Posted on 04/08/2018 5:43:53 AM PDT by Michael van der Galien
With all the talk about Twitter shadow banning conservative commentators, National Review's Jim Geraghty wondered whether the social network also had the gall to go after conservative politicians. So he looked at the number of retweets and likes Senator Ted Cruz's tweets receive on average and compared them to California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris.
Harris has only half of Cruz's followers: 1.5 million versus 3.2 million. As such, you'd expect Cruz to be retweeted more often by his followers. Surprisingly, that's not the case. But that's not even the most shocking part. Look at the difference; it's gigantic.
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz has more than 3.2 million followers. You would figure that almost every tweet he wrote would get a significant reaction. And yet, as you scroll through his feed, you find most tweets he writes have, collectively, a few hundred retweets and likes at most. Just in the last few days: 259 retweets, 90 retweets, 62 retweets. Cruz’s most retweeted item in the past few days appears to have been retweeted 416 times.
California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris has 1.5 million followers, roughly half that of Cruz. But almost all of her tweets are shared at a rate three to four times, sometimes as much as forty times, as much as Cruz’s. Her most recent tweets have been retweeted 1,800 times, 1,300 times, 981 times, and 4,000 times.
The number of retweets Sen. Harris' tweets receive is more or less what you'd expect from a politician with 1.5 million followers. Sen. Cruz's stats, however, are extremely pathetic. He should get that number of retweets with a fraction of the followers he has, especially because his supporters tend to be as passionate as President Trump's.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
I have lurked around twitter and really don’t get it. I think the people on twitter must think everybody is on twitter, which is far from the case. Most of the twitter material I see are media reactions to the latest tweet from the Pres. or somebody destroying their career in 240 characters, or less.
Standard M.O. for fascists.
When the left cannot conjure a truthful and cogent side to debate their beliefs these bigots break out the nooses to shut up the conservative side of the debate they are afraid and too lazy to engage in.
It is not an honor to have some self-serving jackwad use Free Republic to advertise his material.
All he's interested in is driving traffic to his hit counter.
Twitter, FaceBook and Google are more dangerous than the plague. Most Freepers have no clue just how dangerous these public business are because they think you should just not use them.
Your side fires its smoothbore muskets enmasse to have an effect on the other side [re-tweeting].
Occasionally, a sharpshooter with a rifle [a particularly well-aimed tweet] will take out an opposing officer, or an opposing officer will commit career suicide onscreen.
More well-known accounts are like the 12-pounder smoothbore cannon used in the Civil War and before.
Need a visual for that post.
And that's fine if all you want to do is engage in political small talk with like-minded individuals.
If you want to actually promote conservative ideas to the low-info masses, as many younger conservatives wish to do, you need access to those platforms that millions of people are using. This is where getting shadow-banned from Twitter or demonetized from Youtube becomes a problem and "we'll just start our own websites" isn't the answer when the left has unrestricted access to the same millions of low-info voters.
You aren’t outright banned from the site, told we’ve banned you for X transgression.
We let you log in. We let you send Tweets. But half or none of your followers see it. So you don’t KNOW you’re banned unless someone else says “I can’t find your profile, I don’t see your Tweets, all your attachments are listed as unavailable”.
Twitter’s been doing that to a lot of conservatives and libertarians.
And they’ve been doing it by degrees. Like randomly dropping a fraction of your subscribers so they have to re-subscribe. Like hiding a fraction of your attachments but not to the same people every time. Like putting a “this attachment is unavailable” though clicking on that notice makes it available.
All of these passive-aggressive tactics are to limit the spread of conservative viewpoints without actually BANNING someone. And they’re done knowing that cutting the audience in half limits the reach of said viewpoints. That’s why they do it.
Possibly true.
That is a violation of the first amendment
Certainly false.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.