Obviously, this isn’t surprising or new information. However, it’s always nice to have empirical data to back up your case.
It’s no secret that Twitter censors and shadow-bans conservatives. The Gateway Pundit has reported on this extensively over the past few years. We reported in July 2018 that Twitter has long been accused of censoring conservatives. Twitter was indeed censoring and shadowbanning the President of the United States, Donald Trump’s twitter account, @realDonaldTrump. Twitter is […]
Source: SHOCKING NEW STUDY Finds Twitter Censors Conservatives over Liberals at a 21:1 Ratio
Luckily, through the use of standard statistical methods—similar to those commonly applied to calculate confidence intervals in the physical and social sciences—one may determine that the underlying population disparity (i.e. the disparity between liberal and conservative behavioral norms) would have to be quite large in order for there to be any significant likelihood of observing a randomly constituted 22-point data set characterized by the above-described 21:1 ratio. Indeed, assuming some randomness in enforcement unrelated to bias, one would have to assume that conservatives were at least four times as likely as liberals to violate Twitter’s neutrally applied terms of service to produce even a 5% chance (the standard benchmark) that a 22-data point sample would yield a result as skewed as 21-1.
Left-wing activists on college campus regularly engage in the practice of de-platforming—including the use of violence or the threat thereof as a means to prevent someone from speaking. Victims of this practice typically are conservative figures such as Ben Shapiro and Ann Coulter. At Berkley, when Milo Yiannopoulos tried to give a speech, a large mob threw stones and fireworks at police officers, and attacked members of the crowd. Around the same time, commentators noted that during the 2016 president campaign, when Bernie Sanders visited Liberty University, the evangelical institution run be Jerry Falwell, Jr., his message was met with “polite skepticism.”
Are we to believe that while prominent figures on the left encourage uncivil and even violent tactics, both on an off college campuses, their online behaviour is, with the solitary exception of Rose McGowan, universally exemplary?
Harassment and the advocacy of violence are serious issues, and there is nothing morally objectionable about social media companies removing this kind of content from their platforms. However, such laudable objectives should not be used as cover to prosecute ideological campaigns. While social media platforms are private companies, anti-discrimination laws generally allow legislators avenues to address businesses that exhibit unacceptable biases in how they treat the public.
Source: It Isn’t Your Imagination: Twitter Treats Conservatives More Harshly Than Liberals
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