I follow a few people in "gamer/twitch twitter" and every now and then this meme pops up of twitter secretly deranking "go live" twitch.tv tweets, which is much more palatable to these people than the reality of just no one caring about their boring tweets.
Please stop living in this bubble. There have been plenty of reports of Twitter shadow banning speech it doesn't like. It has even suspended accounts multiple times only to reinstate them by saying it was an "algorithm error" or it being "wrongly flagged". In India we regularly see Twitter suspending accounts that have not violated any Indian law.
All because it doesn't align with the left-leaning ideology of Twitter. Even trends are boosted to favor left-leaning news portals over right-leaning news portals (which is visible in the trends section).
An example: https://www.freepressjournal.in/viral/bringbacktrueindology-...
^ This account specifically was suspended a total of 3 times. Ultimately the anonymous account owner decided to come out in the open and open a Twitter account in his real name. He got banned again very recently. In all those instances, there was not even one tweet of his that "crossed the line" when it came to anything illegal. Be it speech, instigation of violence or even a curse word. Nothing at all. The suspension was purely ideological.
Of course this is evident too. And let me quote directly from an Opposition leader in India (whose party/ideology I completely oppose):
"“I have been reliably, albeit discreetly, informed by people at Twitter India that they are under immense pressure by the government to silence my voice. My account was even blocked for a few days for no legitimate reason,” Gandhi said in his letter."
"“For example, in May 2021, my account gained roughly 640,000 new followers. This had been the case for several years until July 2021. Then something strange happened. Since August 2021, the average number of my new monthly Twitter followers has fallen to nearly zero,” he claimed."
Article in question: https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/in-focus/story/rahul-gan...
Now just because I am opposed to his ideology (which is Left-Centrist) doesn't mean I want him banned/shadow-banned from the platform. He has every right to continue to voice his opinions. Now he claims that it was the Government (whose ideology I support) which supposedly interfered and pressurized Twitter to manipulate follower count. I would like transparency on this if my Government, which I support, did indeed do that. Or did Twitter itself decide to shadow ban his account. Or was Twitter doing it legitimately because he had a lot of bots following him and when they banned those bots his follower count decreased. Either ways, I want the facts in the open.
As far as shadow banning content goes. It happens on a fairly regular basis. Open any Tweet that has quite a few comments right now and scroll to the end. You typically have a "Show additional replies, including those that may contain offensive content". Take this tweet as an example: https://twitter.com/Bob_Mayo/status/1518679097672617990
When you click more replies it shows "Show additional replies". Clicking on it is an innocuous tweet with laughing emoji. But the tweet above it isn't put behind a collapsible card. How many would click on the "Show" button and read those replies that are hidden by default? This is throttling reach a.k.a shadow banning. It is not like there is some abusive word being used in the tweet. It is just laughing emojis.
