Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk released a second edition of the “Twitter Files” Thursday, exposing how the company has secretly shadow-banned and blacklisted numerous accounts.
The story was covered by journalist Bari Weiss, who shared it in a series of posts on her Twitter account.
THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART TWO.
TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
“A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss wrote online.
1. A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Weiss discussed Twitter placing the account of Stanford University Professor of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on a “Trends Blacklist,” which blocked his posts from picking up as much traction as the algorithm would typically allow after he argued that pandemic lockdowns were damaging to children.
3. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending. pic.twitter.com/qTW22Zh691
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Other instances of the secret account throttling included the placement of radio talk show Dan Bongino on a “Search Blacklist” and the account of Turning Point USA Founder and President Charlie Kirk being stuck on a “Do Not Amplify” list.
Weiss noted that Twitter has denied shadow-banning based on political points of view.
“We do not shadow ban,” A Twitter statement said in 2018. “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
6. Twitter denied that it does such things. In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: “We do not shadow ban.” They added: “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
What many have called “shadow-banning” for quite some time now is typically called “Visibility Filtering” at Twitter.
“Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told Weiss.
“We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” Weiss wrote, quoting a Twitter engineer.
Many conservatives have called for Twitter to publicly release all information as it pertains to shadow-banned accounts in the wake of Musk’s damning leak, including the aforementioned Charlie Kirk.
“I’m happy Elon Musk and Bari Weiss have confirmed my account was targeted, but every Twitter user deserves to know if they too were targeted in some way,” Kirk wrote online. “Twitter should publicly release ALL information on shadowbans, no matter how large or small the target was. Let the truth out.”
Kirk appeared on Thursday’s episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight to discuss the revelations.
“A couple of years ago, Axios did a study that showed that our Twitter account… was the 4th most engaged… on the planet… right up there with President Trump,” Kirk said on the show.
Here's my interview tonight with Tucker Carlson about being "Blacklisted" and placed on the "Do Not Amplify" list by Twitter. Thank you, Bari Weiss and Elon Musk for exposing the true extent of Twitter's censorship regime.
Let ALL the truth come out. pic.twitter.com/6jN1OzcLbN
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 9, 2022
Many leftists have reportedly expressed fury at the level of access Weiss was allegedly granted by Musk in order to break the story.
