Shadow banning: Are social networks suppressing political content?

WVXU's Cincinnati Edition spoke to a University of Cincinnati journalism professor about the topic of shadow banning, the concept that social networks are promoting or suppressing content based on the network's political leanings.

UC College of Arts and Sciences Professor Jeffrey Blevins told host Lucy May that many people have suspicions about active meddling by social media sites.

“You post something on your social media feed and you assume it will appear in the feeds of people who follow you,” Blevins said. “But it's possible for the social media platform to mute that post so it doesn't appear as prominently as you would expect.”

“It's incredibly difficult to prove,” Blevins said. “We don't know what goes into the secret sauce of the algorithms that the social networks use.”

Blevins is a professor of journalism who also teaches in UC's School of Public and International Affairs. He is the co-author of the 2024 book “Social Media and Digital Politics: Networked Reason in an Age of Digital Emotion.”

Blevins was joined on the show by Tatum Hunter, a technology reporter for the Washington Post.

“Companies will say on the record that they will hide people's posts from their algorithmic feed if it violates their recommendations standards. That's different from community guidelines that can get you kicked off the app,” Hunter said.

Blevins said many people mistake a social network's management of content with censorship or a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. But Blevins noted that the First Amendment protects speech from government intrusion, not a third-party company's actions.

Paradoxically, the social networks' content moderation is protected speech as well, he said.

“They are also entitled to First Amendment protection to suppress speech they want to suppress,” he said

Listen to the Cincinnati Edition interview.

Featured image at top: UC journalism Professor Jeffrey Blevins talked to WVXU's Cincinnati Edition about shadow banning. Photo/Stockcam/iStockPhoto