Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur, released the second edition of “Twitter Files,” Thursday. It revealed how the company had blacklisted and shadow-banned accounts.
Bari Weiss, a journalist, was given the story. She tweeted it in a lengthy thread from her Twitter account.
u201cTHREAD. THE TWITTER SIGNS PART TWO. nnTWITTERu2019S SECRET BLACKLISTS.u201d— Bari Weiss (@Bari Weiss)
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“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,” she said in a second tweet.
Weiss explained how Twitter placed the account of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending because he argued that pandemic lockdowns were harmful to children.
Dan Bongino, a radio talk show host, was another example. placed for a while on a “Search Blacklist”. It also put Charlie Kirk’s account On a “Do NOT Amplify” List.
Weiss noted that Twitter had denied shadow banning on the grounds of political opinion.
“We do not shadow ban,” said a
