Twitter’s next ‘big’ software update will help a lot of users, says Elon Musk – Times of India

Hours after journalist Bari Weiss revealed “Twitter Files Part 2“, the company’s new owner announced that Twitter is working on software that will let people know whether they have been shadowbanned. The “Twitter Files Part 2″ talks about shadowbanning – a practice by the microblogging platform to restrict some accounts and tweets from trending on the website.
“Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal,” Musk said in a tweet.
With “shadowbanning” or as Twitter called it “Visibility Filtering” (VF), the company controlled the visibility of a user or tweets from multiple places. It blocked searches of individual users, to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability, blocked select users’ posts from ever appearing on the ‘trending’ page, and from inclusion in hashtag searches. This was done without the users’ knowledge.

Weiss cited multiple examples wherein profiles of various ‘right-wing thinkers’ and their tweets were put on the “Search Blacklist”, “Trends Blacklist” and “Do not Amplify” categories. This prevented their posts from trending on Twitter essentially limiting their visibility.
In 2018, Twitter denied shadowbanning, however, Weiss provided quotes and screenshots suggesting that Twitter did not reveal the big picture. As per Weiss, Twitter also had a “secret group”, apart from moderators to look into such limitations and take a decision. The “secret group” was called “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support ” (or SIP-PES). It included the 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. “This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made,” Weiss said.
Twitter’s new policy
Last month, Musk announced that Twitter has a “new policy” – freedom of speech and not freedom of reach. He mentioned that “negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetised, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.” He also said that no one will be able to find that deboosted and demonetised negative/ hate tweet “unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from the rest of the Internet.”