Former New York Times reporter Bari Weiss dropped the second part of the Twitter Files Thursday evening and exposed what many conservatives have been speculating for years.
Weiss began the thread by sharing Twitter’s “secret blacklists” and verified many of the speculations that were deemed as “conspiracy theories” by many leftist pundits and activists.
She revealed that “teams of Twitter employees” did in fact build blacklists, prevented disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limited specific accounts and topics all in secret, without the knowledge of users.
Sharing details of specific accounts, Weiss reported that Twitter secretly placed the account of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on a “Trends Blacklist” which blocked his tweets from getting on the trending page. Dr. Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor was one of the first critics of the COVID lockdowns and was very vocal about their negative impact on children.
3. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending. pic.twitter.com/qTW22Zh691
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Weiss further reported that conservative commentator Dan Bongino’s account was placed on a “search blacklist” which prevented users from finding his tweets via Twitter search.
Furthermore, the account of Turning Point USA founder, Charlie Kirk was also placed on a “Do Not Amplify” filter.
5. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.” pic.twitter.com/dOyQIVdsW2
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Twitter and its senior leadership had repeatedly denied the existence of any such “shadow banning” mechanism In 2018, the company’s then-Head of Legal Policy and Trust along with Head of Product, Kayvon Beykpour, said: “We do not shadow ban.” Adding, “And certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
In 2018, Gadde denied any existence of a shadow banning mechanism, tweeting “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.”
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
In its internal discussions, Twitter executives referred to the shadow bans as “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.”
“‘VF’ was used to “block searches of Individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the “trending” page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches,” Weiss reported.
Just like Gadde, the company’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey denied claims of shadow banning and said, “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…”
The company’s Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team or SRT-GET was a group responsible for key shadow banning decisions and handled up to “200 cases a day” Weiss reported. This “secret” group included the 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,” Weiss confirmed.
Gadde, who played a prominent role in the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the weeks leading to the 2020 presidential election, and banning then-sitting President Trump’s account was later appointed by the Biden administration’s DHS panel in December 2021 as part of a team responsible to combat “misinformation and disinformation” she was also a member of the DHS agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CSIA).
Roth is infamous for brazenly likening members of the Trump administration to Nazis and held frequent meetings with Federal agents prior to censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Agrawal, the successor to Dorsey has outright admitted that he docent believe that the platform is responsible to uphold Americans’ first amendment rights.
Weiss further reported that the account of LibsOfTikTok was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.”
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
In an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, following LibsOfTikTok’s seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that LTT has not “directly engaged in behavior (that is) violative of Hateful Conduct policy.
However, the committee went on to justify her multiple suspensions by internally claiming that her posts “encouraged online harassment.”
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
Following the committee’s decision to censor LoT, Roth wrote in an internal discussion, “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.”
25. 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.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
The first round of The Twitter Files was dropped by independent journalist Matt Taibbi last Friday and detailed internal discussions and decision-making process that Twitter took to censor the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell reported by The New York Post.
Following the drop, Musk promised transparency and to have more details exposing the company’s internal records. The process was however briefly disrupted by the company’s then-counsel, Jim Baker, an ex-FBI general counsel who intentionally censored the files before Taibbi’s release. The files were thankfully recovered over the weekend and Musk announced soon thereafter that Baker was fired from Twitter.
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