Twitter said that political ideology did not shape its policies, days after accusations of bias against right wing users in India. Right-wingers have accused Twitter of limiting the reach of their accounts, banning or suspending accounts which support the Indian government, manipulating the Trending section, among other things. "We do not review, prioritize, or enforce our policies on the basis of political ideology. Every Tweet and every account is treated impartially," wrote Twitter's VP of global public policy Colin Crowell in a blog post on Friday. "Whether it’s trends, how we enforce our policies, or the content that appears in your timeline, we believe in impartiality and do not take any actions based upon political viewpoints," he said. Twitter denied any ideology-based bias against conservative voices on Twitter, stating that "public conversation around Twitter’s policies and actions may be distorted by some who have a political agenda" and "this may be particularly acute during election cycles when highly-charged political rhetoric becomes more common." Twitter and impartiality: an explanation Reporting: "Abuse and hateful conduct comes from accounts across the ideological spectrum and we will continue to take action when our rules are broken," wrote Crowell, explaining that mistakes or false positives are human errors, and not "political statements of intent." Trending: Crowell also said that Twitter is regularly accused of bias regarding the Trending section, but the topics are driven by algorithms based on both volume and speed of the tweets. Only posts related to profanity, adult/graphic references and total number of tweets,…
