I'm obliged to Gab user Matthew T. McDonald for providing the image below.
This morning, activist James O'Keefe released over 100 hours of video, allegedly showing how CNN's coverage of news was deliberately biased, falsified and redacted to reflect its editorial point of view. Discussion immediately arose on Twitter (and elsewhere) about it, using the hashtag #CNNLeaks. Twitter censored that hashtag a short while later, to prevent it becoming even more popular (Twitter being a hotbed of left-wing partisan political activism, as we've discussed here before).
Mr. McDonald notes:
This graph shows the moment when Twitter dumped the #CNNLeaks hashtag. Around 9:30 AM 15,000 ppl were using it, moments later only 600.
Very eye-opening! Now you see why Twitter, Facebook and other left-wing-oriented social media are censoring alternative viewpoints as hard as they can. If they can reduce discussion of events or news unfavorable to their side, they can have a significant effect on public opinion and political debate.
That being the case, I guess it'll be up to supporters of free speech and open debate to make sure that all points are aired, regardless of censorship. I try to do that here, as you saw earlier this morning.
Peter
It would be very interesting to see what would happen if Donald Trump sent out a tweet pointing this out. I don't know if Twitter has the guts to censor the President - it would instantly be a huge story.
ReplyDeleteI'd love it if they did so - and he publicly switched over to Gab in response.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, the dropoff is not nearly as pronounced now.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.hashtags.org/analytics/cnnleaks/
I think our Gab colleague managed to catch the #CNNLeaks analysis right at the beginning of a period before it captured many samples. Current history looks more reasonable and doesn't show a suspicious cutoff. There are many examples of Twitter malfeasance. This isn't one.
ReplyDeleteSee trend chart.