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Why Musk gets electrified with Twitter files

1 year ago babelfish

Why Musk gets electrified with Twitter files

Here's how Twitter's new owner Elon Musk rides the "Twitter Files", the publication of the social network's employees' internal documents, as evidence of the censorship of the social network's previous management

Second installment of the Twitter Files saga.

On December 9, the journalist Bari Weiss, a former New York Times columnist, with the "blessing" of Elon Musk, the new CEO of Twitter, posted on a long "thread" which demonstrates the existence in the past of a team of employees of Twitter whose purpose was “to build blacklists, prevent unfavorable tweets from trending, and limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics”.

“All – continues the post retweeted by Musk himself – in secret, without informing users”.

These revelations follow those of December 3, when the new owner of Twitter gave way, through the American journalist Matt Taibbi, to the publication of the "Twitter files". In that first revelation of internal documents it emerges that the social network blocked a post by the New York Post on some potentially incriminating emails from Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, at the time of the 2020 US elections.

But why did Musk share internal Twitter documents with Weiss and Taibbi? The American billionaire thus wants to demonstrate that the moderation of content under the previous management of the social network was biased against the conservative right. Musk, who bought Twitter in October for $44 billion, has vowed to reshape the social network into a "free speech" platform. And now the new "Chief Twit" intends to end the practice of "shadow banning", secretly downgrading one person's trending tweets or topics, to minimize their reach.

All the details.

THE SECOND POINT BY THE JOURNALIST BARI WEISS

In a Twitter thread on Dec. 9, "Twitter's Secret Blacklists," Bari Weiss highlighted instances where Twitter limited the distribution of tweets by demonstrating how the old social media establishment would place in covert "blacklists" based on their political orientation.

From the thread it emerges that Twitter had specialized teams in charge of handling 200 cases a day. Weiss focused on several specific accounts, including conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Stanford physician Jay Bhattacharya, and Chaya Raichik, who runs TikTok's Libs account.

Bhattacharya, who has opposed Covid-19 restrictions, appeared to have been placed on a "trend blacklist," as was right-wing TikTok account Libs, according to photos.

MUSK'S WELCOME

And Musk promoted Weiss' thread by chirping "The Twitter Files, Part Deux!!".

“As the owner of a private social media company, Elon Musk has the right to reveal all he wants about Twitter Inc.'s editorial decisions. If he wants to open Twitter files, as he apparently did to reporter Matt Taibbi last week , to disclose internal company deliberations on tweets related to the 2020 New York Post report on Hunter Biden's laptop, this is Musk's prerogative,” Reuters points out.

THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA

As Axios points out, Twitter has long made it clear that it could reduce the visibility of tweets from users who violate its rules. However, the company hasn't always been transparent about when it took those actions or who was making those decisions.

THE BORDER BETWEEN CONTENT MODERATION AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has said he's been trying to maximize free speech on the platform. But it has also sparked protests for allowing slurs and other hateful language to proliferate. Musk said "impressions of hate speech" have actually dropped by a third since he bought the company.

After that, the new Twitter owner promised to make the social media company more transparent after the release of the second tranche of Twitter Files.

THIRD POINT COMING SOON

Finally, Weiss says she and Matt Taibbi "have broad and expanding access to Twitter files."

And the journalist concludes by saying to follow Taibbi who will return with the next episode. So all that remains is to wait for the third episode.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/musk-twitter-files/ on Sat, 10 Dec 2022 07:01:13 +0000.