Twitter Files Part Two: Tech Company EXPOSED for Blacklisting Conservative Accounts
Last week, Twitter CEO Elon Musk ordered the release of the first edition of the so-called “Twitter Files,” a Twitter thread from journalist Matt Taibbi revealing the bias practices that have been happening on the social media platform over the last few years. Taibbi’s thread highlighted the suppression of The New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story leading up to the 2020 election and how Twitter blocked the story despite clear evidence it violated the platform’s Terms of Service.
The second edition of the Twitter Files was released last night at the hands of former New York Times writer Bari Weiss. Weiss’s thread is the smoking gun that conservatives have been waiting for and proves what many have suspected: Twitter has been blacklisting conservative accounts on their platform.
“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 via Twitter
Weiss’s Twitter thread cites several examples of Twitter accounts that have been blacklisted. She first mentions Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Professor at Stanford’s School of Medicine who has been critical of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bhattacharya has a history of posting criticisms of lockdown procedures, arguing that they particularly harm young children. To suppress Bhattacharya’s arguments, Twitter placed his account on a “Trends Blacklist” that prevents his tweets from trending.
Among other examples of accounts being blacklisted is conservative talk-show host Dan Bongino, whose account was on a “Search Blacklist.” Turning Point USA’s CEO, Charlie Kirk, was also being suppressed, with Twitter placing a “Do Not Amplify” flag on his account. Kirk’s account was also labeled NSFW (not suitable for the workplace).
Twitter’s process for blacklisting accounts was intentional, not a side effect of the site’s algorithms. The tech giant created a moderation team called the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team (SRT-GET) that would decide whether or not to limit the reach of specific accounts in question. This team would handle up to 200 cases a day.
A higher-level moderation team was constructed to address high-profile accounts as well. This was known as the Site Integrity Policy – Policy Escalation Support (SIP-PES). This group included Vijaya Gadde (former Twitter Head of Legal Policy and Trust), Yoel Roth (former Twitter Global Head of Trust and Safety), and Twitter’s former CEOs, Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, among others.
One account in particular that SIP-PES took action on was the infamous Libs of TikTok account. Weiss shows that this account was on the “Trends Blacklist” and had a special label stating, “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.”
Libs of TikTok has been suspending multiple times, each suspension banning the owner from posting for one week. But according to Weiss, these suspensions were not due to the direct violation of Twitter’s terms of service. “In an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension,” says Weiss, “the committee acknowledged that ‘LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.'”
SIP-PES justified suspending Libs of TikTok by claiming that the account’s posts encouraged harassment of medical providers by stating, “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.” In her thread, Weiss reminds Twitter users that the owner of the Libs of TikTok account had her home address and name doxxed on the platform, and to this day Twitter has not taken the doxxed Tweet down.
Internal Slack messages from former Twitter Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth detail how Twitter would use technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets.
Roth wrote:
“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.”
“We got Jack [Dorsey] on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations – especially for other policy domains.”
Yoel Roth via internal Slack messages
In the past, both Vijaya Gadde and Jack Dorsey have stated that Twitter does not shadowban users for political reasons. But Weiss’s findings reveal this to be inaccurate. Twitter argues that these actions are not a “shadow ban,” but rather “visibility filtering.”
The “Visibility Filtering” practice is essentially the same thing as the “shadow ban” accusations that have been made towards Twitter. Conservatives have argued that Twitter is manually placing outreach limits on specific accounts they do not want to be seen by the public. These allegations have proven to be true, despite years of Twitter executives denying them and blaming any suppression on the algorithms.
Suppression practices by Twitter have long been suspected by conservatives. When Musk’s takeover of the company went into effect, many well-known conservative pundits noticed a substantial increase in their follower count and engagement.
Weiss stated at the end of her thread that more details will be released soon about these practices via Twitter. Since the release of Weiss’s thread, Musk has clarified that political candidates were also subject to shadowbanning while they were running for office. He confirmed that accounts on the right were being suspended even with internal acknowledgment in the company that no rules were being broken that warranted a suspension.
This shocking revelation is part of a broader problem happening in American culture. There is a growing belief, particularly among those on the political left, that speech they oppose should be labeled as “dangerous information.” Twitter described blacklisted tweets as “misinformation” that directly causes harm,” but many of these tweets were subjective opinions, and were not a direct call to violence. When you label speech you don’t like as harmful, it justifies censorship. This practice is a gross violation of our country’s first amendment principles, and does not promote civil discourse in our culture.
