Twitter has been in the spotlight for the last couple of days. The social media platform has been faulted for not doing enough to weed out radical users who break its policies.
Its recent feature namely Fact-Check was attacked by the US President who argued that the corporation was trying to interfere with his posts. The development was based on complaints that Trump was making false complaints.
The platform has also seen users air their views, including Trump’s speeches that are allegedly racist.
Now, if you search ‘racist’ on Twitter, the first account that comes up is Trump’s.
This, however, cannot be perceived from face value. Search results are affected by the data Twitter collects from its users, including interests and political affiliations.
We tried to do the same thing using Brave browser in private mode (see why we used Brave) and got the same results.
Other friends reported the same thing.
One assumption is that Twitter is, inadvertently or otherwise, promoting the algorithm that brings the search results.
But according to the company, some accounts pop up based on their mention alongside other search terms. Therefore, users can see the suggested recommendation from the results, which appears to be happening here.
Twitter has since taken down Trump campaign tribute videos for George Floyd who passed away under circumstances that have since seen the nation resort into demonstrations. The videos were flagged after a copyright infringement report.
It is going to be a very interesting year for Twitter, among other social media platforms that have been under fire for allegedly giving privilege to popular people that break its policies.
