Twitter announced in January that the platform “amplifies the counter narrative” whenever President Trump tweets.
On May 9, evidence of that policy surfaced. The Democratic Coalition, a left-wing group headed by Resistance supporter Scott Dworkin, wanted to get the hashtag #PutinsGOP trending. “Vladimir Putin owns the GOP. Retweet if you agree. #PutinsGOP,” tweeted the Coalition. Eventually, it became recognized on Twitter as the number one trend, with the headline, "Anti-Trump group alleges that Vladimir Putin owns the Republican Party."
Despite the release of the Mueller report, which cleared President Trump of all allegations of conspiring with Russia. Attorney General William Barr wrote that the Mueller investigation “did not find that the Trump campaign or other Americans colluded in those schemes.”
But Twitter and the liberal resistance present on the platform were willing to have users believe otherwise. Left wing conspiracy site Alternet noted that it was trending on Twitter. It claimed, “It’s goal … is to expose and highlight the close ties some top Republicans have with the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
Producer Robby Starbuck claimed that he reported the trend to Twitter, who apparently admitted that it made a mistake, and took the trend down. When the Democratic Coalition noticed this, Dworkin tweeted, “.@TwitterSupport-Please fix the glitch, as #PutinsGOP is no longer showing up in trends, even though it’s been tweeted over 150,000 times by real Americans. The American people are speaking loudly. Let them. Thank you. #TheResistance.”
Dworkin then implied that whenever the Coalition reported a problem to Twitter, the site willingly fixed it according to their wishes. “Most of the time it’s just a glitch where a lot of right wingers report it as spam, and it gets knocked off of some folks trends. So if we just point it out to @TwitterSupport, they almost always have fixed the issue. Just FYI.”
Then he suggested that right-wingers on Twitter be banned for spreading violence and “fake news”, saying “The right wingers have a lot of fake accounts, and accounts that spam reply to tweets and send threatening messages to folks. Some have also of course been run by foreign adversaries like Russia. They incite violence and spread fake news. They should be banned.”
