The Story Behind Trump’s Claim That Twitter Is Shadow-Banning Conservatives
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On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump used Twitter to criticize … Twitter. “Twitter ‘SHADOW BANNING’ prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints,” he wrote.
“Shadow banning” refers to social media companies’ practice of making users’ posts visible only to themselves, without banning them outright from the platform. The tactic has been used by Reddit and other social media sites to manage users who violate the platform rules.
The recent kerfuffle over shadow banning came about after Twitter implemented a new strategy to fight “troll-like behaviors.” The company wrote in a May blog post that it was making some changes to its search bar: “People contributing to the healthy conversation will be more visible in conversations and search.”
But it seems to have had an unintentional effect. Gizmodo reported on Sunday that some far-right figures—such as Jason Kessler, who organized the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and far-right blogger Mike Cernovich—had been “buried” by Twitter’s search feature.
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