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The Twitter Files, Part Two: Twitter's Secret Blacklist Thread, In A More Readable Format

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The Twitter Files, Part Two: Twitter's Secret Blacklist Thread, In A More Readable Format

we converted the hard-to-read images to text, and posted the thread in order here.

Brandon Gorrell
Dec 9, 2022
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The Twitter Files, Part Two: Twitter's Secret Blacklist Thread, In A More Readable Format

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Last Friday, Elon Musk gave journalist Matt Taibbi a scoop: the story of how Twitter censored New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, revealed by Twitter’s internal documents. (If you need to catch up on that before reading this, click here.) Taibbi broke the news on Twitter itself with “The Twitter Files,” a 40+ tweet thread of his reporting and internal documents such as one showing the “Biden team” itemizing specific tweets they wanted censored—and Twitter staff obliging without comment (“handled these.”)

Tonight, Bari Weiss released the second installment of the The Twitter Files, titled TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS, in another thread. The reporting—done by Abigail Shrier, Michael Shellenberger, Nellie Bowles, Isaac Grafstein, and The Free Press crew—shows Twitter shadowbanning right-of-center accounts, despite denying that they shadowban at all (see Vijaya Gadde’s canonical Twitter blog post titled “Setting the record straight on shadow banning”).

Here’s the thread in article format. Enjoy.

Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.
12:20 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
24,073Likes7,423Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.
12:24 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
16,795Likes3,530Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.
Image
12:30 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
19,418Likes6,323Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
4. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.”
Image
12:33 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
15,752Likes4,513Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
5. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.”
Image
12:36 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
14,767Likes4,292Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.”
12:40 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
16,015Likes4,198Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.
12:41 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
13,693Likes3,460Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.
12:43 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
12,344Likes3,094Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
9. “VF” refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF 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.
12:47 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
9,804Likes2,538Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
10. All without users’ knowledge.
12:47 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
9,712Likes2,169Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
11. “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.
12:48 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
10,267Likes2,828Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.
12:50 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
8,817Likes2,286Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
13. But there existed a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper. That is the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” known as “SIP-PES.”
12:54 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
6,090Likes1,623Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.
12:55 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
6,650Likes2,038Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.”
12:57 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
5,662Likes1,603Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.”
Image
1:00 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
3,841Likes1,420Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
17. The account—which Chaya Raichik began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers—was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik says. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week.
1:03 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
3,734Likes1,055Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
18. Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.”
1:04 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
2,475Likes700Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
19. But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy." See here:
Image
1:08 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
1,114Likes430Retweets

Screenshot text:

Site Policy Recommendation

Site Policy recommends placing @LibsOfTiktok ([LTT] 1.3M followers, not verified) in a 7-day timeout at the account level [meaning, not for a specific Tweet] based on the account's continued pattern of indirectly violating Twitter's Hateful Conduct Policy by tweeting content that either leads to or intends to incite harassment against individuals and institutions that support LGBTQ communities. At this time, Site Policy has not found explicitly violative Tweets, which would result in a permanent suspension of the account. This type of enforcement action [repeated 7-day timeouts at the account-level] will not lead to permanent suspension, however: should LTT engage in any other direct Tweet-level violations of any of Site Policy's policies, we will move forward with permanent suspension.

Assessment

Since its most recent timeout, while LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy, the user has continued targeting individuals/allies/supporters of the LGBTQIA+ community for alleged misconduct. The targeting of at least one of these institutions

Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.”
1:09 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
9,908Likes2,238Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
21. Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes.
1:11 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
10,060Likes2,303Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.
Image
1:16 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
6,555Likes1,931Retweets

Screenshot text:

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out. We reviewed the reported content, and didn't find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules. In this case, no action will be taken at this time.

If you have further concerns about intellectual property, your privacy, or your personal safety, the following guidelines can be of assistance:

Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
23. In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects. Here’s Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then Global Head of Trust & Safety, in a direct message to a colleague in early 2021:
Image
1:18 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
3,245Likes972Retweets

Screenshot text:

Yoel Roth 09:02:09

A lot of times, SI has used technicality spam enforcements as a way to solve a problem created by Safety under-enforcing their policies. Which, again, isn't a problem per se - but it keeps us from addressing the root cause of the issue, which is that our Safety policies need some attention.

Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.”
Image
1:19 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
6,513Likes1,727Retweets

Screenshot text:

Yoel Roth 11:51:36

One of the biggest areas I'd *love* research support on is re: non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering. 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 (by just reducing prevalence overall). 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. So I'd love research's POV on that.

Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.”
1:20 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
6,738Likes1,621Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.”
1:21 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
7,087Likes1,744Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
27. There is more to come on this story, which was reported by @AbigailShrier @ShellenbergerMD @NellieBowles @IsaacGrafstein and the team The Free Press @TheFP. Keep up with this unfolding story here and at our brand new website: thefp.com.
1:27 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
3,851Likes1,175Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bariweiss
Bari Weiss @bariweiss
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.
1:28 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
3,040Likes699Retweets

Update: Elon followed up on Bari’s thread with a note that Twitter will release an update that allows you to know the distribution status of your account.

Twitter avatar for @elonmusk
Elon Musk @elonmusk
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
2:32 AM ∙ Dec 9, 2022
30,759Likes5,223Retweets
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The Twitter Files, Part Two: Twitter's Secret Blacklist Thread, In A More Readable Format

www.piratewires.com
7 Comments
Chris Coffman
Writes Positive Space
Dec 9, 2022Liked by Brandon Gorrell

All I can say is thank God for Elon Musk, and for Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and you! You’re all on the side of the angels. God bless all of you!

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Dr. K
Dec 9, 2022Liked by Brandon Gorrell

Thanks for doing this. Those of us not on Twatter have no good way to get to this. So it is not only prettier, but enabling. Most appreciated.

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