Report: Prominent Republicans see their influence limited on Twitter, Democrats don't

Are you a prominent conservative aligned with President Trump? It might be harder for people to find you on Twitter.

An analysis by Vice News found that some of Trump's closest allies don't immediately show up when you type in their names in Twitter's search box. Influential Democrats did not appear to have the same problem.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida is one of the president’s most ardent defenders and has raised questions about the credibility of high-level people at the Department of Justice and FBI, along with Reps. Jim Jordan of Florida and Mark Meadows of North Carolina, both powerful conservatives.

“Is it only a coincidence that these allegations would arise the week following my heated exchange with Twitter Executives before the Judiciary Committee??" Gaetz tweeted Wednesday.

“It should be clear that the targeted censorship of conservatives on Twitter isn’t some fringe conspiracy theory, it’s actually happening,” said Andrew Surabian, an adviser to Donald Trump Jr. and a former White House employee. Surabian, who had issues with people finding his account, called on Twitter to address the issue, which he said was the result of “anti-Trump political bias running rampant in their company.”

“The notion that social media companies would suppress certain political points of view should concern every American,” Ronna McDaniel, Republican Party chair and one of the users being “shadow banned," told Vice.

Some accounts weren’t being auto-suggested even when people were searching for

Kayvon Beykpour‏, head of products for Twitter, tweeted that the issue stemmed from a system the company started using in May to monitor how accounts behaved and interacted with other accounts that violated their rules. He said "our behavioral ranking doesn't make judgements based on political views or the substance of tweets."

Beykpour said the system used behavior signals that caused certain accounts not to be auto-suggested even if they were being searched for specifically. He said they were making changes Wednesday to improve the search function.

In the spring the company changed its policy to target “troll-like behaviors that distort and detract from the public conversation on Twitter.” The changes have targeted the influence of racists and white nationalists, but it was not clear why public figures were also being affected.

WSBTV