“Twitter Files”, second episode. the social network would arbitrarily limit the visibility of certain conservative accounts

Has Twitter arbitrarily censored some posts? This is what two American journalists, Matt Taib and Barry Weiss, are trying to show, who, with the support of the new head of the network, Elon Musk, publish “Twitter files“. These disclosures are made in the form of an investigation into the disclosure of internal Twitter documents. Last week, reporter Matt Taibbi opened the dance by posting the first of a series of tweets back on how Twitter prevented the October 2020 investigation from being published. New York Post , about the computer of Hunter Biden, the son of the current US president. As in the Netflix series, the journalist announced the second episode of the revelations, which Barry Weiss published today.

What does this new “episode” contain? The journalist says:Teams of Twitter employees“were able to confirm”black lists“, prevent “tweets to trend“and limit”proactively visibility into entire accounts or even trending topics, all in private, without letting users know“. It is impossible to know the origin of the documents published by Barry Weiss, but it is clear that Elon Musk is in favor of all these revelations.

Employee testimonials and supporting emails. email exchange, Barry Weiss confirms that Twitter has imposed a double level of censorship. The first level was known in the company as “VF:“for”Visibility filter“, French “Visibility filtering“. This process would make it possible to limit the distribution of certain tweets or accounts, making them more difficult to find in the search bar or preventing posts from appearing.trend“.

Barry Weiss cites the example of several conservative Internet accounts that would bear the brunt of this censorship. A professor at Stanford Medical School, who has been decrying the harms of detention to children during the Covid pandemic, would thus post his account “trending blacklist“. Popular conservative talk show host Dan Bongino’s account would be posted “search blacklist“. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s account would appear “do not intensify“.

Finally, the journalist confirms the existence of a second level of censorship, which is managed by “secret group“called”SIP-PES:“for”Site Integrity Policy, Policy Extension Support“Where were they taken?”the most important and politically sensitive decisions“. According to him, this group included Vijaya Gade, then the company’s head of legal, political and trust affairs (famous for deciding to ban Donald Trump’s account), security officer Joel Roth, and Twitter’s CEO (Parag Agrawal, then Jack). Dorsey).

Chaya Rajchic’s Twitter account @libsoftiktok, which has 1.4 million followers, has reportedly been hit internally with the following notification, e.g.do not act on the user without consulting SIP-PES“. Several times this account has been suspended for a week, officially “hateful behavior“. But an internal SIP-PES memo confirms that the account “has not directly engaged in conduct that violates the hate speech policy“. According to Barry Weiss, Twitter based these suspensions on the grounds that Chaya Rajik implied that “gender affirming healthcare“for children”gender affirming healthcareunderstand. sex reassignment surgeries – compiled by “child exploitation“. Comments that Twitter would consider likely to encourage “harassment of LGBT-friendly individuals or institutions“.

“Twitter files” should not stop there. journalist promises the arrival of a new episode of “The Twitter Files” on the account of Matt Taibbi.