Twitter files part 2 drops outlining ‘secret blacklists’ and shadow banning

Journalist Bari Weiss recently published findings from an investigation into Twitter’s censorship practices prior to Elon Musk’s ownership of the company. She found that teams of Twitter employees built blacklists, prevented disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limited the visibility of entire accounts or trending topics, all without informing users.

Despite Twitter’s mission “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers,” the investigation revealed that the company had erected barriers along the way. For example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was placed on a “Trends Blacklist” that prevented his tweets from trending after he argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Conservative talk show host Dan Bongino was slapped with a “Search Blacklist,” and Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to “Do Not Amplify.”

Twitter denied that it engaged in such practices. In 2018, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde and Kayvon Beykpour stated: “We do not shadow ban. And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.” However, multiple high-level sources confirmed that the company used a practice called “Visibility Filtering” or “VF” to secretly control the visibility of user accounts, tweets, and trending topics.

According to a senior Twitter employee, “VF” is “a very powerful tool” that is used to “suppress what people see to different levels.” The employee added that “normal people do not know how much” the company controls the visibility and amplification of users’ content.

The group responsible for limiting the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. This team handled up to 200 “cases” a day. However, there was also a secret group known as “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support” or “SIP-PES” that included Twitter executives such as the Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), and subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal.

Stay tuned for more…

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