27 May 2021 Twitter Promises to Be Transparent When It Censors Conservatives

Washington, D.C. – While maintaining that Twitter is unbiased, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey nevertheless promised today to be more transparent about why conservatives are routinely disciplined on his social media platform.

Scott Shepard

At Twitter’s virtual annual shareholder meeting, Scott Shepard, Deputy Director of the Free Enterprise Project (FEP) at the National Center for Public Policy Research, submitted this question:

I’m Scott Shepard with the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Twitter regularly discriminates against customers who express center/right positions. Just a couple recent examples: Many users were suspended or banned on the false grounds that they had incited the January 6th intrusion into the Capitol, but you allow leaders of terrorist regimes as well as anonymous users to celebrate genuine, deadly attacks on Israel. You permit, without comment or response, LeBron James to threaten and stoke violence toward a police officer against whom no charges of wrongdoing had been laid. You suspended James O’Keefe for posting a video that simply recorded a CNN producer admitting the network’s bias, poor journalistic practices and efforts to stir up racial division, but you said that it was fine for users to describe a Syrian Muslim shooter in Colorado as a “white Christian terrorist.”

As long as you remain the only game in town, you are obliged by law to act as a common carrier, treating all customers with objective equality. Since you won’t do that, will you call on your fellow tech companies to stop thwarting competitors to Twitter, or will you instead acknowledge that it’s time for the federal government to institute antitrust action against you?

Dodging Shepard’s specific examples, Twitter moderators condensed the question to: “Why do you continue to censor only on the conservative side?”

Dorsey responded:

We have no bias in any of our policies, in our enforcement, in our machine-learning algorithms. If we ever find anything even hinting at that, we look at it immediately and rectify it. If we make any mistakes along the way, we admit to them and correct them.

And I think the most important thing that we can do always is be more transparent with how our rules work, how our enforcements have taken place, and not just to the person directly but ultimately for anyone who happens to be looking at the actions. People should know why we took an action or why we didn’t take an action. Sometimes there might be assumptions around a particular content that we took action on, but underneath there might be other things going on, like manipulation of the network or spam-like activities or accounts manipulation, that we have to take action on as well.

So, we’re gonna do a better job at making sure that these are transparent so that people see that there is no bias in our action, and we’re going to make sure that we have a much more robust appeals process, so that when we do get things wrong, people can appeal the decision and we can correct it.”

After the meeting, Shepard responded:

Twitter’s treatment of our question is hilarious: it stealth-edited out of the question the factual demonstrations of bias against conservatives so that Dorsey could airily assert that Twitter doesn’t do exactly what it did to the question he was answering.

There’s no question that Jack and Twitter discriminate massively and constantly against conservatives and libertarians, and did so even in the manipulation of our question. This renders Jack’s falsehoods about nondiscrimination the most patent and embarrassing sort of nonsense.

But after the nonsense he did clearly and objectively promise to the company’s shareholders that Twitter would be more transparent about what it’s doing, with clear explanations and appeals processes. Now, since Jack and Twitter lied even in its repackaging of our question, and lied about Twitter’s aggressive discrimination against center/right thought, this transparency and these appeals boards are likely themselves to be biased from the jump. But now Dorsey and Twitter have acknowledged, however obliquely, that something is very wrong and needs real fixes.

All of this illustrates that aggressive, insistent pressure from those of us in the center and on the right can make a difference, even in a den of discrimination and hate like Twitter. Let’s hold Dorsey and the company to its promises, and let’s work at every level to write into law prohibitions against viewpoint discrimination by monster companies like Twitter.

Davis Soderberg

FEP Associate Davis Soderberg, who also attended today’s meeting, added:

Well, you heard it here first. Dorsey just made two lofty promises: transparency regarding accounts that are censored, and a more robust appeals process for anyone who feels they have been unfairly disciplined.

The question remains: Will Dorsey walk the walk, or continue to talk as if there isn’t a biased bone in his body? Based on his history, conservatives should be skeptical and keep a close eye on his actions going forward. Promises like these must be kept, and it is about time that he steps up to the plate to address the lack of transparency regarding Twitter’s censorship practices.

Adding to conservatives’ already existing skepticism, Dorsey doubled down on claims that Twitter has no bias against conservatives. Yet there are many reasons conservatives should be hesitant to accept this notion. To start, as our original question pointed out, Twitter had a quick trigger finger in kicking the former president of the United States off the platform, but has taken no action against Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader, whose tweet calling for the eradication of Israel remains on the platform. Additionally, a Media Research Center study revealed that Trump was censored at least 65 times by Twitter and Facebook during the election cycle of 2020, while Joe Biden wasn’t censored once. Maybe Jack should start by being transparent about that.

Conservative investors can learn how to oppose leftism in corporate America by downloading FEP’s new 2021 Investor Value Voter Guide and Balancing the Boardroom voting guide. The new website Stop Corporate Tyranny also provides tools for engagement with corporate leaders.

Today’s meeting marks the 35th time FEP has participated in a shareholder meeting in 2021. To schedule an interview with a member of the Free Enterprise Project on this or other issues, contact Judy Kent at (703) 477-7476.

Launched in 2007, the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project focuses on shareholder activism and the confluence of big government and big business. Over the past four years alone, FEP representatives have participated in over 100 shareholder meetings – advancing free-market ideals about health care, energy, taxes, subsidies, regulations, religious freedom, food policies, media bias, gun rights, workers’ rights and other important public policy issues. As the leading voice for conservative-minded investors, it annually files more than 90 percent of all right-of-center shareholder resolutions. Dozens of liberal organizations, however, annually file more than 95 percent of all policy-oriented shareholder resolutions and continue to exert undue influence over corporate America.

FEP activity has been covered by media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Variety, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Drudge Report, Business Insider, National Public Radio and SiriusXM. FEP’s work is prominently featured in Stephen Soukup’s new book The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business (Encounter Books) and Kimberley Strassel’s 2016 book The Intimidation Game: How the Left is Silencing Free Speech (Hachette Book Group).

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors.

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