Staff Reports
Documents pertaining to Twitter's blacklisting practices and the discretion of its workers in determining which content users saw were made public on Thursday night.
Journalist Bari Weiss disclosed in her second batch of Twitter files that teams of Twitter workers have banned, reduced the visibility of, and stopped specific content from trending on the platform. “without informing users.”
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
It was reported that Stanford pediatrician Dr. Jay Bhattacharya disagreed, stating that children suffered as a result of COVID lockdowns. His Twitter was blocked, so nobody could see his updates. For the same reason, Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and a conservative activist and radio talk show host, was banned by Twitter workers so that his tweets would not be seen.
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
Despite Twitter's denials of shadow bans, one programmer confessed that the company does manage visibility "quite a bit" behind the scenes.
Executives including Head of Legal and Trust Vijaya Gadde, Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth, and later CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal were all involved in making these choices.
11. “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,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Those executives gained access to an account called "libsoftiktok," which would be banned six times in 2022.
In defending the bans, the organization said that the account actively promoted harassment, especially against medical professionals.
16. One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was @libsoftiktok—an account that was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.” pic.twitter.com/Vjo6YxYbxT
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Contradiction alert: Twitter did nothing when "libsoftiktok" account head Chaya Raichik compared her suspensions to the publication of her personal information.
According to the social networking site, no rules were broken.
22. When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: "We reviewed the reported content, and didn't find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules." No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up. pic.twitter.com/tUeaBP1bS4
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Reporter Matt Taibbi plans to reveal other documents at a later time.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Oann.
