It was early 2016, and the presidential race was starting to heat up. People were flowing to social media to put in their two-cents about how they felt they had to support a particular candidate, including Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and others. The playing field was pretty much even, with Democrats and Republicans arguing facts and stats at an almost 50–50 pace, some winning arguments and of course some losers.
Then something happened. Around Summer of 2016, Twitter started filtering content with their custom algorithm. Now, usually an algorithm has nothing to do with politics, it’s a simple 1+1=2 code that does what you want it to do. But this time, the algorithm started censoring one side of the political spectrum while “signal-boosting” the other side. At first I assumed it was just a bug in the code, conservatives using a certain keyword that the coder had installed to remove. But then it got worse. Entire accounts were being removed and banned off of Twitter for “violations of terms of use” but never given a reason or link to the tweet in question. It was as if someone on the Twitter side was removing all pro-Trump content while allowing the most vile, nasty tweets from leftist Democrats to stay on the platform. This was not an algorithm issue, it was intentional.
Facebook and Google began doing the same thing. Searches for “Brexit” would display only negative news about it, and posting on social media about anything Pro-Trump would get you banned. This was a concerted effort to stifle speech if it went against the left’s narratives. This is an act of war in every sense of the word.
