Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Twitter Files" in English language version.
Among the most hotly debated questions on social media is how algorithmic bias affects social media. In America conservatives claim that Facebook and Twitter bury or outright censor their views. The left retorts that right-wing conspiracy theories like QAnon flourish on these sites. An unlikely arbiter recently emerged in this debate: Twitter itself. In October it released a paper it said demonstrated that its algorithm, which picks which tweets users see in which order, favoured right-leaning American news sites. In six of the seven countries studied, the algorithm also gave a disproportionate boost to lawmakers from conservative political parties.
The billionaire, Trump, and the right are ignoring an inconvenient backstory.
Last night, on Fox News, Tucker Carlson also picked up the claim about the First Amendment. With characteristic breathless hyperbole, Carlson declared that the documents "show a systemic violation of the First Amendment, the largest example of that in modern history." Musk and Carlson are both profoundly wrong; the documents released so far show no such thing. In October 2020, when the laptop story broke, Joe Biden was not president. The Democratic National Committee (which also asked for Twitter to review tweets) is not an arm of the government. It's a private political party. Twitter is not an arm of the government; it is a private company.
The billionaire, Trump, and the right are ignoring an inconvenient backstory.
Among the most hotly debated questions on social media is how algorithmic bias affects social media. In America conservatives claim that Facebook and Twitter bury or outright censor their views. The left retorts that right-wing conspiracy theories like QAnon flourish on these sites. An unlikely arbiter recently emerged in this debate: Twitter itself. In October it released a paper it said demonstrated that its algorithm, which picks which tweets users see in which order, favoured right-leaning American news sites. In six of the seven countries studied, the algorithm also gave a disproportionate boost to lawmakers from conservative political parties.
Last night, on Fox News, Tucker Carlson also picked up the claim about the First Amendment. With characteristic breathless hyperbole, Carlson declared that the documents "show a systemic violation of the First Amendment, the largest example of that in modern history." Musk and Carlson are both profoundly wrong; the documents released so far show no such thing. In October 2020, when the laptop story broke, Joe Biden was not president. The Democratic National Committee (which also asked for Twitter to review tweets) is not an arm of the government. It's a private political party. Twitter is not an arm of the government; it is a private company.
The billionaire, Trump, and the right are ignoring an inconvenient backstory.
