Twitter kept secret blacklist of anti-lockdown users
Elon Musk reveals social media site had policy that prevented Right-wing accounts from trending
TWITTER “censored” prominent figures including a Stanford professor who warned of the possible harmful effects of Covid lockdowns, according to internal company data shared by Elon Musk, its chief executive. Bari Weiss, a former New York Times columnist, released a second instalment of the “Twitter Files” on Thursday night, posting images of accounts that Twitter allegedly placed on various types of “blacklists”.
The majority of the accounts, the journalist said, belonged to conservative and far-right users.
Dr Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, argued on the social media site in 2020 that protracted absences from school, economic disruptions and forced isolation of older people during the pandemic would cause long-term harm.
Ms Weiss said: “Teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavoured tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics – all in secret, without informing users.”
Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and former chief executive, had previously denied that the company restricted accounts with “certain political viewpoints”.
Other health leaders, including Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, condemned the declaration and called the document’s proposal for herd immunity “nonsense and very dangerous”.
Mr Musk acquired the social media company just over a month ago. The billionaire, who promised to reshape Twitter into a “free speech” platform, shared a trove of internal documents with Ms Weiss and Matt Taibbi, another independent journalist, in an apparent effort to show that content moderation under the previous management was biased against the political Right.
According to screenshots shared by Ms Weiss, Dan Bongino of Fox News was subject to a “search blacklist” and activist Charlie Kirk, of conservative student movement Turning Point USA, was given a “do not amplify” internal notice.
Dr Bhattacharya said: “Still trying to process my emotions on learning that Twitter blacklisted me.
“The thought that will keep me up tonight: censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures and a generation of children were hurt.
“The purpose of modern censorship is not to prevent people from hearing an idea. It is to delegitimise the idea in the mind of the public, and excommunicate the heretic who dared express it from polite society and the public square.”
He went on to express gratitude to the new Twitter chief executive.
Mr Musk wrote on his account on Thursday night: “As @bariweiss clearly describes, the rules were enforced against the right, but not against the left.”