Jack Dorsey lied. Twitter has been shadowbanning prominent conservative accounts without users’ knowledge for years.
A new batch of internal Twitter communication records released on Thursday confirm the tech giant has been shadowbanning prominent conservative accounts without users’ knowledge for years, despite former CEO Jack Dorsey previously claiming otherwise.
Released by Bari Weiss, editor of The Free Press, the new “Twitter Files” reveal the company created blacklists designed to prevent certain accounts or posts from trending. Lists were also built to limit the visibility of accounts or tweets Twitter employees deemed unfavorable.
Among the most notable accounts targeted by the platform were prominent conservative figures such as Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, with the former’s profile being placed on a “Search Blacklist” and the latter’s being switched to a setting called “Do Not Amplify.” Medical professionals were also censored, with Twitter putting the account of Stanford University’s Jay Bhattacharya, one of the authors of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” on a “Trends Blacklist,” which “prevented his tweets from trending.”
Commonly known as shadowbanning, the concept of secretly limiting the reach of users’ accounts and posts was referred to by Twitter executives as “visibility filtering.” According to a senior Twitter employee who spoke with Weiss, visibility filtering is “a way for [the company] to suppress what people see to different levels.”
“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,” a Twitter engineer separately revealed.
Federalist CEO and co-founder Sean Davis has also been among those censored, with his Twitter account having been shadowbanned since January 2021.
Thursday night’s revelations show former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to be a complete liar about the company’s censorship practices. When asked in a post by political commentator Dave Rubin in October 2020 if Twitter shadowbans “based on political beliefs,” Dorsey responded with a straightforward, “No.”
The company also put out a blog post in July 2018, in which it claimed Twitter doesn’t shadowban “based on political viewpoints or ideology” and said users “are always able to see the tweets from...
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So Elon confirmed what we already knew.
ReplyDeleteSo 'what now?' is the $64,000 question.
Will there be any accountability...
Will anyone be called to Captain's Mast?
I hate to say it, but I don't think so.
-lg
When has there ever been in the past? 250+some odd years, right?
DeletePrivate company doing private things.
DeleteI distinctly remember from an 8th grade journalism class a case study of several newspapers each with large readership hiding deep down in column inches their disdain that the conspiracy supporting the assassination of one A. Lincoln was held in high contempt by the public at large.
Plainly said, there were a large number of people, even among the yankees, who wished death upon Lincoln. But it was in hushed tones that such was favored. Why so? Because though their number be great, even so among the movers and shakers - the 'elite' of their time - they remained the minority. And they were not certain of who would, or would not, favor such opinion.
Compare that to our time. Even in contrast, there is no difference between then and now.
The pen is mightier than the sword. This is why I have held that if I ever won billions in the lottery which I do not play that I would buy a TV station, or a large global newspaper.
DeleteWe, for I couldn't do it on my own, would so shape public opinion that you'd 'know' the moon is made of cheese. And you would hate - hate! - them who thought otherwise.
And if you don't know what 'column inches' are, or were, its because you're a fuck up, a loser, who cannot be bothered - oh, the bother - to expand your knowledge beyond popular culture which is nothing but this day's primordial ooze; which, by the way, is your cranial fluid seeping out your anus.
Delete