It’s been a long time since users started suspecting the shadow-banning practices of the social media platform and finally, Twitter is listing shadow-banning practices as an official tool.
This controversial shadow-banning practice is used by micro-blogging platform in such a way that it bans the content of users by limiting the discovery of the content from the platform hence making it difficult for other tweeters to discover it at all and during all of this the original posters get no official notification regarding what's happening with their accounts.
The shadow-banning practice was always suspected of existing and now as of this January this practice officially arrived at Twitter as in the updated terms of service page, it’s becoming a legitimate option for the company.
When social media platforms have the option to get rid of the content or the users violating the platform rules by directly banning them from the network then why even consider the shadow-ban strategy?
Well we think, the social media platforms want to make a false promise to its users by blocking the content while keeping them in doubt that they’re fully participating, when instead they’re not. Or, maybe, social networks want to boast a better active users statistic on their quarterly reports to impress the stakeholders.
In the past, when Twitter was accused of using shadow-banning practices, the social network denied the accusations by stating that only content is ranked and downranked according to the decision by the company regarding bad-faith actors and the platform does not use any shadow-banning practices at all.
Well, for now, the social media platform is pretty much coming clean about its practices even if not directly admitting to it for now.
According to the updated terms of service of Twitter, the social network mentions the right to limit the distribution or visibility of any content on the service along with the removal and refusal of content and suspending the users without liability.
Well, we think there’s not much transparency in the new terms of service as Twitter doesn’t exactly state how or even why the users and their content would be considered for limited distribution or visibility, plus Twitter's updated TOS page also fails to state how the decision will be made, whether based on algorithms or humans or some of the combination of both so users are pretty much confused about the new terms of services.
Back in January 2018, the former Twitter engineer Abhinov Vadrevu also reported that the strategy of using shadow-banning practices is an attempt by the platform to take ultimate control of the users by making them think that no one is engaging with their content when in reality no one is seeing it.
In this same year, the CEO of Twitter also stated that the company mistakenly removed more than 600,000 accounts from its auto-generated search sections and blamed it all on algorithms so now when Twitter is changing its statements every once in a while who should we trust at all?
Read next: Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, and Indian PM titled as the Most Influential People on Twitter
This controversial shadow-banning practice is used by micro-blogging platform in such a way that it bans the content of users by limiting the discovery of the content from the platform hence making it difficult for other tweeters to discover it at all and during all of this the original posters get no official notification regarding what's happening with their accounts.
The shadow-banning practice was always suspected of existing and now as of this January this practice officially arrived at Twitter as in the updated terms of service page, it’s becoming a legitimate option for the company.
When social media platforms have the option to get rid of the content or the users violating the platform rules by directly banning them from the network then why even consider the shadow-ban strategy?
Well we think, the social media platforms want to make a false promise to its users by blocking the content while keeping them in doubt that they’re fully participating, when instead they’re not. Or, maybe, social networks want to boast a better active users statistic on their quarterly reports to impress the stakeholders.
In the past, when Twitter was accused of using shadow-banning practices, the social network denied the accusations by stating that only content is ranked and downranked according to the decision by the company regarding bad-faith actors and the platform does not use any shadow-banning practices at all.
Well, for now, the social media platform is pretty much coming clean about its practices even if not directly admitting to it for now.
According to the updated terms of service of Twitter, the social network mentions the right to limit the distribution or visibility of any content on the service along with the removal and refusal of content and suspending the users without liability.
Well, we think there’s not much transparency in the new terms of service as Twitter doesn’t exactly state how or even why the users and their content would be considered for limited distribution or visibility, plus Twitter's updated TOS page also fails to state how the decision will be made, whether based on algorithms or humans or some of the combination of both so users are pretty much confused about the new terms of services.
Back in January 2018, the former Twitter engineer Abhinov Vadrevu also reported that the strategy of using shadow-banning practices is an attempt by the platform to take ultimate control of the users by making them think that no one is engaging with their content when in reality no one is seeing it.
In this same year, the CEO of Twitter also stated that the company mistakenly removed more than 600,000 accounts from its auto-generated search sections and blamed it all on algorithms so now when Twitter is changing its statements every once in a while who should we trust at all?
Read next: Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, and Indian PM titled as the Most Influential People on Twitter
