Elon Musk's Second Edition: The company allegedly has "secret blacklists," according to a second edition of the "Twitter Files," which observers say sound remarkably like the billionaire's own policies.
Bari Weiss, a former opinion columnist for the New York Times, presented a number of instances in which Twitter had restricted the dissemination and endorsement of particular tweets.
She highlighted conservative activist Charlie Kirk and Chaya Raichik, who runs the Libsoftiktok account, as examples of those punished by the company, in a series of tweets explaining the previous management's position on reducing the visibility of Twitter users who disobeyed company policies.
In the 30-tweet thread, Ms. Weiss claimed that Twitter had a group of staff members who created blacklists, stopped specific tweets from trending, and limited the visibility of topics or accounts.
Mr. Musk reluctantly paid $44 billion for the business and pledged to defend free speech on the network at all costs, allowing banned users like former president Donald Trump to reappear.
And last month, as thousands of employees were fired and advertisers abandoned Twitter amid uncertainty about content moderation, Mr. Musk insisted that the company was still dedicated to preventing some tweets from being amplified.
Mr. Musk tweeted last month that the new Twitter policy allows for freedom of speech but not freedom of reach.
Negative or hateful tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so Twitter won't get any ads or other income.
The tweet won't appear unless you specifically search for it, just like you would the rest of the Internet.
Weeks before his father, Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election, newsletter author Matt Taibbi wrote about how Twitter restricted access to a New York Post article on Hunter Biden's laptop. This led to the publication of the second instalment of Twitter Files.
Weiss's report prompted a tweet from Elon Musk, who said that Twitter was "a software update that will display your true account status is being developed, so you can easily see if you have been shadowbanned, the reason(s), and the appeal process.”
