top | item 45104597

Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

389 points| hn1986 | 6 months ago |utkusen.substack.com

189 comments

order

roughly|6 months ago

I am not an Elon or X fan, and I don’t think this is Good, but Twitter’s policy pre-X to comply with national content laws was to geo-block content when a government demanded it be blocked. I don’t recall if the algorithmic shadow-ban was in that toolkit pre-X as well, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Again, I don’t think this is a good outcome, but it’s not substantially at odds with what Twitter pre-Elon would’ve done (I also seem to recall Twitter was very sensitive to employees visiting or living in Turkey - the relationship with the Turkish government had been fraught for years).

Now, if the critique here is that Mr. Free Speech is rolling over and showing his belly to the first autocrat who shows up at his door, yeah, I get that, but it’s a little bit more of a “dog bites man” than a “man bites dog” story at this point.

panarky|6 months ago

I happened to be in Istanbul during the Gezi Park uprising in 2013.

I didn't participate in the protests, but I did manage to wander into the wrong place at the wrong time and got teargassed pretty good and hard. I sheltered from the gas and the water cannons and the soldiers with a group of protestors overnight and got to learn from them firsthand.

They were using Twitter extensively to coordinate and to find out what what was going on because state media was completely bogus. They told me the government was blocking or throttling network traffic from Twitter at the DNS and ISP level to suppress the uprising.

Twitter routinely refused or challenged Turkish government demands to take down material or to turn over logs. I remember that in 2014 the government demanded Twitter take down links to evidence of official corruption and Twitter refused.

Pre-Musk Twitter quite vigorously fought Turkish demands for censorship. Not every time, but many times.

After Musk took over, Twitter/X has been far more compliant with Turkish takedown demands. Before Turkish elections in 2023, Twitter restricted access to some accounts in Turkey to avoid threats of a wider shutdown. Musk publicly defended his decision as the "lesser of two evils".

X’s own figures (as cited by Human Rights Watch) show 86% compliance with government requests from Turkey in 2024 (https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/05/08/joint-open-letter-social...).

Compare that to pre-Musk times, where Twitter complied with Turkish court orders ~25% of the time (https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/313615_TURK...).

Free-speech Twitter no longer exists.

energy123|6 months ago

Elon fights UK, Brazil, Australia, Germany, and other democracies but turns a blind eye to every autocracy on the planet engaging in far more insidious censorship. Worse he will genuflect towards those autocrats. Interesting.

arp242|6 months ago

I guess the thing is that Musk does actually fight this sort of thing, but seemingly only on certain topics that align with his pretty far-out views.

It's rather hard to take that in good faith. This is "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law." kind of stuff.

Old Twitter wasn't perfect, but at least tried to be somewhat neutral and even-handed.

dmix|6 months ago

This is definitely not the first time post-Elon that Twitter has continued the practice of following foreign requests. AFAIK they only pushed back on Brazil when what the government requested was particularly aggressive, not unlike when Facebook pushed back against Brazil back in the day and similarly got a daily fine for not following through.

bananalychee|6 months ago

Twitter regularly banned political figures globally following government pressure. X is more consistent in applying bans regionally rather than banning accounts from the platform entirely. Post-acquisition they've expressed that they choose to do that because they deem it to be preferable to having the entire network banned in certain countries. It probably has more to do with the financial incentives than with a value judgement, but either way there's no reasonable alternative, so I find it disingenuous to frame it as evidence of Musk's dishonesty, regardless of the fact that there are other instances where moderation policies were changed arbitrarily that actually do constitute evidence of that. I understand that some people flag any comment that isn't sufficiently critical of Musk and his companies regardless of their validity, which makes it tempting to parenthesize any "softball" comment to express loyalty to the tribe, but with regards to their compliance with government censorship it's unwarranted.

numpad0|6 months ago

imo the bigger talking point is that Twitter post-acquisition has been working pathetically to curb organic buzzes in favor of manufactured trends, even harder than its previous left-leaning management. Effect of that being observed in Turkish politics is a downstream issue to that.

Twitter's strict "fun wins" algorithm of past seem like it had been a major driver in e.g. Arab Spring.

pessimizer|6 months ago

Old Twitter was selective in what countries it would take orders from because it would consult with the administration on a weekly basis and be told what to do. Social media explicitly changed their policies to allow for the advocacy of violence against Russians (only), which is insane.

I have no idea how people could delude themselves into thinking that was a better situation, especially during a Trump presidency that has been deporting and excluding people for speech, but it's impossible to understand the movement Democrat's value system at any particular moment.

It's of course sad that we have to rely on Mr. Free Speech Oligarch in order to debate subjects from positions that consistently poll majorities of the electorate, but I'd rely on China, Russia and Iran to talk about my problems with the US government, too. They openly hate free speech, they just support the freedom of that sort of speech (until the US likes them again.) It's the US that is desperate to abandon what is almost literally its Prime Directive and main differentiator from the rest of the world. We are popularly sovereign. We are not ruled by God through His current anointed representative bloodline, with a Parliament as a customary intermediary (which is actually a frozen conflict.)

How many years are we away from a POTUS directly passing rule to their child or spouse? We've gotten awfully close multiple times in the past couple decades. Will Democrats finally be happy that dumb people don't get to vote anymore? Do we pass from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire again, propelled by the righteous complaints of slaves and farmers about a decadent, narcissistic, do-nothing elite?

like_any_other|6 months ago

> it’s a little bit more of a “dog bites man” than a “man bites dog” story at this point.

Not just at this point, and not just Twitter - slanting algorithms and bans for political ends is common practice, it's just usually a little more subtle:

Twitter Aided the Pentagon in Its Covert Online Propaganda Campaign - https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/twitter-milita...

On Facebook, Comments About ‘Whites,’ ‘Men,’ And ‘Americans’ Will Face Less Moderation - https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/12/03/on-face...

Facebook, Twitter stocked with ex-FBI, CIA officials in key posts - https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/facebook-twitter-stocked-with-...

Emi Palmor, the former General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice is on Facebook's oversight board - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emi_Palmor

1993-1997 US secretary of Labor Robert Reich: Trump is suing Facebook, Twitter, and Google for violating his 1st Amendment rights by keeping him off their platforms. Someone should remind him that they're private companies to which the 1st Amendment doesn't apply. - https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1412826396490039296

Meet the Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy - https://www.mintpressnews.com/meet-ex-cia-agents-deciding-fa...

Far-right Polish groups protest Facebook profile blockages - https://apnews.com/article/7ea31c13b8bf45db88430e763e594025

Polish PM calls Facebook ban on far-right party undemocratic - https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-technology-h...

YouTube: Keeping Americans in the Dark on Islam - https://www.raymondibrahim.com/01/26/2018/youtube-keeping-am...

PPC candidate banned from Facebook and public debates - https://xcancel.com/MarcScottEmery/status/143384506948066510...

Website critical of Joe Biden banned by reddit, and even banned from private messages on Facebook - https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/hr30p3/reddit_f...

Facebook Prevents Sharing New York Post Story on Black Lives Matter Founder Patrisse Cullors' Real Estate - https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-prevents-sharing-new-york-...

Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments - https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is-dele...

Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News - https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-sup...

Reporter: Facebook using ex-CIA to decide misinformation policy is ‘very, very worrying’ - https://thehill.com/hilltv/3566225-reporter-facebook-using-e...

Meta: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content - https://text.hrw.org/news/2023/12/20/meta-systemic-censorshi...

How Facebook restricted news in Palestinian territories - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c786wlxz4jgo

nashashmi|6 months ago

Elon has bragged about shadow banning posts in the interview with don lemon. Apparently twitter has been the most important public town square… to manipulate. Thank you.

dmix|6 months ago

Which interestingly was almost exclusively far right accounts. He shadow banned 3-4 and kicked a few others off X premium (so they don't get paid for tweets). Which X claimed was for spamming him and others after they disagreed with him over supporting H1B visas. But he's definitely not a neutral actor so who knows. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/23/business/elon...

mensetmanusman|6 months ago

Counterpoint: shadow banning will always be necessary in any public square until mental illness is solved.

sercansolmaz|6 months ago

The Turkish government definitely has a hand in this situation. Otherwise, I think the fact that I see almost no posts from an account that has notifications enabled and that I follow indicates a flawed algorithm. I congratulate the friend who shared this post. He touched on a very nice, detailed topic...

numpad0|6 months ago

Possibly but also plausible that they just do it anyway. The post-acquisition Twitter "shadowban" a lot of contents and users in-organically and algorithmically in their attempt to change its content-novelty-meritocracy culture into cash based influence economy, with not significant, but not at all negligible, successes.

theneki|6 months ago

They won elections for years with a puppet candidate. Now there is no puppet candidate, and they want to block this one by using all the power of the state.

StefanBatory|6 months ago

Are you saying that opposition had a puppet candidate all this time in Turkey, like you'd see in Russian elections?

Argonaut998|6 months ago

Not the first time this has happened. It’s very strange. Elon is willing to risk breaking the laws of the EU, Brazil and the UK yet caters to Turkish law with seemingly no resistance whatsoever.

balder1991|6 months ago

He knows authoritarian countries will order what they want and that’s it, so he simply comply. But for democracies where power is more diffuse, he can afford to make a show and try to shift public opinion to whatever he wants, defying the State as much as possible.

halukakin|6 months ago

Considering Turkey is an EU membership candidate. This should fall under the guidelines of Digital Services Act. This is a clear violation.

SilverElfin|6 months ago

Is it? X just follows the country’s applicable laws right?

Also the EU is not exactly innocent or a better authority - see the interference recently in Romania’s elections, where they literally annulled the votes cast by citizens, banned a candidate, and reran the elections so they would get the desired result.

xp84|6 months ago

I continue to be skeptical of hanging hopes for 'free speech' on expecting free-as-in-beer, ad-supported, privately owned websites to actively promote the things that you write.

Irrespective of how Musk's overall social media posturing portrays "free speech" -- X is the only one whose speech matters and they are apparently choosing to 'speak' in ways that don't support him. They are technically doing this guy a favor by letting him post on their site in the first place, and in an algorithmic timeline it is impossible to justify how much reach his posts "should" have vs. how much they do have.

If someone wants to post their speech, they should do so on their own website that they pay for and control. They should purchase advertising if they're not satisfied with their traffic. Thwarting those things -- now that's unethical government censorship, which one can justifiably be mad about. Depending on the government in question it may or may not be unconstitutional.

Relying on X or Meta or whomever to distribute your speech just because there's some vague notion of non-interference in speech on such platforms in the countries where they're based is foolish when you live somewhere else with different laws. Even if the US constitution had some draconian provision to force X to promote his speech, that can't really protect him in Turkiye where the government can just block X.

eig|6 months ago

It's possible to simultaneously believe that private companies should have control over what messages are shown on their own platform while also believing that exerting such control can be negative to the world.

It's the same reason libel and defamation laws exist: someone realized that countries operate better when spreading falsehoods to tarnish a party is illegal, and so laws exist to influence public discourse.

raziel2p|6 months ago

How is purchasing advertisement any more safe from free speech suppression than posting on X/Twitter, Instagram or similar? You're still subject to algorithms, and because advertisment goes through a private entity, they can instil arbitrary restrictions with some amount of effort.

ysofunny|6 months ago

I think shadow banning is harmful. But I have been ostracized all my life so I am definitely biased

kiitos|6 months ago

you will meet assholes in your life, but if everyone you meet is an asshole, you're the asshole

think on this

ebrugulec123|6 months ago

Even if X is acting under a court order in Turkey, the shadow-ban–like behavior on a global platform is concerning. Hiding posts algorithmically goes beyond legal compliance and raises serious questions about whether X is protecting free speech or quietly facilitating censorship.

internetter|6 months ago

AI comment?

ChrisArchitect|6 months ago

> We don't have solid proof but

These shadowban stories are so often just hearsay and anecdotes from random users just feeding weird conspiracy vibes. Never go on a user saying they don't see something, there's too many variables in the mix from their usage patterns to sure, actual weird Elon/X algorithm tweaks at play.

BlueTemplar|6 months ago

That Xitter uses a complex, opaque algorithm, is why it should be banned in the first place.

leetharris|6 months ago

Misleading title. There is no proof at all, just speculation in this post.

From the last paragraph:

"We don’t have solid proof, but it strongly suggests that X is secretly shadow banning İmamoğlu. I don’t think Elon Musk will change this, but I’m writing this article to show the political power he holds."

DustinBrett|6 months ago

Proof has never stopped these people from making claims.

notenlish|6 months ago

There is proof, people have had their likes and retweets removed from the presidential candidates x account on multiple cases.

Also, most of the accounts tweets only have around 200k impressions, which is much lower than what the old x account(which was banned by the government) used to get.

Also another point, erdogans government is so intolerant of seeing the presidential candidate is that they've literally took down banners and posters that mention anything about him. It is "illegal" to have a banner ad that has the text "Ekrem İmamoğlu" or a photo showing İmamoğlu. Do you really think a government that goes to such extremes won't try and persuade Twitter to shadowban the presidential candidate's x account?

cheschire|6 months ago

I wondered early on if this X brand was going to take off. If maybe this was a genius move that I just didn't comprehend. And yet here we are, over 3 years later, still needing to caveat X with Twitter in common usage.

lysace|6 months ago

The problem here is primarily Erdogan and secondarily Musk.

raziel2p|6 months ago

The world might have people like Erdogan hold less powerful positions if large social platforms like Twitter didn't enable populism and suppression so easily.

xxray|6 months ago

It’s been long time since Twitter invited to settle in Turkey.. so guessing they getting on well on something obvious lol

notenlish|6 months ago

Nothing shocking, Musk doesn't stand for free speech, neither does Erdogan.

afroboy|6 months ago

Actually no president does.

stivatron|6 months ago

They have to follow the law of the country as tyrannical as it is like they did in Brazil. I hope one day they say fuck it.

foxglacier|6 months ago

What other moral standard is there besides laws? Is it that the laws of non-tyrannical countries should override those of tyrannical ones? How do you decide tyrannicalness? Or should internet companies decide what should be allowed in other countries despite those countries and their populations disagreeing? Great firewalls are the solution when nobody can agree with each other across borders but that's a pity.

FredPret|6 months ago

But then X just gets banned in said country

utku1337|6 months ago

shadow ban is not part of that

warkdarrior|6 months ago

Turkey has a law requiring social networks to shadowban opposition-party candidates?

flykespice|6 months ago

Mr freedom of speech strikes again!

I like how Elon is so eager to bend his knee to censor requests from authoritarian "friend" governments like India and Turkey

but when the request comes from a supposedly "left-leaning" judiciary like Brazil to suspend accounts that were posting misinformation, suddenly he stands on his principles and defy the orders.

yalogin|6 months ago

We all know is vehemently aligned on right wing ideology. So this is not surprising. What in surprised by though is why it’s relevant.

fourseventy|6 months ago

X's stated goal is to comply with the laws of any given country that it operates in. As the article states, there is a court order to restrict that particular users account https://x.com/GlobalAffairs/status/1920426409358455081.

This is a nothing burger.

utku1337|6 months ago

I suggest you read the article. Officially restricting an account is one thing, but shadow banning without a court order is another. Something suspicious is happening, and the article talks about it.

tshaddox|6 months ago

The fact that it's their "stated goal" does not exempt them from criticism.

blaufuchs|6 months ago

At this point I think we can safely retire “nothing burger”, can’t remember the last time it meant something other than “an inconvenient story for my narrative that I’d rather gloss over”

selim17|6 months ago

Elon Musk loves to brand himself as a “free speech absolutist” but when it comes to authoritarian regimes like Turkey, that principle evaporates instantly. Pre-Musk Twitter, for all its flaws, at least pushed back against censorship requests - now, X bends the knee without hesitation.

Shadow-banning opposition voices is a gift to governments that fear open debate, and Musk is complicit.

Free speech isn’t free if it only applies where it’s convenient.

trelane|6 months ago

> Free speech isn’t free if it only applies where it’s convenient.

Man, this is true across so much of the political landscape.

"Principles" are what we enforce on others and excuse away for ourselves.

Rakshith|5 months ago

As they should, the islamic brotherhood are terrorists or soft terrorists funding terrorists. Twitter used o bloack terrorists but then started letting them on to propagate propaganda and literally use the platform to mobilize their troops all over the world, the islamic invasion, as the world sees it today. It has been in the works for decades while we got busy with our own 1st world issues like feminism and homosexuality. Those people will kill these fanatics but uses them to weaken their target.

socrates1998|6 months ago

[deleted]

SilverElfin|6 months ago

> Elon will continue to mess with the algorithm until he gets his political goals.

Twitter/X has open sourced their algorithm (https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm). So what do you mean by “mess with the algorithm”? And how do you characterize the extreme moderation (AKA censorship) practiced by old Twitter? For example when they banned a sitting president on the flimsiest reasoning, that even their own blog post justifying it could not describe, that their former CEO agreed was a big mistake?

> It's too bad that most people don't care about fascists getting control of these huge media platforms.

Define “fascist”. These days it seems to just mean “someone not aligned with one end of the political spectrum”. The bottom line is Twitter/X is far less censored today than it was a few years ago and it isn’t even close. The vast scheme of censorship it practiced previously dramatically altered elections worldwide.

declan_roberts|6 months ago

How do you measure viable? Twitter is still the best place to hear and read about breaking news.

Havoc|6 months ago

It has critical mass and network effects which apparently can take a hell of a lot of strain from the actual product being shit

numpad0|6 months ago

Decentralized socials haven't found a great way to generate informational bandwidth comparable to peak Twitter. Twitter demographic is thoroughly desensitized with data bandwidth and will not move to alternatives that don't offer current Twitter even though it's nowhere near the rosy peak.

idiomat9000|6 months ago

Its more a auction house for selling the western public any opinion. The irony beeing that all those unsavoury characters, autocrats, islamo-facists can push their stories with the rest rented out to lobbies. Resulting in public places with no public.

cryptoegorophy|6 months ago

Did you know you can just ignore politics? There are filters. When it comes to politics everyone seems to be a retard, even figures like Paul Graham being a genius in one field, while being a complete moron in all others.

dlivingston|6 months ago

The sole reason I'm still on Twitter/X is that it's still ground zero for the startup scene. Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Garry Tan, and thousands of other VCs, CEOs, founders, and engineers are highly active and visible.

Also, I cannot stand BlueSky, as much I want to like it. There's this intense moralizing and pile-on culture that reminds me of the worst of pre-Musk Twitter. I'll never forget joining BlueSky late last year, posting some very milquetoast, liberal-coded and frankly inoffensive opinions, and finding myself added to lists called "MAGA / Nazi accounts to block". Just absolutely blew my mind and caused me to write off the platform forever.

archagon|6 months ago

By the way, one of his primary political goals these days is white nationalism. He does not try to hide it anymore: https://bsky.app/profile/harikunzru.bsky.social/post/3lxrqzm...

(In case anyone is not familiar: “Remigration is a far-right European concept of ethnic cleansing via the mass deportation of non-white immigrants and their descendants, sometimes including those born in Europe, to their place of racial ancestry.”)

I am gobsmacked that this is rarely mentioned whenever there’s news about Twitter. It’s just so stunningly grotesque.

docmars|6 months ago

Unfortunately fascists were in control before Elon bought the platform, so if that's the case, nothing's really changed.

jjangkke|6 months ago

by your own measure then communists and socialists have gotten control of platforms like Reddit and is no longer a viable platform

NelsonMinar|6 months ago

It says a lot about the people who are still ok using Twitter after what's been done to it.

loeg|6 months ago

Twitter is still the best of the twitter clones.

jjangkke|6 months ago

[deleted]

kyle-rb|6 months ago

It's not the most pro free speech platform, Elon deboosts and prevents users from liking any post with the word 'cis'.

timzaman|6 months ago

Hard to believe given the tweets have 100ks of views.

NewJazz|6 months ago

On an earth of 8 billion? And how many views are in Turkey?

reboot81|6 months ago

That’s it. Im going to get my family to delete their x accounts.