Twitter CEO Elon Musk has developed a new update for the microblogging platform after the second installment of so-called “Twitter files” revealed how the company was blacklisting and actively restricting the visibility of certain accounts. Musk tweeted Friday, “Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status so you’ll know exactly if you’ve been banned, why, and how to appeal.”
Twitter According to reports, employees have created blacklists and actively restricted the visibility of entire accounts, according to the second episode of Elon Musk’s “Twitter files” purporting to elucidate the company’s hidden practices under previous leadership.
Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status so you’ll know exactly if you’ve been banned, why, and how to appeal
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
“A new #TwitterFiles investigation shows teams of Twitter employees create blacklists, prevent unwanted tweets from trending, and actively restrict the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics — all in secret without informing users.” , the editor of The Free Press Bari Weiss said in a series of tweets.
“Twitter once had a mission to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. However, barriers were erected along the way,” she added.
Although previous management has denied reports of a shadow ban, Weiss said Twitter executives and employees used a powerful tool like “visibility filtering,” or VF, to block searches for individual users and limit the scope of discoverability of a particular tweet.
Weiss said that “VF” refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. “It used VF to block searches for individual users, limit the scope of discoverability of a given tweet, block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the trending page, and from inclusion in hashtag searches.”
She said a select group, handling up to 200 “cases” a day, decided whether to restrict the reach of certain users, the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team.
“But there was a layer beyond official ticketing, beyond the grassroots moderators following company policy on paper. This is the Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support, known as SIP-PES,” she added.
Weiss said that clandestine group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde, Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth, later CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.
“The biggest, politically most sensitive decisions were made here. Think high follower account, controversial, another Twitter contributor told us. There wouldn’t be a ticket for that or anything,” she said.
Last week, journalist Matt Taibbi, in partnership with Musk, released “Twitter Files,” which document Twitter’s internal communications to reveal ties to political actors and to focus on how the social network was covering stories related to Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the… 2020 blocked US presidential election.
