dChan
Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 4:50 p.m. No.17909657   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9742 >>9744 >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

7:20 PM · Dec 8, 2022 https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601008766861815808

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601008766861815808

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 4:53 p.m. No.17909676   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9742 >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

7:24 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601009744575025152

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 4:58 p.m. No.17909707   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9742 >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

7:30 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601011428579717121

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:07 p.m. No.17909759   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.”

7:40 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601013855697588224

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:10 p.m. No.17909774   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

7:43 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601014524227645440

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:12 p.m. No.17909790   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

7:47 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601015659491532800

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:15 p.m. No.17909814   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

7:48 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601015872046260226

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:17 p.m. No.17909824   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

7:50 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601016446930124800

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:19 p.m. No.17909829   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.”

7:54 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601017524996304896

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:20 p.m. No.17909834   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9907 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

7:55 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601017754324062208

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:22 p.m. No.17909842   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0175 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.”

7:57 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601018077021229056

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:26 p.m. No.17909854   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.”

8:00 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601018810495995904

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:28 p.m. No.17909864   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9872 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

8:03 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601019593606107136

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:32 p.m. No.17909892   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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:

8:08 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601020845224128512

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:33 p.m. No.17909899   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9957 >>0040 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.”

8:09 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601021201815457793

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:34 p.m. No.17909903   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

8:11 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601021562085208070

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:35 p.m. No.17909914   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

8:16 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601022887556571136

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:36 p.m. No.17909921   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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:

8:18 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601023504916172800

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:38 p.m. No.17909931   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9949 >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.”

8:19 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601023770717626368

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:40 p.m. No.17909937   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9957 >>0002 >>0019 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.”

8:20 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601024006819180546

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:43 p.m. No.17909948   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9957 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.”

8:21 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601024233739407360

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:50 p.m. No.17909980   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9993 >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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: http://thefp.com.

8:27 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601025779021684736

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:51 p.m. No.17909991   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

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.

8:28 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601026062887972864

Anonymous ID: 4991f6 Dec. 8, 2022, 5:52 p.m. No.17909997   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0114 >>0183 >>0284 >>0375

Bari Weiss

29. We're just getting started on our reporting. Documents cannot tell the whole story here. A big thank you to everyone who has spoken to us so far. If you are a current or former Twitter employee, we'd love to hear from you. Please write to: tips@thefp.com

8:38 PM · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601028451862859776