"IT'S A NEW DAY. "
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When people invoke platitudes like this it is usually done in order to being hope, to assert the positive aspects of what's ahead.
Not today.
There is nothing positive about this. We played the Super Bowl and we lost, but there is no rematch.
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Worse, one of the players for the other team is suddenly a fucking umpire and wants to review the tapes of all previous games and change some of the calls made by other, better umpires from games we had already won in the past.
I won't be lectured about majorities or electoral politics on the day #BrettKavanaugh was confirmed to #SCOTUS with the help of a goddamned Democrat.
I don't care where he's from or the demographics of his state. I don't care about any of that bullshit.
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He deserves some fire under his feet on the day he voted FOR a fucking lying racist rapist who is probably going to overturn ROE v. WADE and a host of other important pieces of legislation.
He could have called in sick.
He could have abstained.
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He could have stood on the Senate floor and said "I am casting this vote because my constituents have asked me to and I am their representative, but I personally strongly oppose this nominee, and support Professor Ford.
Let it be our promise to every future life that is destroyed, changed, or affected by a Justice #Kavanaugh that we will make it a priority to see Sasse, Manchin, and Collins suffer for their vote today.
They must lose their Senate seats, and be reminded everyday why.
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If we can't manage to focus long enough to carry through on our threats to our elected leaders who betray us then there will never be a reason to fear us. There will never be a reason to reconsider a decision or vote.
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And maybe no mistake, @SenatorCollins must be made an example of, if only because so much focus was placed on her and her decision making process.
But also because of that poisonous victim blaming/ shaming speech she delivered yesterday.
There is no way to sugarcoat how bad things just got, and if there was, we shouldn't. This is a loss that will haunt this nation for decades.
The confirmation of #BrettKavanaugh has managed to confirm more than just a man, for many, its confirmed our worst fears.
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It has confirmed that the @GOP is the most corrupt ruling party at the federal level in our nation's history. That they will do anything and everything to protect itself, including putting the survival of our Republic itself at risk.
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Its confirmed that the real decisions are made before the questions are even formally presented, and that they really do not care what our opinions of those decisions will be.
And it has also confirmed that Donald Trump has a lot more power than we imagined.
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If you want to live in a nation that is "led" by a man who would mock someone who was the victim of a violent sexual assault then we are very different people.
Trump's behavior today was that of a playground bully. They were the words that a bully utters and then laughs.
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The bully imagines, and may even hear, the world laughing with him, but the chuckles are only from his hangers-on and those hoping to impress the bully.
The rest of the world only turns its head to look away. They hope that someone, anyone, will intervene.
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They almost always get away with it, though, bullies.
And Trump will likely get away with this, like always.
#ChristineBlaseyFord passed a lie detector test on the day of her grandmother's funeral. No one non-partisan or credible has questioned her credibility.
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As the nation braces itself for the @GOP's latest betrayal in the runup to the #BrettKavanaugh confirmation vote, it is becoming clearer that even those we once believed retained some recognizably moral standards, simply don't.