Trump accuses Twitter of targeting Republicans, offers no evidence

U.S. President Donald Trump accused Twitter Inc on Thursday of restricting the visibility of prominent Republicans on its platform, without providing evidence, and he promised to investigate.

“Twitter ‘SHADOW BANNING’ prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once!” the Republican president wrote in a Twitter post.

The practice involves limiting the visibility of a user in search results, specifically in the auto-populated dropdown search box on Twitter.

Trump’s comments followed a Vice news report on Wednesday that Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and other Republicans including Donald Trump Jr’s spokesman were being “shadow banned.”

“The notion that social media companies would suppress certain political points of view should concern every American. Twitter owes the public answers to what’s really going on,” McDaniel wrote on Twitter.

Twitter did not have a comment on Trump’s tweet but a spokesperson said the company does not “shadow ban.”

“We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box, and we’re shipping a change to address this,” the spokesperson said in a statement.” Twitter said the technology used is based on user behavior not political views.

Twitter instituted a policy change on July 12 to increase the service’s credibility and reduce suspected fraud. That change cost its 100 most popular users about 2 percent of their followers, on average, according to social media data firm Keyhole.

The change cost former President Barack Obama 2 million followers by the morning after the change and singers Katy Perry and Justin Bieber each lost 3 million, The Washington Post reported, citing analytics company Twitter Counter.

The report said Trump’s account lost more than 200,000 of its 53 million followers.

Twitter shares, already lower in premarket trading after Facebook Inc’s disappointing earnings late Wednesday damped enthusiasm for technology and social media stocks, dipped a bit further and volume rose slightly after Trump’s tweet at 7:46 a.m. The stock was last down 3.2 percent. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bangalore; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Susan Thomas)

[USA Today]

Trump calls on Twitter to boot NY Times and Washington Post since they are banning ‘fake accounts’

President Donald Trump on Saturday again lashed out at his enemies in the media in a Twitter rant where he urged the company to delete the accounts of The New York Times and Washington Post.

“Twitter is getting rid of fake accounts at a record pace. Will that include the Failing New York Times and propaganda machine for Amazon, the Washington Post, who constantly quote anonymous sources that, in my opinion, don’t exist,” Trump wrote.

The president, whose businesses have repeatedly declared bankruptcy, also predicted that both newspapers would be, “out of business in 7 years!”

The company has been repeatedly urged to ban President Trump for violating the company’s terms of service.

In January, the social media company updated its policies to protect President Trump’s account.

“Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” Twitter claimed.

Two days later, demonstrators gathered at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to protest the announcement.

The protesters projected criticism on the facade of Twitter’s building, with messages stating Chief Executive Office Jack Dorsey is “complicit” and asking the question, “would Twitter ban Hitler?”

[Raw Story]

Trump Staffers Plant Alternative Facts to Stop Him From Tweeting Them

Several days have passed since the last news story appeared filled with hair-raising reports from inside the White House attesting to Donald Trump’s utter unfitness for office. The latest dispatch from the child monarchy of Donald Trump comes via Politico’s Tara Palmeri, who conveys the methods used by Trump’s staffers to manipulate his delicate and damaged psyche.

The thrust of the story revolves around the constant struggle to prevent Trump from tweeting out angry or false things that degrade his standing with the public by opening up a window into his mind. Palmeri, who spoke with six former Trump campaign officials, discovered that their method for controlling the president is based on a combination of his pathologies:

1. Media criticism makes Trump irrationally angry. The president’s habit of firing off replies to critical media outlets is well known, but Palmeri provides more details of his vulnerability to psychic distress when presented with criticism:

One Trump associate said it’s important to show Trump deference and offer him praise and respect, as that will lead him to more often listen. And If Trump becomes obsessed with a grudge, aides need to try and change the subject, friends say.

2. Trump does not control his own print-media diet. Other than a handful of legacy newspapers and magazines that he reads in print, the rest of the president’s news diet is spoon-fed to him by his staff:

He rarely reads anything online, instead preferring print newspapers — especially his go-to, the New York Times — and reading material his staff brought to his desk.

3. Trump does control his own television-media diet. He surfs cable for hours, a habit that can feed into his self-destructive mental state:

Leaving him alone for several hours can prove damaging, because he consumes too much television and gripes to people outside the White House.

4. Trump’s staff manipulates him by presenting him with favorable “news.” Trump tweets his own message out of a belief that his allies are not defending him with sufficient vigor, so he can he dissuaded from doing so if he sees favorable coverage in the printed-out news collection handed to him:

“He saw there was activity so he didn’t feel like he had to respond,” the former campaign official said. “He sends out these tweets when he feels like people aren’t responding enough for him.”…

“If candidate Trump was upset about unfair coverage, it was productive to show him that he was getting fair coverage from outlets that were persuadable,” said former communications director Sam Nunberg.

5. If there was not enough favorable coverage available, Trump’s aides would plant favorable stories in conservative media. Palmeri reports several such examples of planted stories in the right-wing media:

During another damage control mission, when former Miss Universe Alicia Machado took to the airwaves to call out Trump for calling her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping,” the communications team scrambled to place a story in conservative friendly outlets like Fox News, the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller and Breitbart.

“Alternative media” describes media that will report the Trump administration’s “alternative facts.” The Washington Examiner and Fox News contain a mix of legitimate reporting with conservative propaganda. Infowars is a fever-swamp conspiracy site run by Alex Jones, who promotes hoaxes like “Pizzagate,” insists the Sandy Hook shooting was faked, is suspicious of fluoridated water, and so on. Jones is barking mad. Breitbart and the Daily Caller lie in the middle ground between normal, conservative, Fox News–crazy, and Alex Jones–crazy. (Jim Rutenberg recently noted the overlap between Jones’s conspiratorial beliefs and Trump’s, but the administration refused to tell him that Trump followed Jones’s claims. Now Palmeri has confirmed it.)

And so Trump’s staff essentially outsources the job of circulating pro-Trump alternative facts to the right-wing media in order to dissuade the president from doing it himself and thereby tarnishing his brand. The president is therefore not only the subject but also the object of his own staff’s propaganda campaign.

Palmeri also reports a fascinating detail about the efforts to confirm Neil Gorsuch. The nominee’s comments to Senator Richard Blumenthal expressing dismay with Trump’s attacks on the judiciary were planned, out of the calculation that demonstrating Gorsuch’s independence from Trump and willingness to oppose his attacks on the judiciary would ease his path to confirmation. “White House officials anticipated that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch would distance himself from Trump’s attack and thought the planned comments would help the nominee’s bid, said a person with knowledge of the conversations,” she reports. Alas, Trump was not privy to the plan and, filled with rage, fired off a series of tweets attacking Blumenthal:

Trump himself didn’t like Gorsuch’s “disheartening” and “demoralizing” critique. He fired off a tweet criticizing Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who repeated the comments, digging up a past controversy over the senator’s military record and accusing him of incorrectly characterizing Gorsuch’s comments. Afterwards, Blumenthal and other Democrats criticized Trump and said the president’s comments would hurt his nominee’s chances. Asked if aides and advisers liked the tweet, one White House official said sarcastically: “What do you think?”

(h/t New York Magazine)

Kellyanne Conway: ‘Why Do You Care’ About Trump’s Tweets?

Former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on Monday defended President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter vendetta against the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” arguing that social media use is “a great way” to “cut through the noise or silence” and that Trump has the right to offer his criticism.

“Why do you care?” Conway said when asked by “New Day” host Chris Cuomo about Trump’s “Hamilton” feud. “Who is to say that he can’t do that, make a comment, spend five minutes on a tweet and making a comment and still be president-elect?”

Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, criticized media coverage of the social media controversy, saying that Trump is “just trying to cut through the nonsense of people telling Americans what is important to them, which we saw through the elections wasn’t true. People constantly being told this issue, this statement, this past transgression is important to you — and Americans said, ‘No, it’s not. What’s important to me is this 100-day plan.'”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

But that is not what Donald Trump is doing.

Taking a look at his past 10 tweets, half of them are personal attacks against those who have criticized him. And we should care because Trump has made a habit of intimidating those who disagree with him, both in the press and private citizens.

trump-tweet-timeline-2016-11

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIT9lD1z0TQ

Trump Wrongly Tweets Social Media is Burying FBI Letter

Sunday Morning Donald Trump sent out a tweet implying that major social media sites, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, are trying to suppress information regarding a letter FBI Directory James Comey sent to congress about emails found on an device belonging to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her soon-to-be ex husband Anthony Weiner.

Reality

Donald Trump received this information in an article from the conspiracy theory website Zero Hedge which is known to produce disingenuous content.

For their only evidence they showed screen grabs of we assume their own social media feeds.

However all social media sites have their own independent algorithms, and for this claim to be true Trump and his unreliable source would need to provide evidence of a level of collusion between competing social media companies.

There are a few things to consider when looking at trending topics. First, they are all algorithm-based, meaning some computer code was written to determine what topics are most important, and second, part of that algorithm factors in the things that you like.

But a simple  review of each social media site shows, in most cases, the James Comey letter is indeed in the top trending stories.

Trump has a social media team who should be able to debunk this for him.

Google

Google Trend searches for “Clinton FBI” and “FBI investigation Clinton” both showed a 100% interest value at the time of Trump’s tweet.

And news about James Comey’s letter was the top story to a logged out user.

trump-tweet-clinton-fbi-google

Facebook

Top story on Facebook.

trump-tweet-clinton-fbi-facebook

Twitter

Top of the Twitter news for a logged out user.

trump-tweet-clinton-fbi-twitter

 

 

 

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