If you can believe it, VICE News put down their victim-driven gonzo journalism approach to reporting about transgender meth addicts in Cambodia, in exchange for…actual news? Wait, and, is it actually a defense of conservative voices?
Yesterday they published an article titled, "Twitter is 'shadow banning' prominent Republicans like the RNC chair and Trump Jr.'s spokesman," in which the journalist Alex Thompson examined the growing trend to mute conservative voices online — which, as we've said before, is pretty ironic considering leftists and their alarmism regarding the repeal of Net Neutrality.
The article reveals what many of us have long suspected:
Twitter is limiting the visibility of prominent Republicans in search results — a technique known as 'shadow banning' — in what it says is a side effect of its attempts to improve the quality of discourse on the platform.
Republican Party chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is one of several major Republican figures who have stopped showing up in search results.
The notion that social media companies would suppress certain political points of view should concern every American. Twitter owes the public answers to what's really going on.
Trump Jr. tweeted the following:
So now @twitter is censoring @GOPChairwoman? Enough is enough with this crap. @Jack it's time for you to #StopTheBias against conservatives and Trump supporters and fix this once and for all.
The article concludes with a call for action:
Democrats, for their part, have largely rolled their eyes at conservative claims of discrimination. … But Facebook and Twitter have appeared to take the conservative criticism seriously and have arranged a series of meetings and public reviews aimed to build up trust with influential figures on the right.
Despite some evidence that Diamond and Silk were exaggerating their claims, Facebook publicly apologized to the duo in front of Congress last week. And Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey convened a D.C. dinner on June 19 with prominent conservatives including White House advisor Mercedes Schlapp, Fox News commentator Guy Benson, and tax activist Grover Norquist, as the Washington Post first reported. But the black box of the platforms' changes still has conservatives wary.
The #StopTheBias hashtag has been trending. Maybe, just maybe, people will start listening.
"This type of opaque behavior by social media companies is exactly why conservatives are speaking out and demanding more transparency and accountability," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California told VICE News in a statement. "The bias has to stop."
The #StopTheBias hashtag has been trending. Maybe, just maybe, people will start listening.