Was Twitter correct in fact checking Trump?

Twitter is a biased actor and frequently targets conservatives

Question: Was Twitter correct in fact checking Trump?
Position‹2 of 2: No, Twitter should not have fact checked Trump
Argument‹2 of 2: Twitter is a biased actor and frequently targets conservatives

With most users leaning left and the company employing unintelligible algorithms that fixate on keywords, there is a clear political bias showcased by Twitter with conservative voices being censored and fact-checked at a greater rate than their liberal counterparts.

The argument

Statistically, 43% of Americans believe tech giants support liberal views over conservative, and 72% believe that social media platforms actively censor opposing political views to their own. Delving further, 85% of Republicans and right-leaning independents find that media platforms are purposefully censoring political viewpoints. This bias is even clearer when viewing Twitter as an entity with a political spectrum. In an analysis, Twitter is heavily skewed towards the left, with 67% of Twitter users being center-left or extreme left and only 33% of users being right-leaning (most of whom are extreme right-wing users). Compared to other outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and Yahoo News, who have almost equal amounts left vs. right digesters, Twitter's user breakdown is extremely polarized and left-leaning. Additionally, in a study reviewing Twitter suspensions of politically active public figures between 2015 and January of 2019, it was found that conservatives are four times as likely as liberals to "violate" Twitter's ambiguous terms of service. When looking at this rate along with the user analysis, it is clear that even with so few right voices on the platform, conservatives are more likely to be censored on Twitter.

Premises

[P1]A platform that systematically favors one political side cannot serve as a neutral fact-checker. [P2] Twitter's user base is heavily skewed leftward, and public perception confirms that the platform censors conservative viewpoints. [P3] Studies show conservatives are roughly four times more likely than liberals to be suspended under Twitter's ambiguous rules, demonstrating systemic bias. [C] Therefore, Twitter, as a biased actor that targets conservatives, should not have fact-checked Trump.

Counter-arguments

On various media sites, there are have been studies indicating that the algorithms and interactions within the sites are skewed in terms of what a reader will consume. Liberal accounts tend to be exposed to more moderate content, while conservative ones are shown content skewed to the right. Additionally, Partisan accounts (mostly conservative) tend to receive more followers. In other words, conservatives are certainly not being censored.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A platform's leanings do not by themselves settle whether a particular label was warranted. The claim that was fact-checked is either accurate or it is not, and the premise never engages the substance of what the label said. [Rejecting P2] The question at issue is whether the platform is biased, so citing polls showing that people believe it is argues in a circle. And the composition of a user base is not a moderation practice — it describes who uses a service, not how the rules are enforced. [Rejecting P3] Unequal suspension rates admit at least two explanations: uneven enforcement, or uneven rates of the conduct the rules prohibit. The premise assumes the first without testing the second, and research on reach has found partisan accounts on the right accumulating followers and engagement, which sits awkwardly with a claim of systematic suppression.

Proponents cited

Michael Glassner
“It appears that many people employed by Big Tech corporations in Silicon Valley are assisting the Biden campaign by instituting a special ‘Biden protection rule’ that effectively censors and silences legitimate political speech Biden’s campaign and its supporters do not like”
Jillian C. York
“Most of this content moderation is still done by humans, and humans are notorious for having their own values and biases”
William Barr
“You know, online platforms play a vital role in our society. Nearly everyone relies on platforms now for — on a daily basis — to communicate, to share private information, buy goods, receive news and information. And we’ve grown to depend on it, and necessarily, we’ve had to put our trust in these platforms.But these platforms can abuse those positions of trust, whether by deciding which voices they’re going to amplify and which they’re going to throttle, and by improperly tracking and collecting user data and even facilitating criminal activity. So the increased size and power of these entities really exacerbates those concerns.”
Ben Shapiro
“Though targeted harassment and bullying is something all people should be able to agree has no place in the arena of public discourse, sadly this ideal is rarely upheld when conservative opinions are being targeted by leftist bullying and harassment”
Donald Trump
“At the urging of the radical left, these platforms have become intolerant of diverse political views and abusive toward their own users....For example, Twitter routinely restricts posts expressing conservative views, even from a President of the United States, while at the same time it allows Iran’s Supreme Leader to freely spew vile, anti-Semitic hate and even death threats.”