Various reports are suggesting that ‘Mandalorian’ star Gina Carano’s Twitter account is hard to find in the first search attempt.
In the world of social media, this well-known concept is called “Shadow Banning”. Although, Twitter is denying the existence of such practice on their platform.
The reason behind all of this Twitter trouble is Carano’s bluntness and outspoken nature. She shared several questionable tales and opinions on her Instagram account.
As a result, she received a lot of backlashes. Many people began perpetrating hashtags like #FireGinaCarano while tagging Disney, Disney Plus, “Star Wars” and Lucasfilm. They started demanding that Gina should be dropped from her series Mandalorian, and their wish came true. She was removed from the series in February.
What exactly did Gina Carano post on her social media?
In the month of February, Carano put up a story on her Instagram account which became controversial. It read, “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?” Originally, this post was made on another Instagram account, but Carano is influential so it picked up steam.
Adding to this, she also shared a picture of a person, covering their entire face with masks. The caption read, “Meanwhile in California”. Later, the posts were removed, but it was late. Another post, mentioning controversial American Financier Jeff Epstein was also shared. It read, “Jeff Epstein didn’t kill himself,” and this post stayed all day.
All of this became the cause of this Twitter hashtag movement, resulting in Carano getting fired from the show. Also, making her account hard to find on the social platform.
What Twitter has to say about shadow banning?
On its official blog, Twitter says, “We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.
“We do rank tweets and search results. We do this because Twitter is most useful when it’s immediately relevant. These ranking models take many signals into consideration to best organize tweets for timely relevance. We must also address bad-faith actors who intend to manipulate or detract from the healthy conversation.”
Cancel Culture, Freedom of Speech, and Influencers
How do we define freedom of speech? The right to express your thoughts freely? Well, if that’s the case, why a person’s political opinion, leads to this massive social boycott. This modern form of ostracism is known as Cancel Culture. It is a practice of withdrawing support from a person (or canceling them) because of something they’ve said or done.
On the other hand, public figures or the so-called ‘influencers’, should be considerate of the fact that they have got a social responsibility. A question celebs and influencers need to ask themselves, ‘We’re influencing people to do what?’ When people are coming to their pages, do they walk away better or worse?
The current scenario indicates that our society lives on two extremes. Either, they cancel someone completely for their opinions, or they blindly follow someone, irrespective of their ideological legitimacy. The dire need for ‘balance’ is increasing in this sphere.
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