Twitter Files ‘reveal’ about ‘shadow-ban’ policy, but former product head calls it ‘misleading’

The second set of Twitter Files and ‘shadow-banning’

According to Weiss’ thread, “teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics.” She claims all of this was done in “secret, without informing users,” except as many have pointed out many of these ‘facts’ were already known.

She also pointed out Twitter’s 2018 blog post on the subject, which was written by Vijaya Gadde then Head of Legal Policy and Trust and Kayvon Beykpour the former Head of Product. The post states that the company does not shadow-ban anyone based on “political viewpoints or ideology.”

Weiss’ thread also claims Twitter executives and employees called this “Visibility Filtering” and that there were multiple right-wing accounts which were suspended or had their reach restricted by these teams. The thread implies that the rules were applied unfairly only to those who were seen as pro-right. And Elon Musk appears to agree with these conclusions because he too replied to a thread around the TwitterFiles saying, “As @bariweiss clearly describes, the rules were enforced against the right, but not against the left.”

1. 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 (@bariweiss) 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

15. 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.”

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022

As @bariweiss clearly describes, the rules were enforced against the right, but not against the left

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022

But ‘de-amplification’ of tweets was known since 2018

However, many disagreed with the claims made in the thread. Kayvon Beykpour replied saying, “We never denied de-amplifying things. In fact, we made clear that we do rank. We defined exactly what we meant by “shadow banning” (b/c there are many definitions) and made very clear that we didn’t do *that*.”

He added that “characterizing any de-amplification as equating to shadow banning which is either a lazy interpretation or deliberately misleading.” He also quoted tweeted one of Elon Musk’s earlier tweets on the issue saying, “De-amplification is obviously necessary and even Elon himself believes so.”

wow. did you even read the blog post? We never denied de-amplifying things. In fact we made clear that we do rank. We defined exactly what we meant by “shadow banning” (b/c there are many definitions) and made very clear that we didn’t do *that*…

— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) December 9, 2022

… You are characterizing any de-amplification as equating to shadow banning which is either a lazy interpretation or deliberately misleading. De-amplification is obviously necessary and even Elon himself believes so https://t.co/u4D5UNfrRe

— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) December 9, 2022

Story continues below this ad

Beykpour also denied that he and other executives had lied about the policies, and said a lot of this was ‘manufactured drama’.

nah. never lied. this is manufactured drama and you’re playing into it. why else would they cherry pick my quote out of context without linking to the full text?

— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) December 9, 2022

It should be noted that Musk has said earlier, “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity,” in a tweet where he spoke about ‘declining’ hate speech on Twitter.

Now, Shadow-banning has been a much-debated topic around Twitter. It typically means when a user’s posts or comments are blocked from being visible to others, without their knowledge. However, in Twitter’s case, while a tweet would not show up in the feed if it was de-amplified, the user could still see it by going to the account profile, as the 2018 blog post had noted.

Twitter has always said that it does “rank tweets and search results,” based on a number of signals ranging from relevance to whether the tweet could be from a bad-faith actor. In May 2018, it said in a blog post that it would start hiding tweets or conversations that it felt were detracting from a conversation. While users had the option of clicking on the “Show more replies” option for these ‘hidden’ tweets, it should be noted that when a user’s tweets got tagged as such, they were not informed by the platform. Further, all of the user’s tweets would get hidden from search results and public conversations, once the software decided to mark their tweets.

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

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022

The ‘lack’ of transparency on what caused one to get tagged as such has always been a debated issue. Meanwhile, it looks like Musk plans to address this by showing ‘true account status’ to users.’ He wrote, “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.” We will have to wait and see when this feature actually rolls out and whether it can put to rest claims of Twitter being biased.