One of the reasons Tesla mogul Elon Musk says he wants to take over Twitter is that the social media platform censors conservatives.
“I am concerned about the de facto bias in the ‘Twitter algorithm’ having a major effect on public discourse,” he posted on Twitter not long before he launched his $43 billion hostile bid for the company.
Mainstream conservatives, who for years have accused Twitter and other social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube of censoring right-wing views, applauded Musk’s offer. “Let’s hope this passes and we have free speech on Twitter again,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in an interview with Fox Business that he posted on Twitter.
Accepted as gospel on the right, the notion that conservatives are marginalized or “cancelled” by social media companies has always had an odd ring to it, given that conservative pundits and politicians (like Jordan) are particularly prolific and enjoy it. high levels of engagement on major platforms. Last year, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights published a paper I wrote that noted the lack of any credible research finding that platforms were removing conservative content for ideological reasons.
Even anecdotal evidence of alleged bias tends to evaporate under close scrutiny. Yes, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube banned former President Donald Trump after the US Capitol uprising on January 6, 2021. But while it was unprecedented, this response was justified by Trump repeated violation of platform rules against baseless infringement of election results and incitement to violence.
Now, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale and the University of Exeter have published the first study I’m aware of that takes an independent, empirical look at the bias claim. Twitter, they found, tends to suspend Republican users far more often than Democrats. But this is not necessarily due to party favoritism. Instead, it’s just as likely that Republicans were suspended because they tend to spread far more misinformation.
Researchers identified 9,000 politically engaged Twitter users in October 2020, half Democrats and half Republicans. They tracked the sample for seven months after the November 2020 election. During that period, Twitter suspended 7.7 percent of Democrats. By contrast, the platform suspended 35.6 percent of Republicans — a more than fourfold change.
Evidence that Twitter is leaning against the right? Not so fast, the researchers said.
The study team examined their subjects’ appetite for sharing misinformation, meaning truly false content such as fake COVID-19 cures or QAnon conspiracy theories. The researchers found that Republican Twitter users shared “significantly more news from disinformation sites.” (Disinformation sites were labeled as unreliable by professional fact-checking organizations or by polls of politically balanced and demographically representative lay people.)
“Critically,” the researchers said, “we found that users’ dissemination of misinformation was as predictive of suspension as was their political orientation. Thus, the observation that Republicans were more likely to be suspended than Democrats does not provide support for the claim that “Twitter showed political bias in its suspension practices. Instead, the observed asymmetry can be explained entirely by Republicans’ tendency to share more misinformation.”
In addition to tracking Twitter suspensions, the researchers surveyed 4,900 Americans about their attitudes toward misinformation, finding “strong bipartisan support” for social media platforms taking action against demonstrably false content. On Twitter, however, Republicans are more likely to amplify misinformation. “As a result,” the researchers said, “our study shows that it is inappropriate to draw conclusions about political bias from asymmetries in suspension rates.”
Asymmetry is a key word when thinking about misleading and polarizing content online. Previous studies have determined that conservatives tend to share dramatically more content from low-quality “fake news” sites than liberals and were more likely to visit such sites. Research has also shown that Republican Twitter users are exposed to greater misinformation from their political leaders than Democrats.
However Musk’s Twitter lead is resolved — the company’s board of directors is using a “poison pill” to try to thwart him — the issue of social media bias will remain front and center as the midterms approach. November and beyond, the presidential elections of 2024. elections. Republicans are repeating the baseless claim in an attempt to smear not only the platforms, but Democrats as well.
“Big Tech has censored my posts about biological sex, COVID, Hunter Biden, even kitchen-table issues like energy prices,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee. “Democrats’ election strategy now relies on censorship.”
The newly published study should blunt this line of attack. But in an online environment where propensities for misinformation are asymmetric, the claim of bias is unlikely to fade anytime soon.
Paul M. Barrettsenior research fellow and deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, writes about the effects of social media on democracy. Find him on Twitter @authorpmbarrett.
