It’s as if someone simply flipped a giant magical switch, and everything instantly changed. That’s what’s seemingly happened over at Twitter in the last 24 hours since Elon Musk bought the company.
This is why conservatives using social media have reported a dramatic increase in their followers within the last 24 hour.
While I’m awesome and totally deserving of 87,000 new followers a day it seems that someone took the shackles off my account. Wonder if they’re burning the evidence before new mgmt comes in? pic.twitter.com/9Mso48qyNP
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 26, 2022
Donald Trump Jr. A whopping 87,000 followers were added Tuesday by Federalist Editor Molly HemingwayReports indicate a rise of close to 8,000 while podcaster Benny JohnsonGained 20,000. Twitter searches reveal that many other claims are similar.
Meanwhile, liberals are crying that they’re Shedding followers. Maybe it’s because someone over at “The Bird” is nuking ‘bot accounts?
Are there others who are losing followers? Twitter is reporting today that thousands have disappeared. My number is now 5,000 It could just be that I have too many followers. Idk
— David Hogg 🌻 (@davidhogg111) April 25, 2022
Change is coming… no, it’s already here.
Several prominent accounts including Tucker Carlson’s are back in business. Carlson was previously suspended to defend the Babylon BeeHe refused to remove a comment he had made that agreed with the joke site that Dr. Rachel Levine was a transgender woman and U.S. Assistant secretary for Health was a man. According to the NY Post this tweet has been removed from his timeline so it appears he deleted it.
Conflicting reports indicate that the Babylon Bee may not have been permitted to start tweeting again. Although their Twitter account is available, there has been no activity since March 20,
Fox News radio host and contributor Mark Levin boycotted the station for over a year. But he announced that he was now allowing the platform to continue its broadcasts. decision to re-engage Monday, posting “Thanks to new ownership, I’ve decided to come back!”
Truckers for Freedom are also seeing an increase in their following.
It’s happening once again, friends! Since joining twitter, we already have over 1000 followers! We had similar growth last time (but not in the first hour !!!)). Stay with us and support Elon Musk!#truckersforfreedom pic.twitter.com/PmmrhVkw6g
— TruckersForFreedom (@Truckers5Fredom) April 25, 2022
Donald Trump was a former President It is notOne of them is returning at least temporarily. As I wrote Monday I’m not buying that, though, and bet he just can’t stay away. Mike Miller from RedState agreed with me, as do many others.
Why do so many accounts see such large growths in followers? It could be because of something called a “shadow ban,” which many users claim that Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others employ. Twitter asserts that they don’t engage in this practice but it is not true. Social media site SocialPlanner calls it that:
A shadowban is when a social media user is blocked on a platform but does not notice he or she is banned.
In other words, it’s all very murky and the algorithms are all secret, but if some little Twitter nerd doesn’t like your content, they can secretly “throttle” your visibility. One way to do this is to ensure that your tweets don’t “trend,” don’t show up in searches, etc. It’s almost more insidious than an outright cancellation because the account holder often isn’t even aware it’s happening. These and other algorithmic changes have led to dramatic improvements in engagement rates for posters.
shadow ban council reviewing tweet … pic.twitter.com/cawjtwc7CW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022
For the time being, it’s mostly conservatives celebrating the new Musk era, while libs are crying in their milk that free speech might be making a return on the platform.
It is obvious that the Musk acquisition of Twitter was a major game changer, however I doubt many people saw this dramatic shift in practice. Stay over.