by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
A second batch of “Twitter files” released Thursday reveals how the platform maintained “secret blacklists” and engaged in “shadow banning.” Files released previously included evidence of election interference and widespread censorship of COVID-19-related information that didn’t fit the accepted government narrative.
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The second batch of “Twitter files” released Thursday reveals how the platform maintained “secret blacklists” and engaged in “shadow banning” of certain users despite prior denials.
This latest in a string of stunning revelations and large-scale changes at Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover adds to prior revelations about election interference — including suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 U.S. presidential election — and widespread scientific censorship.
The “blanket amnesty” of previously suspended accounts and Musk’s reinstatement over the past month of many such accounts — including former President Donald Trump’s — drew fury from many Democrat lawmakers and left-wing entities, but enjoyed wide swaths of support from Republicans and Libertarians.
The outcry from Democrats, and from entities including the EU and private Big Tech and Big Media actors such as Apple and CBS, has further complicated Musk’s plans for Twitter, amid investigations against Musk’s companies and threats from the EU that it will be banned in the 27-nation bloc.
‘Secret group’ at Twitter made ‘politically sensitive’ decisions
In a series of tweets Thursday, Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, revealed information about the “secret blacklists” and other censorship practices Twitter engaged in.
Weiss tweeted, in part:
“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.
“Twitter once had a mission ‘to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.’ Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.”
The Epoch Times reported that Weiss is working with Musk and independent journalist Matt Taibbi to disclose internal Twitter documents to the public, revealing the Big Tech platform’s practices prior to Musk’s takeover of the company.
Weiss revealed that among the user accounts previously targeted by Twitter was that of Dr. Jay Bhattacharaya, a Stanford University School of Medicine professor who criticized COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures.
According to The Epoch Times, “Bhattacharya was put on the list because he stated that children would be harmed by COVID-19 lockdowns. This action stopped his tweets from trending.”
Other accounts targeted for censorship included those of Libs of TikTok, conservative talk-show host Dan Bongino, who was placed on a “search blacklist,” and conservative activist Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, who was placed on a “Do Not Amplify” list.
Such practices, and in particular “shadow banning,” were referred to internally among Twitter executives and employees as “visibility filtering,” or “VF.”
This arsenal of practices enabled Twitter to make it difficult for other users to search for such accounts, to make individual tweets more difficult to find, to prevent tweets from appearing in Twitter’s “trending” section and to block tweets from appearing in hashtag searches, “all without users’ knowledge,” according to Weiss.
Many decisions were made, according to Weiss, by a “secret group,” the Strategic Response Team-Global Escalation Team (SRT-GET), that consisted of former Twitter executives including Vijaya Gadde, head of legal, public policy and trust; Yoel Roth, head of trust and safety; and CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal.
According to Weiss, “This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made.”
However, Twitter previously asserted that it did not engage in “shadow banning” or other similar practices.
On Thursday, Musk retweeted a pair of 2018 tweets by Gadde and Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s former head of product, where they asserted that “we do not shadow ban … and we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
According to The Epoch Times, Weiss said there is “more to come on this story” that will be published by The Free Press and also made public through the revelation of a “part three” release of the “Twitter files.”
“We’re just getting started on our reporting,” Weiss said. “Documents cannot tell the whole story here.”
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