Twitter Software Update Will Let Users See ‘True Account Status,’ Appeal Shadowbans: Musk

December 9th, 2022

Awake Goy

Elon Musk announced more changes to Twitter on Thursday after releasing the second volume of the “Twitter files” revealing the social media platform’s “secret blacklists.”

The billionaire businessman, who finalized his purchase of Twitter in October for $44 billion, said the company will now start telling users if their content is being made undiscoverable.

Twitter will also provide a way for users to appeal such cases, Musk said.

“Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal,” Musk wrote on Thursday.

The Tesla CEO’s post came shortly after Bari Weiss, founder, and editor of The Free Press, released the second wave of so-called “Twitter files” detailing how conservative commentators had their tweets censored by the platform.

A week prior, independent journalist Matt Taibbi, with Musk’s endorsement, detailed how Twitter staff had worked to suppress a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election.

In the latest trove of internal Twitter documents, Weiss, a former New York Times columnist, said that the company had placed a number of accounts under a “Trends Blacklist” or a “Search Blacklist” making either their content undiscoverable or their accounts harder to search.

Twitter ‘Prevents Disfavored Tweets From Trending’

“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 on Twitter.

Accounts placed on a “Trends Blacklist” included those belonging to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine who opposed COVID-19 lockdowns due to concerns about children’s mental health, and the popular Libs of TikTok account.

The account of conservative commentator Dan Bongino was also allegedly placed on a “Search Blacklist,” according to Weiss, while a photograph of the account of Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk appeared to be marked “Do Not Amplify.”

Weiss also shared a screenshot of an alleged message from Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of global trust and safety, in which he asked for more research support on “non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering.”

“The hypothesis underlying much of what we’ve implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure, and limiting the spread/virality of content is a good way to do that,” Roth wrote.

Weiss also claimed that Twitter had a “secret group” that consisted of Roth, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former head of legal policy and trust; and former CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, among others, called the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support”, or “SIP-PES”.

“This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. ‘Think high follower account, controversial,’ another Twitter employee told us. For these ‘there would be no ticket or anything,’” Weiss said.

Musk has pledged that Twitter’s policy is “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach” and has welcomed back to Twitter a string of previously banned accounts.

Weiss said on Thursday that Taibbi will release the third installment of the “Twitter files”, although it is unclear exactly when.

Caden Pearson contributed to this report.