Twitter chief Elon Musk, following a ‘Twitter Files’ document drop on Thursday, says the evidence proves censorship was enforced almost exclusively against right-leaning and conservative accounts.
Evidence given to independent journalist Bari Weiss shows high-ranking officials behind the decision to build blacklists and filter content without a user’s knowledge.
Weiss tweeted out information on “Twitter’s Secret Blacklists” that showed employees creating these lists, working in concert to “prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit(ing) the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics.”
The effort to suppress voices was “all in secret, without informing users,” she explained.
And the targets of the censorship include some of the biggest names in conservative media.
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
RELATED: Liberal ‘Journalists’ Use VERY Similar Talking Points to Downplay Hunter Biden Censorship Bombshell
Elon Musk: Shadow Banning Was Almost Exclusively Used Against the Right
And these revelations have not led to a re-examination among the left, who are still making excuses.
Left-wing ‘internet sleuth,’ Ashley Feinberg dismissed the bombshell evidence and suggested Twitter employees were simply following a public policy on “spammy behavior.”
this has literally been on twitter’s help page since at least 2018 https://t.co/nCRHB3x5Vy pic.twitter.com/sxLxc2j6wD
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) December 9, 2022
Weiss’ reporting does show that Twitter executives had created a “policy escalation” group that tagged accounts for further review and subjected them to potential “spam enforcements.”
But that group was used as a means of circumventing the safety team “under-enforcing their policies.”
David Sacks, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Tesla, mocked the suggestion that Twitter’s shadow banning was simply an attempt to enforce spam policy.
New narrative: they weren’t shadowbanning political opponents. They were just enforcing the spam policy. https://t.co/mizB1ssxJ2
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) December 9, 2022
Musk responded to Sacks’ tweet by insisting that even if such a policy were the reasoning behind the shadow bans, enforcement of it was against one type of account.
As [Weiss] clearly describes,” he wrote, “the rules were enforced against the right, but not against the left.”
As @bariweiss clearly describes, the rules were enforced against the right, but not against the left
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
In another tweet, Musk points out that “some accounts on the right were suspended even when Twitter internally acknowledged that no rules were broken.”
True, some accounts on the right were suspended even when Twitter internally acknowledged that no rules were broken
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
Inmates Running the Asylum
The first two ‘Twitter Files’ document drops have now offered inarguable proof that conservatives were censored on the platform and the Big Tech company deliberately censored the Hunter Biden laptop story as directed by the DNC and President Joe Biden’s campaign.
As Musk states, “The inmates were running the asylum.”
As @bariweiss clearly describes, the rules were enforced against the right, but not against the left
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
Conservative radio host Dan Bongino, who was specifically cited by Weiss as an account that had been slapped with a “search blacklist” called the censorship “Soviet-style bulls***.”
‘SOVIET-STYLE BULLS–T’: On “Hannity,” @dbongino blasts mainstream media for ignoring the shadowbanning of conservatives following the second batch of Twitter Files. pic.twitter.com/Rp7plRgIlR
— Fox News (@FoxNews) December 9, 2022
A Pew Research poll shows nearly a quarter of Americans used Twitter as of November of last year, and among those, 69% say they consume news stories on the site.
Report from @pewjournalism | News on Twitter: Consumed by Most Users and Trusted by Many https://t.co/QIqvsjN9vM pic.twitter.com/LnLCR2Zb9x
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) November 22, 2021
The overt bias being revealed by the ‘Twitter Files’ demonstrates that the suppression of real and true news stories that reflected poorly on the left and stymied information sharing for conservatives surely put a finger on the scale for voters during the last two elections.
Believe it or not, there will likely be more bombshell evidence of Twitter’s suppression of speech in the coming days.
29. We’re just getting started on our reporting. Documents cannot tell the whole story here. A big thank you to everyone who has spoken to us so far. If you are a current or former Twitter employee, we’d love to hear from you. Please write to: [email protected]
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Musk has vowed to implement a system providing more transparency on shadow banning going forward.
“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,” he wrote.
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