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So, uh, the latest Twitter Files just dropped. This one is about Trump and his removal.
Taibbi claims the following.
Twitter post-Trump-ban was now willing to carry forward a policy of "the president can be banned" no matter what.
At least 1 executive did not consider Trump's tweets in isolation i.e they considered the context surrounding the man, his policies, and supporters as well, and they were discussing this with Gadde.
Trust and Safety team members were meeting with the FBI and DHS regularly during this time period.
Twitter was actively engaging in fact-checking against some class of tweets (the particular example is whether Trump's claim about a rigged election would count as a violation if the supporting facts were wrong).
Twitter was aware that they would not necessarily look good if it came out that they were partnering with the FBI/DHS to evaluate misinformation.
In my opinion, this one is somehow even weaker than the first reveal. Most of this was already known through other sources, it just gives additional information to existing claims about bias. Nothing new was revealed, which is now an argument many are using to claim that this is all a waste of time.
I'm totally down to believe that Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi had to post their reveals on Twitter, but the theatrical nature of the reveals is, in my opinion, actively hurting whatever points they want to make. The discussions are increasingly becoming about how the information is being handled over what, if anything, is being shown to us.
Huh? Maybe in the "it's not happening, and if it is, it's a good thing" sense. Wikipedia is still calling Twiiter shaddow-banning a "conspiracy theory" (even as they admit it turned out to be true). Hard evidence comes out that it was in fact happening, and you go "pff, everyone knew that"?
What's your definition of "shadow-ban"?
According to urbandictionary
And according to Twitter
So, what accounts is it alleged Twitter shadow banned, according to either its own or the pre-Twitter-Files definition? As far as I can tell the actions Twitter is alleged to have taken are:
De-boosted some accounts such that their content would not appear in one's timeline, but could still be viewed if they went to the posting account directly (i.e. not shadow banned) and;
Hid some accounts from auto complete in the search bar, but which could still be viewed if one navigated directly to the posting account (i.e. not shadow banning).
As far as I can tell this new post-Twitter-Files definition of shadow banning as any kind of limit of an accounts reach is entirely invented for the purpose of claiming Twitter lied about not shadow banning people (in the same blog post where they are extremely clear about what they mean by shadow banning).
The second one you quoted is fine, with the caveat that it doesn't have to be undiscoverable to everyone.
And as far as I can tell, insisting that to meet the definition of "shadow-banning" content has to be made 100% undiscoverable is entirely invented for the purpose of claiming twitter hasn't lied about shadow banning people.
I think this is just a new halfway measure that didn't have a specific term. Would anyone be unhappy with calling this as "partial shadowban" or something like that?
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