Latest ‘Twitter Files’ Drop Claims Company Shadowbanned Conservatives Charlie Kirk, Dan Bongino
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Journalist and podcaster Bari Weiss claimed to have uncovered evidence Twitter previously engaged in the shadowbanning of conservatives on the platform.
Weiss joined journalist and author Matt Taibbi last week in gaining access to the platform’s internal files from before Elon Musk purchased the company. Taibbi released files last week that purported to show Twitter worked with political parties to suppress tweets and accounts.
Drops of the “Twitter Files” by journalists have been billed as a way to help Musk make right on a vow to be transparent about Big Tech’s alleged political meddling. Taibbi’s reporting of company files made available to him by Musk portrayed Twitter as a company where outside actors successfully petitioned to direct the discourse.
This included the suppression of the initial October 2020 reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop by the New York Post.
Taibbi claimed people on both sides of the political aisle successfully lobbied to remove content they did not like, but the system was “biased” against people on the right. On Thursday evening, Weiss dropped more files she claimed showed shadowbanning targeted conservatives, some with a large following on Twitter.
“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,” she claimed.
She showed tags on the accounts of Charlie Kirk and Dan Bongino that apparently limited the reach of their posts.
In a photo posted by Weiss, Bongino’s account has a “Search Blacklist” tag on it while Kirk’s has one that says “Do Not Amplify.”
Twitter had previously denied it engaged in shadowbanning. Weiss said the company instead referred to the act of denying reach to certain sources was called “Visibility Filtering.” It is unclear why either account flagged by Weiss was singled out.
Musk has expressed opposition to banning accounts that do not incite violence, but he has floated a system where accounts that post extreme or hateful content are denied a large audience. In a Dec. 2 tweet, he wrote, “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach.”
It is not clear if Musk’s call to limit reach for accounts that spread hate will look different than the one Weiss’s reporting claims was in place.
Read Weiss’s Thursday thread in its entirety here.
