Twitter Buried Anti-Hillary #DNCLeak & #PodestaEmails Tweets in 2016
Wonder why normally anti-regulation conservatives wouldn't hold memorial services if companies like Twitter, Google or Facebook, were regulated like a utility? Because of stories like this one. Save your pumpkin spice candles, basic bitches and bros.
If you tweeted using #DNCLeak or #PodestaEmails in the closing months of the 2016 election, there's a chance Twitter buried your tweets. On purpose.
Twitter’s systems hid 48 percent of tweets using the #DNCLeak hashtag and 25 percent of tweets using #PodestaEmails, Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett said in his written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.“Approximately one quarter (25%) of [#PodestaEmails tweets] received internal tags from our automation detection systems that hid them from searches,” Edgett said.
He added that “our systems detected and hid just under half (48%) of the Tweets relating to variants of another notable hashtag, #DNCLeak, which concerned the disclosure of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee.”
Yeah, but the Russians! They were just protecting us from the Russians!
Not so much.
Just two percent of the tweets using the #DNCLeak hashtag came from “potentially Russian-linked accounts,” according to Edgett. He explained that Twitter hid the tweets as “part of our general efforts at the time to fight automation and spam on our platform across all areas.”
Two percent. As in one more percent than one percent. One less than three. Represented visually as two pennies. Found in gum in a homeless man's box. A cat litter box.
As a thought experiment, let's say the Ruskies were interfering on behalf of Hillary Clinton. It'll be fun, I promise. In our alternate universe, Wikileaks releases a bunch of anti-Trump emails from inside the RNC. Let's say there's one from Marco Rubio to Ted Cruz going something like this:
Ted,
Here's a sad thought: Donald can't tell knock knock jokes. Why? His tiny hand stubs can't grab the door knocker. Imma tell that joke to his face next week on stage. His face will get redder than Carly's dress. And you know what they say about little fingers right? Ted, right? YOU GET IT? BECAUSE HE HAS A TINY PECKER!
~Marco
P.S. Imma stay in the primaries longer and totally steal votes from you, LOL!
Think Twitter would've hidden #RNCLeak or #ManafortEmails? Right.
Herein lies the problem. Yes, these are private companies who can do what they want. But Americans have grown rather dependent on these companies for information. Bitterly partisan douchecanoes are controlling that information (see Bullied No More: PragerU Files Lawsuit Against YouTube and Liberal Zuckerberg to Crackdown on ‘Political’ Facebook Ads. A Few Things…).
Not only is the game rigged, they aren't even pretending it isn't.
On the plus side, despite all this cheating and system rigging, Hillary got hosed. So Republicans ultimately got the last laugh. Some might argue we're still laughing.
