Musk said that the change would be coming in a software update, but did not say when users could expect it to go live.
He wrote hours after sharing the latest version of the Twitter Files that Twitter is working on a software update that shows your true account status. The internal documents were shared with journalist Bari Weiss who shared the contents Thursday.
A new TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics, all in secret, without informing users, Weiss said in a thread.
There used to be a mission to give everyone the ability to share ideas and information on the internet without any barriers. She added that barriers were erected along the way.
Weiss first identified Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a vocal critic of COVID lockdowns, as a victim of a shadowban.
Weiss reported that Twitter had secretly placed him on a 'Trends Blacklist, which prevented his tweets from trending.
Weiss also highlighted the fact that Fox News host Dan Bongino was a recipient of a Search Blacklist. Weiss recalled Twitter heads that had denied they had performed such actions.
In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gadde then Head of Legal Policy and Trust and Kayvon Beykpour Head of Product said: We do not have a shadow ban. They said they don't oppose a shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology. Weiss reported that Gadde and Beykpour had another name for the action, as Twitter executives and employees called it the process of diminishing a person's reach on the platform visibility filtering or VF. If you think visibility filtering is a way to suppress what people see to different levels, think about visibility filtering. Weiss said that it was a very powerful tool, citing a senior Twitter employee. She added that VF refers to Twitter's control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users, limit the scope of a particular tweet s discoverability, block select users posts from appearing on the trending page, and include in hashtag searches. Musk wants to change this, because these actions are taken against the account owners knowledge.
Musk later tweeted that some accounts on the right were suspended even though Twitter internally acknowledged that no rules were broken. The major reveal came days after the initial installment of internal documents showed a glimpse at the company's content moderation.
Musk shared the first Twitter Files with Substack journalist Matt Taibbi.
According to Musk-provided and Taibbi-shared information, Twitter's ever-persistent content moderation was a decision made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role. The files show some employees challenging the company's targeted censoring.