President Donald Trump says his administration will look into claims that Twitter is "shadow banning" prominent Republicans on Twitter.
Shadow banning is a term used to describe Twitter allegedly reducing the visibility and reach of some of its users to others on the social media platform.
Trump’s comments came in a Thursday morning tweet He called shadow banning a "discriminatory and illegal practice."
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said he feels “victimized” by Twitter after allegedly being "shadow banned," The Hill reported.
"I feel victimized and violated by a platform that holds itself out to be a public forum," he said. "It's really frustrating to think that the marketplace of ideas couldn't accommodate the thoughts and musings that I contribute."
The Hill reported Gaetz’s office claimed it saw "a significant decrease” in the number of followers gained and in retweets around May 15.
Vice News reported on Wednesday that Republican Party chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, some conservative GOP congressmen and Don Trump Jr.’s spokesman stopped appearing in the auto-populated drop-down search box on Twitter.
“The notion that social media companies would suppress certain political points of view should concern every American,” McDaniel said. “Twitter owes the public answers to what’s really going on.”
Axios reported that Twitter’s Kayvon Beykpour said the issue was not aimed at Republicans and was a side effect of the company’s use of machine learning to enact a new policy to "reduce people’s ability to detract from healthy public conversation." Beykpour said the issue was being fixed.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.