Twitter has responded to Project Veritas’ undercover investigation, which revealed employees at the company boasting about censoring conservatives, by attacking the messenger.
“The individuals depicted in this video were speaking in a personal capacity and do not represent or speak for Twitter,” claimed a Twitter spokesman in an email to Breitbart Tech. “We deplore the deceptive and underhanded tactics by which this footage was obtained and selectively edited to fit a pre-determined narrative. Twitter is committed to enforcing our rules without bias and empowering every voice on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.”
“Twitter does not shadowban accounts,” they continued, despite the fact that numerous Twitter employees disputed this. “We do take actions to downrank accounts that are abusive, and mark them accordingly so people can still to click through and see this information if they so choose… This makes content less visible on Twitter, in search results, replies, and on timelines. Limiting tweet visibility depends on a number of signals about the nature of the interaction and the quality of the content.”
The Project Veritas investigation, which mainstream tech news outlets have ignored, confirmed years of Breitbart Tech reporting on Twitter, which has frequently been accused of censoring conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals.
In one secretly recorded video, Twitter engineer Pranay Singh admitted to mass-banning accounts that express interest in God, guns, and America, while others explained Twitter’s shadow banning system, which they claimed was frequently utilized against conservatives and Trump supporters.
As explained by Breitbart Tech reporter Lucas Nolan, “Twitter and other platforms such have Reddit have twisted shadow banning from a tool to fight spammers into a tool to prevent tweets and content from spreading naturally.”
“Followers do not see tweets from the shadow banned individual in their timeline, and therefore do not engage with the tweets by responding, liking, or retweeting them,” he explained. “The shadow banned user is essentially tweeting to themselves, unless a follower directly visits their account.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.
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