Elon Musk doesn’t blame Jack Dorsey. The former Twitter CEO didn’t have a clue what was going on in his own company. Instead, “the inmates were running the asylum.” Contrary to all the official denials, the platform did “shadow ban” conservatives, only they called it controlling visibility.
Twitter Files part two
Now that James Baker isn’t vetting the material before Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi get to comb through it for release, proof has surfaced that Twitter really did shadow ban conservatives.
On Tuesday, December 6, the second tranche of secret files were released. This batch is all about “secret blacklists.” Don’t blame Jack Dorsey, Musk tweeted out.
Elon doesn’t hold a grudge against his predecessor running Twitter. Dorsey swore up and down that “we don’t shadow ban, and we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints.” They did, he just didn’t know about it.
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
As Musk explained, “Jack has a pure heart,” adding the abbreviation for “in my opinion.” Dorsey takes the concept of “plausible deniability” to a whole new level.
“Controversial decisions were often made without getting Jack’s approval and he was unaware of systemic bias. The inmates were running the asylum.”
Those are the “woke employees who have mostly fled or been let go” since Musk assumed control. Twitter readers weren’t fully convinced. “If he didn’t know what was going on his own company, he was a terrible leader.”
True account status
As part of the fix, “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.” The outrage is growing, especially from “many of those identified as having had their voices silenced.”
Those such as Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya “who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a ‘Trends Blacklist,’ which prevented his tweets from trending.” Then there was “popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino, who at one point was slapped with a ‘Search Blacklist.‘” Not to mention conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The platform set his account to “Do Not Amplify.”
Musk promises “Twitter won’t be perfect in the future, but it will be *much* better.”
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
If all goes well, once people get a chance to hammer the issues out between them with an exchange of ideas, “the far right and the far left will splinter off Twitter to irrelevant echo chambers.” Bari Weiss revealed a whole bunch of interesting things about what the previous management team had been up to.
One engineer explained to Ms. Weiss that Twitter can and has controlled “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.” Two more engineers confirmed that. Former execs Vijaya Gadde and Yoel Roth on the security team were the real threats.
“Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool.” LibsofTikTok can tell you all about how that works. Weiss revealed they were one of the targets, simply for being “a conservative account that brings attention to social media videos and posts that promote a progressive liberal agenda.“
