Amid the growing allegations of bias against users belonging to right-wing ideology, today many users on microblogging site started Twitter complaining that suddenly numbers of retweets and likes on Tweets posted them declined after higher numbers were shown for them.
Several users on Twitter posted screenshots their tweets, which showed that retweets on likes on their tweets came down within a few minutes.
Nobody does maths as good as @TwitterIndia and @Twitter:
* 934 RTs at 1.34 PM
* It comes down to 453 RTs at 1.37 PM – – three minutes later
* At 1.48 PM, it is again brought down to 26 RTs
Shadow-banning or sheer manipulation? Or is the tweet you didn’t like much @twitter? pic.twitter.com/acUPxa89bG
— Utkarsh Anand (@utkarsh_aanand) February 12, 2019
People who were monitoring retweets of their tweets noticed that numbers of retweets were gradually coming down.
BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma alleged that her one tweet with more than 1200 retweets, which had criticised Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for sending a pregnant woman in his place to the Parliamentary committee, was later showing 505 tweets.
:@Twitter again back at it’s antics. My 1200+ RTed tweet calling-out @jack’s failed attempt at using a pregnant employee to play victim is now showing only 500+ RTs. If anybody has a screen-shot of 1200+ RTs please do share. Will personally hand-over to @ianuragthakur ji. pic.twitter.com/0R90dULFgD
— Nupur Sharma (@NupurSharmaBJP) February 12, 2019
When we checked the tweet ourselves, we found the number of retweets on that tweet had come down even further to 211 at 3.30 PM.
The same allegation was made by several users on Twitter, many of them prominent right-wing names.
So @Jack & @twitter…. this tweet just crossed a 100 RTs an hour back.. now down to 4. Care to explain? https://t.co/78zpHfEjnz
— Abhijit Iyer-Mitra (@Iyervval) February 12, 2019
An hour ago, this tweet had over 200 RTs. And suddenly, I see less than 100. What’s happening ? https://t.co/aSRm4AFPsK
— Swati Goel Sharma (@swati_gs) February 12, 2019
Hey @TwitterIndia , few minutes back this tweet had more than 500 RTs and 1000Likes and suddenly it has dropped to 8RTs… Wht’s happening boss?? Any sort of censorship on questioning Rahul Gandhi or what? https://t.co/HKiuXxehTz
— Sushant Sinha (@SushantBSinha) February 12, 2019
Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s account was also not immune to this mysterious act of vanishing retweets, which was spotted by several people. One tweet by the PM saw the number of RTs and likes going down from 1661 and 5871 to 402 and 1480 respectively in just 3 minutes.
2:13 PM- 1661 RTs, 5871 Likes
*3 minutes later*
2:16 PM- 402 RTs, 1480 Likes
Is it a bug? pic.twitter.com/OO9bZOXj0U
— अंकुर सिंह (@iAnkurSingh) February 12, 2019
Of course, it is not that retweets and likes are mysteriously going down only, they are going up also for some people. This video posted on Twitter shows a drastic change in retweets and likes on a Tweet by Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
See how @RahulGandhi tweet gets Likes & RTs from @twitterindia ??? @Payal_Rohatgi maam this is epic ? #TuesdayThoughts pic.twitter.com/Q5oQpTEgEf
— Payal Rohatgi Fanclub (@TeamPayal) February 12, 2019
The number of retweets suddenly increases to 1798 from 37, while the number of likes is shown as 5411 at first, then it comes down to 160, and then again reaches 5416.
It is not known whether it is happening due to motivated acts by Twitter or due to a bug in their software. Numerous people have tagged Twitter in their tweets, but the company has not responded yet.
