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American journalist Bari Weiss published a Twitter thread alleging that the company, under its old management, created a secret blacklist of users with limited access to what is now known as the Twitter File the second part of .
The incident involved internal documents and communications that Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, allowed Weiss and another reporter, Matt Taibbi, to access and report on. See what these involve and what they mean.
Part 1 – Revelations related to the Hunter Biden story.
On Dec. 2, Taibbi published a post citing a discussion that led to the New York Post banning coverage of content about Hunter Biden, the son of current U.S. President Joe Biden.
Published on the eve of the 2020 US election, the story was blocked from all media platforms due to concerns that it could be part of an attempt to interfere in the election — a concern stemming from what happened in 2016, when political advertising and disinformation were organized Shang is believed to have influenced the presidential election.
Taibi’s report cites exchanges between Twitter employees that show the debate over taking down the story. For the most part, the screenshots Taibi shared provide internal details about how the decision was made, but not why. Taibi hinted at possible pressure from Biden’s team, though evidence of that included requests to delete four tweets showing Hunter Biden nude.
But one crucial internal detail was the backlash from executives. That’s the air of Brandon Borrman, Twitter’s head of communications, who asked in an email: “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”
This question is important because Twitter is generally more liberal about speech.
It’s unclear whether Twitter was motivated by collusion with Biden, a bias against Democrats, or simply being too cautious and ultimately made the wrong decision.
Part 2 – “Secret Blacklist”.
The second part was revealed again in a Twitter thread, this time by Weiss. “A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees created blacklists to prevent unwanted tweets from trending and actively limited the visibility of entire accounts and even trending topics — all in secret and without Notify users,” Weiss tweeted Thursday.
Weiss goes on to cite screenshot examples of certain profiles with additional tags mentioning “recent abuse strikes,” “trending blacklist,” “search blacklist,” and “do not zoom in.” Weiss said these more frequently targeted right-wing voices (although she did not share the data) and violated Twitter’s stated policy of not enforcing “shadow bans.”
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and head of legal counsel Vijaya Gad have publicly stated that the company “does not enforce shadow bans.”
However, the reality is much more complicated than Weiss seems to portray. The labels indicate that Twitter is limiting the visibility of people’s accounts and tweets, removing them from trending topics sections and suggestions for people to view or follow.
Contrary to what Weiss claimed, these were disclosed as actions Twitter may take under its Hateful Conduct Policy, which says accounts it believes to spread hateful content can be “demoted in replies” and their tweets or accounts “banned.” excludes “top search results” and makes their posts ineligible to appear on the timeline in a way that amplifies their posts.
In recent days, Musk has backed pretty much the same policy: He has repeatedly reiterated that Twitter will guarantee freedom of speech, but not freedom of contact, which, in other words, means something like that.
However, there is one scenario in which these steps could be considered a “shadow ban” – claims the company has denied in the past.
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The saga does point to issues of fairness and possible arbitrariness in content moderation, including who decides what is hateful, and whether all content of a similar degree of illegality is subject to uniformly strict measures.
The story of the burial of Biden is particularly controversial because it was reported by the news media, and it underscores the power of Big Tech with little accountability. The “free speech” corporate mission that Twitter has often championed, such as when it allowed Hezbollah’s account to remain and when it banned a New York Post story from linking to its service, was clearly undermined.
The two incidents also raised concerns about Twitter’s safeguards under Musk. A screenshot shared on Friday shows a dashboard that anyone can use to access direct messages that people typically share privately with other users. Twitter’s direct messages are not encrypted in the way WhatsApp messages are encrypted, allowing the company to access them. Experts say it would be a violation of U.S. law for any journalist to be allowed access to the content.
Twitter has come under scrutiny from several governments, including in India, given its outsize political and social influence.
Now under Musk, a string of controversies has put the company under a harsher spotlight. The German government said on Friday that it was following developments at Twitter “very carefully and with some concern” after Musk took over, a government spokesman said, according to Reuters.
“We have decided against TikTok” as a platform for Chancellor Olaf Schulz, the spokesman added at a regular government news briefing, referring to the social media platform over what some say constitutes Chinese espionage. risk of being criticized.
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