Why Twitter should ignore the phony outrage over “shadow banning”

A consequence of covering the intersection of social media and democracy is that sometimes you wind up having to discuss things that are very dumb. The somewhat infuriating controversy over Twitter's "shadow banning" of prominent conservatives — something that it is in no way doing — is one of them. And yet how Twitter reacts to the attendant criticism could determine whether the company ever gets a handle on the abuse its platform is so well known for.

Yesterday I mentioned a misleading story in Vice whose headline then stated, falsely, that "Twitter is 'shadow banning' prominent Republicans like the RNC chair and Trump Jr.'s spokesman." (It has since been changed.) That story drew from a Sunday piece by Gizmodo that described how some...

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