Trump slams Twitter for 'shadow banning' Republicans

IANS Thursday, 26 July 2018 07:30:12 PM

Washington : US President Donald Trump on Thursday slammed Twitter for "shadow banning" some Republicans in search results on the micro-blogging platform.

"SHADOW BANNING" prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints," Trump tweeted.

The tweet came a day after Vice News reported that Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel, several conservative Republican congressmen and Donald Trump Jr.'s spokesperson stopped showing up in Twitter's auto-populated drop-down search box.

"Twitter is limiting the visibility of prominent Republicans in search results - a technique known as "shadow banning" - in what it says is a side effect of its attempts to improve the quality of discourse on the platform," the report said.

A Twitter spokesperson told Vice: "We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box and shipping a change to address this".

After Trump's tweet, Twitter shares slipped 3.2 per cent to $42.79 in early trading, Fortune reported.

Trump has 53.3 million followers on the micro-blogging platform.