With a Single Word, Elon Musk Confirms What We All Feared
As Elon Musk continues to reveal the inside discussions and practices of Twitter before he became its chief, we are seeing more evidence that the leftists running the social media giant worked to shore up Democrats and suppress Republicans.
We aren’t just seeing how pre-Musk Twitter quashed center-right users and their ideas and opinions, though. Through the release of the Twitter Files, we are also seeing how Twitter undermined actual Republican candidates.
These files are being released by independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, much to the consternation of the establishment press.
Despite claiming that they never shadowbanned or throttled the reach of conservatives, with just a single word Musk revealed that political candidates for office were also suppressed.
Conservative Twitter user Ian Miles Cheong put the question directly to Elon Musk, asking him if lefty Twitter had ever shadowbanned political candidates while running for office or seeking re-election.
Musk replied with a single word:
Yes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
Musk’s one-word reply came on the heels of the second batch of Twitter Files, released by Bari Weiss, in which it was revealed that Twitter dedicated entire teams of employees to suspend, block, shadowban and throttle the reach of conservatives, the PostMillennial reported.
This runs completely counter to Twitter’s repeated claims that it did not throttle traffic or shadowban people based on ideology. But Weiss’ revelations seem to give the lie to those claims.
In 2018, for instance, Twitter Head of Product Kayvon Beykpour told Congress that Twitter did not work against users based on their political affiliations and ideas.
To be clear, our behavioral ranking doesn’t make judgements based on political views or the substance of tweets. We recently publicly testified to Congress on this topic https://t.co/Zk4DL7Q3hq
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) July 25, 2018
Then CEO Jack Dorsey also insisted that Twitter did not suppress users based on political ideology.
“We don’t shadow ban, and we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints. We do rank tweets by default to make Twitter more immediately relevant (which can be flipped off),” Dorsey said.
Weiss, though, found Dorsey’s proclamation to be suspect:
7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Indeed, Weiss revealed a number of conservatives, including nationally syndicated talk show host Dan Bongino, were routinely limited in their reach on the platform.
“We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” Weiss noted that Twitter told journalists.
And it’s all done “without users’ knowledge,” Weiss noted.
Some heads are rolling at Twitter in the wake of the release of the Twitter Files. Musk just fired Twitter counsel James Baker for his shady dealings.
In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 6, 2022
It is one thing to quash hate speech, pornography or blatant racism; it is quite another to ban actual, official candidates for office. Indeed, it is a thoroughly un-American action to take. After all, this country was founded on political free speech because our Founders came from a motherland that actively suppressed — and even imprisoned — political dissenters.
If Americans only hear the ideas and candidates from one political party, it is impossible for voters to cast informed votes. Sadly, that is just what leftists want.
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