Still, an even bigger issue with the methodology is the fact that no two Twitter search boxes are alike. The search function on Twitter is individualized for every user, based in part on who that user has searched for in the past and who they follow. It’s similar to how Google tailors autocomplete suggestions to what you’ve searched in the past. “When you search for John and I search for John, we’re going to get different search results,” the Twitter spokesperson told WIRED.

Whatever methods Vice used to arrive at its conclusion, though, Twitter has acknowledged that the omission of major Republicans, particularly verified ones, is a mistake spurred by the company’s efforts to make conversation on the platform healthier by reducing the visibility of users associated with bad behavior. Twitter has been far from transparent in defining that bad behavior, but a few examples it’s given publicly include accounts that haven’t confirmed their email addresses or that signed up several accounts at once. Twitter doesn't ban these accounts or the tweets they post. It instead reduces their visibility in users’ replies and also in search. The company’s algorithms also analyze who those accounts are connected to and whether accounts in those networks are also exhibiting troll-like behavior. But Twitter insists the algorithms have no way of knowing whether the people behind those tweets are Republicans or Democrats.

“If you send a tweet and 45 accounts we think are really trolly are all replying a hundred times, and you’re retweeting a hundred of them, we’re not looking at that and saying, ‘This is a political viewpoint.’ We’re looking at the behavior surrounding the tweet,” the spokesperson said.

That may have led to the search issues Vice spotted. Vice updated the story after Twitter implemented the fix. Twitter, meanwhile, published a blog post Thursday evening, further explaining the signals that contribute to an account's ranking. Those signals include not just a given account's behavior, but also how other accounts interact with it by, say, muting the account or retweeting it. This, according to the post, may have contributed to the weakened visibility of some Republicans mentioned in the Vice story.

"There are communities that try to boost each other’s presence on the platform through coordinated engagement," the post reads. "We believe these types of actors engaged with the representatives’ accounts-- the impact of this coordinated behavior, in combination with our implementation of search auto-suggestions, caused the representatives’ accounts to not show up in auto-suggestions."1

Twitter is trying to do what so many users have asked it to do for so long—to cut down on abusive, harassing, and spammy behavior. It just hasn't gotten the tech right. It's unclear exactly what tweaks Twitter is making to correct the problem with search. It’s even less clear whether conservatives will be satisfied. The examples of Twitter's fellow social media companies may prove instructive as it decides how to move forward.

After Facebook was accused of partisan bias in its Trending News section in 2016, the ensuing backlash led the company to scrap its human moderators and let its algorithms do the work. Afterward, false news stories frequently found their way into the Trending News section, kicking off two hellish years in which Facebook mostly failed to navigate the fragmented American political landscape and anticipate how its tools might be manipulated. In yielding to one party’s accusations of partisanship, Facebook only opened itself up to more blame from both sides. Now, the company still finds itself facing routine criticism from Republicans for allegedly suppressing conservatives, while liberals question why conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones continue to build an audience there.

Twitter would do well to learn from Facebook’s mistakes. It will need to respond to valid criticism without also validating conspiracy theories about the way it works or yielding to bad-faith arguments. Twitter may not please everyone, including the president. On the bright side, at least he’ll be tweeting about it.

1Updated 07/27/18 at 5:29 pm EDT to include Twitter's blog post about shadow banning.

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