In a major set back to fake ids and trollers ., Twitter owner mush has said Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status.
Musk said that the micro-blogging platform is working on a process to inform the users whether their tweets have been suppressed under a process known as “shadow banning” and they can appeal against the ban.
“So you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal,” he mentioned.
A shadow ban refers to decreasing the visibility or partially blocking a user’s posts from appearing on searches.
Bari Weiss claims Twitter employees “build blacklists” to “prevent disfavored tweets from trending.”
Weiss notes that Twitter executives and employees refer to shadow banning as “Visibility Filtering”
Twitter owner Elon Musk on Friday said the company will delete and free names of 1.5 billion accounts that have been inactive for years on the platform.
“Twitter will soon start freeing the name space of 1.5 billion accounts. These are obvious account deletions with no tweets and no login for years,” said the billionaire.
He added, “you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal.” A similar announcement was made by Instagram earlier this week.
However, Musk’s tweet is particularly crucial as Twitter has denied shadow banning in the past.
For instance, in 2018, former Twitter executives Vijaya Gadde and Kayvon Beykpour categorically denied shadow ban allegations in a blog post that reads, “People are asking us if we shadow ban. We do not.”
Meanwhile, Weiss shared more details in a long series of tweets and the first tweet reads,
“A new Twitter Files 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.
” Weiss also claimed that alleges that Twitter placed Stanford’s Dr Jay Bhattacharya, who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children, in a secret “Trends Blacklist.” Even some right-wing and conservative profiles have been put in specific categories to prevent their tweets from trending, in other words shadow banned.
The “Twitter Files 2” revealed that the micro-blogging platform, under a secret group, made controversial decisions, including “shadow banning” high-profile users without informing then CEO Jack Dorsey.
“This secret group included the 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,” said Bari Weiss, Founder and Editor of The Free Press, in the new “Twitter Files.”
Twitter had earlier denied that it did such things.
It is unclear who is currently overseeing “Visibility Filtering” at Twitter, since Musk has laid off half of the staff, including former legal head Vijay Gadde, who denied shadow banning in 2018. Musk’s order to roll out the update coincides with his previous tweet where he said that the social media platform will become a hub for free speech.
