The Twitter Scandal (III)

Steve wrote yesterday about the stunning second round of Twitter disclosures, this time curated by Bari Weiss. Like me, you probably have long suspected that Twitter was boosting liberal opinion and suppressing conservative tweets. (Twitter went so far as to delete my account, while denying that it did any such thing: they said they had never heard of me.)

But I never expected it to be proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, as happened today. We are now familiar with a whole new vocabulary: “Trends Blacklist,” “Do Not Amplify,” and “Search Blacklist.” All of which apparently applied to conservative tweeters, but not liberals.

At Breitbart, Rep. Elise Stefanik says that Twitter executives have repeatedly lied to Congress about that platform’s censorship of conservatives:

“Twitter shadow banned conservatives, clearly interfered in the election, and then lied under oath about it,” Stefanik said.
***
[Twitter CEO Jack] Dorsey testified to Congress in September 2018 that Twitter does not shadow ban Republicans.

“I want to read a few quotes about Twitter’s practices and I just want you to tell me if they’re true or not,” Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), said. “Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?”

Dorsey responded, “No.”

“Are you censoring people?” Doyle followed up.

“No,” Dorsey said.

“Twitter’s shadow-banning prominent Republicans… is that true?” Doyle asked again.

“No,” Dorsey said.

In the same hearing, Dorsey was asked by then-Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) if Twitter discriminated against Republicans’ points of view.

“Do you discriminate more on philosophy, like anti-conservative versus pro-liberal?” Barton questioned.

“No, our policies and our algorithms don’t take into consideration any affiliation, philosophy or viewpoint,” Dorsey responded.

The algorithms may or may not discriminate, but Twitter employees certainly did. If Twitter employees lied to Congress, as seems probable, they should be criminally prosecuted.

Meanwhile, the Democrats’ house organ, the New York Times, has published all sorts of articles over the last couple of days: on Brazil’s “shocking” soccer defeat, on sea slugs, on France’s making condoms available for free to young people, on the new Harry and Meghan documentary, and God knows what else. But the Times has not written a word about the fact that Twitter, the platform that its own “journalists” obsessed over for years, and used to spread their ideology, was rigged from the beginning.

Seems like it should have been a news story. But then, I am not a liberal reporter.

Finally: As I have been writing this, Matt Taibbi has been releasing Twitter documents, set three. There is an enormous amount of material that I can’t begin to summarize now. You can read it here. Briefly, it documents more copiously the Democratic Party bias that has animated Twitter for years.

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