Tuesday, Twitter users noticed something strange happening with their posts. Thousands of Twitter users were posting tweets and seeing the likes and retweets (RTs) on individual tweets disappear right in front of their eyes.
A few Twitter users were able to catch the deletion of likes and RTs in live time, while others caught likes and RTs jumping by the thousands within seconds.
On top of likes and RTs being manipulated, some Twitter users noticed entire replies were disappearing under posts:
Mark Dice asked, “Anyone else having their Twitter replies disappearing?”
Dice added in a subsequent tweet: “Twitter must [be] testing their new censorship algorithm.”
Dice wasn’t the only one who noticed Twitter’s manipulation of likes and retweets, Ann Coulter also noticed and questioned if Twitter was removing likes from conservative accounts:
“Hey Twitter! This Tweet had THOUSANDS of “likes” an hour ago – suddenly it’s down to 99. Twitter management is removing “likes” from conservatives now?”
Larry Elder noticed the same thing happening on some of his tweets and quote tweeted Coulter:
“Same here, @AnnCoulter. I lost hundreds per each of my last several tweets starting this morning. #ShadowBan”
“WHAT’S GOING ON WITH @Twitter?!. For my last several posts, posted a few hours ago, the number of retweets and likes suddenly declined, dropping hundreds of retweets and likes. ARE YOU EXPERIENCING THE SAME PROBLEM?”
Elder continued to track the likes and RTs on his account, posting his findings throughout the day:
“I posted 5 tweets this morning over 2 hrs, starting around 8am PT. One on @IlhanMN, one on @TheRevAl, two on the #GreenNewDeal, and one on Linda Sarsour (@lsasour). They got hundreds of RT’s and likes–and then the numbers dropped! WTH?! DID YOU SEE THOSE TWEETS? #ShadowBan”
“These two tweets got hundreds of retweets and likes on @Twitter when I posted them–and three others–this morning. But all suddenly lost hundreds!!! And some my followers are saying they NEVER SAW THEM!!! DID YOU SEE THESE TWEETS? #ShadowBan”
“I posted this over 2 hours ago. The number of RT’s and likes it got suddenly fell. DID YOU SEE THIS TWEET? #ShadowBan”
“I posted these three tweets this morning. They got hundreds and RT’s and likes–and then the numbers suddenly dropped! DID YOU SEE THESE THREE TWEETS? #ShadowBan”
“Really, @Twitter, ZERO retweets and ZERO likes?!? How are these tweets offensive?!? HEY, twitter followers, DID YOU SEE THESE TWO TWEETS?!? #ShadowBan”
YouTuber Jordan Sather (@Jordan_Sather_) caught his likes and RTs on an anti-vax post he made on Tuesday. The difference is 2.5 hours:
“After 30 minutes: 40 RTs and 100 likes. After 3 hours: 5 RTs and 7 likes. Twitter suppression, much? Anti-vax suppression, much?”
Praying Medic (@prayingmedic) noticed the same thing happening with some of his tweets, pointing out:
“Interesting twitter shenanigans. My first tweet of the day had 1000+ likes about an hour after it was posted. I checked an hour ago, and it had less than 400. It now has less than 200. Twitter wouldn’t gaslight conservatives, would they?”
Just as mind boggling and upsetting is watching Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet where she stuck up for Ilhan Omar jump from 1,500 likes to 17,000 in a split second.
David J. Harris Jr. caught the jump live:
” Proof! @aoc is a fraud!! We are being lied to!!! @realDonaldTrump has to see this!!! “
Twitter user Annie (@Anniemals11) caught another post where in under 30 seconds, the number of likes and RTs fluctuated back and forth:
“Noticed the same thing today “- @Anniemals11
Twitter user Mary Obrien (@MaryObr6330) pointed out that the like/RT count for conservative accounts were decreasing, rather than increasing: “The opposite for conservative accounts”
Many users tagged @Twitter and @TwitterSupport in their posts, and Tuesday evening, Twitter Support finally acknowledged the concerns in a tweet:
“Some people around the world are experiencing an issue with notifications, Likes, and Retweets. We’re working on resolving this and will follow up soon. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Twitter users can expect to receive the same explanation that Twitter Support always gives – this was a glitch, a bug, something within the system that went haywire. Then they’ll stress that the issue has been resolved and users shouldn’t experience this in the future. Users will forget about it, things will go back to normal for a bit until the next “glitch” that manipulates users’ posts, likes, or retweets is noticed.
Seems strange that these “glitches” seem to appear out of nowhere, overnight. How is it that some accounts are seeing their numbers of likes and RTs go down drastically, while other accounts have the opposite occur on their posts?
Selective glitches? Seems legit.
Follow Haley Kennington on Twitter and Gab!
