Elon Musk shared the second episode of the “Twitter Files” on Thursday, in which journalist Bari Weiss says Twitter had secret blacklists. Weiss quotes anonymous employees and shows screenshots of what appears to be the development side of the social network.
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It shows that labels have been added to certain profiles, including those of covid-critical doctor Jay Bhattacharya, right-wing talk show host Dan Bongino and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. According to Weiss, labels such as “Trends Blacklist”, “Search Blacklist” and “Do Not Amplify” limited the visibility of profiles and their tweets and “suppressed” what people saw, for example on the front page, in the “trending” list , in searches, or with hashtags.
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That moderation was done without informing the users. Weiss does not mention whether there were reasons for that restriction. She does say that Twitter denied in 2018 that it does so-called “shadow bans”, “and certainly not based on political beliefs”.
In addition to the usual moderation, according to Weiss, there was also a secret group, including the head of the legal team and Twitter’s CEO, who made “politically sensitive” decisions about controversial, high-profile profiles without creating a “ticket.” For example, certain accounts were suspended several times. Weiss again gives a right account as an example.
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“New” policy
Commentators point out that Elon Musk himself announced on Nov. 18 that Twitter’s “new policy” would be freedom of speech but not “freedom of speech.” At the time, Musk said that negative or hateful tweets would be “de-boosted” at most, could not generate any money, and could only be found if you specifically searched for them.
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Commenting on the new “Twitter Files,” Elon Musk announced Thursday that Twitter is working on a software update that will “show the true status of your Twitter account.” “So that you know clearly if you are ‘shadow banned’, the reason why and how to challenge it.”
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