Is the ‘Twitter Files’, the biggest scandal since the turn of the century, about to reveal the biggest scandal in human history?
Matt Taibi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger flip through “Twitter Files”, a survey focusing on the moderation of this social network before the arrival of Elon Musk. In particular, we learn that the emergence of older employees is increasingly important Twitter He said that he is in regular contact with the American special services and that Donald Trump is really a victim of the social network. But he is not alone: leftists, conservatives and those who oppose the United Nations Doxa and its agency WHO have also been targeted. This raises the broader question of the role played by GAFAMs, which have become the world’s most powerful media during the pandemic.
Libertarian Billionaire Elon Musk has promised to make Twitter a social network for free speech. He criticized the moderation rules of the platforms, without any hesitation to start a massive layoff plan to implement his new policy.
The will of the boss you are here Turning Twitter into a kingdom of free speech had earned him boycott by advertisers, Condemnation by the United Nations and this worried Macroni. Thierry Breton already visited the factories in Austin, Texas last May you are here To warn that the American will have to respect the rules of the DSA, the Digital Services Act, which regulates platforms in the European market. On December 2, Emmanuel Macron took advantage of his visit to the United States to meet with Elon Musk at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
At least we can say that Elon Musk was right about the platform’s moderation rules, and that includes the company he bought in the first place.
A day after the summit meeting with President Macron, Elon Musk tweeted the first part of the “Twitter Files” serialized by American journalists Matt Taibi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger, who are interested in Twitter moderation rules. that his teams maintain the role played by the American intelligence services and the social network during the elections.
Part one: Censorship of New York Post investigation into Joe Biden’s son ahead of 2020 US election
Last week, Matt Taibi launched military operations. He had access to his employees’ emails and internal chats Twitter reveals how Twitter censored the article New York Post Dedicated to Hunter Biden, the son of the current American president, it was published shortly before the American presidential campaign.
In this article, we learned that when Hunter Biden was the director of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, reportedly introduced her father to Viktor Shokin, a high-ranking company executive who would become the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. A year later, while he was investigating the company, the American administration managed to get him to leave.
According to Matt Taibini, Facebook and Twitter It would have raised the possibility of sharing this questionnaire for two weeks and the account Twitter from New York Post was suspended for refusing to delete his tweets related to this article.
According to the journalist, this decision ” elevated to the highest levels of the company, but unbeknownst to CEO Jack Dorsey, former Head of Legal, Policy and Trust Affairs Vijaya Gadde played a key role.
Part Two: The Existence of Two-Level Censorship
Matt Taibbi, the media’s founder and publishing director, promised new revelations Tea freepress, Bari Weiss, who took office this week, said, “ Teams of Twitter Employees » have created “blacklisting, preventing disliked tweets from trending, and actively limiting the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics, secretly without notifying users”.
According to him, “Twitter had a mission” to enable everyone to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. “Despite this, barriers were erected along the road. »
He gives an example “Stanford’s Dr Jay Bhattacharya Claims Covid Lockdowns Will Harm Children”. “Twitter secretly put him on a ‘trending blacklist’, which prevented his tweets from trending. »
Bari Weiss also cites several indexed conservative figures such as the aforementioned Dan Bongino. ” Black List », activist Charlie Kirk, he was given “empowerment”.
According to information, an employee told him: We control the appearance somewhat. And we have a lot of control over content amplification.” “And normal people don’t know everything we do. »
The journalist notes that Twitter has established two levels of censorship, one of which has a name ” View filter », “Visibility Filter” In Molière’s language, this could limit the distribution of certain tweets or accounts, make them harder to find in the search bar, or prevent publications from appearing. “tendency”.
It also mentions the existence of a second level of censorship for “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support” managed by a “secret group” called SIP-PES.the most important and politically sensitive decisionsAccording to him, this group notably includes global trust and security chief Yoel Roth, successive CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, as well as Vijaya Gadde. “We do not prohibit views based on political and ideological opinion.”
Account Twitter Chaya Raichik, an influencer with a following of 1.4 million subscribers, for example, would have been hit from the inside with the notification ” Do not act on the user without consulting SIP-PES“. Several times this account would have been officially suspended “hateful behavior“. But in the internal memo of SIP-PES, the account “Has not engaged in conduct that directly violates the Hateful Conduct Policy“.
Barry Weiss also explains this “In a direct message to a staff member of the Health, Disinformation, Privacy, and Identity Research Group, Roth called for more research to support the expansion of opt-out policy interventions such as disabling badges and amplification, visibility filtering”.
