The second batch of the Twitter files just dropped and it confirmed what right-wingers have been suspecting for years.
On Thursday night, former New York Times editor, Bari Weiss, published the second batch of what has come to be known as “The Twitter Files” and this one was all about the behind-the-scenes tools that were being used to suppress right-wing speech on the platform.
In the thread, Weiss gave examples of how this was used to “deboost” right-wing accounts like Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, and Libs of Tik Tok, but also of the secret blacklisting of Stanford School of Medicine Professor, Dr. Jay Battacharya, who was critical of COVID lockdowns.
Here’s the entire thread:
THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART TWO.
TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
2. 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.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
4. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.” pic.twitter.com/AdOK8xLu9v
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Dr. Battacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, reacted to the revelation that his views were being suppressed.
I'm curious about what role the government played in Twitter's suppression of covid policy discussion. We will see with time, I suppose.
Thank you @bariweiss and @elonmusk. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
2/2— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) December 9, 2022
Dan Bongino was rather blunt during his appearance on Hannity.
Dan Bongino @dbongino reacts to having been blacklisted by Twitter:
"This is some Soviet-style bullsh*t right here." pic.twitter.com/eQrLV4jgUx
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 9, 2022
6. Twitter denied that it does such things. In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: “We do not shadow ban.” They added: “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Charlie Kirk appeared on Tucker Carlson with his reaction.
Here's my interview tonight with Tucker Carlson about being "Blacklisted" and placed on the "Do Not Amplify" list by Twitter. Thank you, Bari Weiss and Elon Musk for exposing the true extent of Twitter's censorship regime.
Let ALL the truth come out. pic.twitter.com/6jN1OzcLbN
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 9, 2022
8. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
10. All without users’ knowledge.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
12. The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 "cases" a day.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
14. This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
16. One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was @libsoftiktok—an account that was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.” pic.twitter.com/Vjo6YxYbxT
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
18. Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
20. The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
20. The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
22. When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: "We reviewed the reported content, and didn't find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules." No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up. pic.twitter.com/tUeaBP1bS4
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Chaya Raichik appeared by phone on Tucker Carlson’s show to discuss the repeated action taken against her account despite no specific violation of the Twitter rules.
.@libsoftiktok Joins Tucker Carlson To React To The Twitter Files Part Two Exposing The Level Of Suppression Used Against Her Account
"The Craziest part of this whole thing is that they admitted that I'm not even violating the policies, & they still suspended me seven times." pic.twitter.com/Ki0zRX0VOL
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) December 9, 2022
Interestingly, similar action wasn’t taken when Libs of Tik Tok was doxxed — her name and address were published without her knowledge or consent.
24. Six days later, in a direct message with an employee on the Health, Misinformation, Privacy, and Identity research team, Roth requested more research to support expanding “non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering.” pic.twitter.com/lqiJapHjct
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
26. He added: “We got Jack 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.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
28. The authors have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
30. Watch @mtaibbi for the next installment.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Conservatives have noticed for years that certain topics and individuals just wouldn’t trend on Twitter despite filling the timelines of right-wingers, but the Powers That Be™ at Twitter insisted that there was no shadowbanning or suppression going on. Now we know that they lied.
When we said this was happening, when mysteriously things would trend that hardly anyone was tweeting and things everyone was tweeting were not trending, we were told we were conspiracy theorists. https://t.co/VRWY2jnYaE
— Carmine Sabia (@CarmineSabia) December 9, 2022
A lot of conservatives pointed this weird habit of twitter not trending stuff that was obviously trending in timelines, often stuff that threatened conventional political wisdom or preferred narratives. Satisfying to know the truth. https://t.co/iZGG2I0z7h
— Geoffrey Ingersoll (@GPIngersoll) December 9, 2022
Of course, a number of Lib journos — but I repeat myself — insist that Weiss’s thread is a nothingburger and we also knew that this nothingburger was a nothingburger for years.
The next installment of what? Another dull recitation of normal enforcement of standard Twitter TOS, in a multi-tweet thread, with zero revelatory content? cc @yoyoel @WSJeditor @nytopinion
— LouiseMensch 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@LouiseMensch) December 9, 2022
I discovered this secret document (the publicly available terms of service) that says Twitter sometimes limits the distribution or visibility of content. pic.twitter.com/xpkXhCQQUM
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 9, 2022
What *is* a thing is bored kooks who are certain that Twitter's moderation policies – which they didn't know about or understand – now think their paranoia was vindicated.
It's dumb, but give Musk credit for doing this before rolling out the $11 Monthly Sucker Plan. /2x— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 9, 2022
The reason she was selected for the job is because she is angry about wokeness, as is Musk. So we already know that whatever the bigger picture is, or context for her specific stories, they will center on the dangers of wokeness.
This isn't investigative journalism.— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) December 8, 2022
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald exposed the gaslighting in a lengthy thread.
Conservatives: The reach of our tweets is being limited by a progressive Twitter workforce.
Dems: That's an insane conspiracy theory.
Bari Weiss: Here are the docs proving this.
Dems: Everyone knew this already. It's an — all together now — nothing burger. pic.twitter.com/VewGdK4CoP
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 9, 2022
Despite their current dismissal that reducing reach without telling users is “nothing new” and part of the terms of service, the Regime Media, like former Twitter executives, had insisted that shadowbanning did not exist.
MSNBC's @kasie Hunt: Idea Twitter "shadow bans" conservatives "has been widely debunked."
"This has been debunked by Twitter. They say this is not something that they actively engage in." pic.twitter.com/GQLPtmvDbA
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 19, 2019
Takes that haven’t aged well: pic.twitter.com/Owdzj2EnzQ
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) December 9, 2022
The higher-ups at Twitter lied about “shadowbanning” or “visibility filtering” based on political ideology.
Here's @Jack telling @brianstelter in 2018 that Twitter doesn't shadow ban conservatives pic.twitter.com/XheWlJQ7ET
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 9, 2022
And lied.
Following up on this with a lot more detail. We don’t shadow ban, and we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints. We do rank tweets by default to make Twitter more immediately relevant (which can be flipped off). More on ranking signals: https://t.co/ORjJfyBvhc
— jack (@jack) July 27, 2018
We want a vibrant and healthy public conversation inclusive of all perspectives, and one that’s immediately relevant and valuable. We’re always listening to the conversation around this, and we commit to participating more fully in it. It’s important to us we get this right.
— jack (@jack) July 27, 2018
And even lied to Congress under oath.
Jack Dorsey denied what we knew was true, Twitter was rigged to censor conservatives. pic.twitter.com/IMDPooiAzG
— Terri Green (@TerriGreenUSA) December 9, 2022
Flashback!
In September 2018, Pa. Dem Rep. @USRepMikeDoyle says it's "a lot of crap" that Twitter shadow bans conservative accounts cc @Jack pic.twitter.com/aOl4fRBI3a
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 9, 2022
Former top-level Twitter executive, Vijaya Gadde, who played a key role in suppressing the New York Post’s exposé on Hunter Biden’s Laptop From Hell and suspending then-President Donald Trump’s account has also been lying for years that there is no anti-conservative bias at Twitter.
Twitter exists to serve the public conversation, enabling important discussions around the world to occur. Favoring one specific ideology or belief goes against everything we stand for. https://t.co/lioupj3aUF
— Vijaya Gadde (@vijaya) July 27, 2018
Here is Tim Pool explaining to Gadde in 2019 that the bias is baked into Twitter policies.
.@Twitter has a clear bias against conservative speech.
Twitter has banned conservatives, including @PragerU, for what it determines as hate, harassment, or abuse.
Watch as @JoeRogan and journalist @Timcast call out Twitter's Vijaya Gadde over censorship. pic.twitter.com/W1cE1Eqiw7
— PragerU (@prageru) March 6, 2019
No wonder she cried when Elon bought Twitter.
Yoel Roth, former head of Site Integrity, also lied. His lies were a little more elegant than Gadde’s since they used a little more sleight of hand.
Here's Yoel Roth distinguishing between "bans" and "visibility filtering":
"Bans are frustrating and take work (and resources) to try to circumvent; visibility filtering deprives trolls…" https://t.co/kkJH12d2Er pic.twitter.com/EbguTxDNgN— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) December 9, 2022
The Regime Media isn’t even really covering this really, huge story.
It’s about much more than just a few political commentators growing their platform — it’s about the ability to have conservative views in the public square, period.
That includes the ability of right-wing candidates to get their message out.
Yes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
There is more coming, and this is why we need alternatives to the Regime Media.
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