Elon Musk Retweets "Twitter Files Part 2", Reveals Secret Suppression Of Right-Wing Commentators

The 'Part 2' of the internal "Twitter Files," which discuss "free speech restriction" by the social media company, was made public by Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Friday morning. Mr Musk retweeted the story, which was originally posted by independent journalist Bari Weiss, and revealed more "dark" secrets about the social media platform.

Journalist Bari Weiss started her thread with a tweet that read, "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."

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"Twitter once had a mission "to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers." Along the way, nevertheless, barriers were erected," she wrote.

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.

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022

In a series of posts, Ms. Weiss described how Twitter used "shadow banning" to limit the visibility of tweets from far-right users.

She wrote, with screenshots, that many right-wing thinkers were put on the "Search Blacklist" and the "Trends Blacklist," preventing their tweets from trending on the microblogging website.

5. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.” pic.twitter.com/dOyQIVdsW2

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022

Ms. Weiss wrote that "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."

According to Weiss, the practise of suppressing conservative voices is known as "Visibility Filtering" or "VF" internally.

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.

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022

"What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning," she tweeted.