Elon Musk Retweets "Twitter Files Part 2", here is what secrets it revealed

Part two of the Twitter Files has been released and it tells the story of censorship on the micro-blogging site. Released by journalist Bari Weiss, the files reveal how Twitter hid views and opinions that did not align with their preferred ideology and how a 'secret group' was active to ensure rebellious tweets do not reach the masses. The Twitter files are being made public to ensure transparency on the platform, which the new boss Elon Musk sternly endorses. 

Twitter files part 2

According to a new investigation into Twitter Files, a team of Twitter employees built a blacklist to prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or trending topics, all without the knowledge of the users. In a threat of tweets, Weiss revealed one such example of Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who once said that lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic would harm children. He was put into the 'Trends Blacklist' and his tweets were altogether prevented from trending.

She shared other examples of right-wing talk show host Dan Bongino and conservative activist Charlie Kirk; both were put in the 'Search Blacklist' and 'Do Not Amplify' categories respectively for their tweets. 

These revelations stand completely opposite to what Twitter's Vijaya Gadde, then Head of Legal Policy and Trust, and Kayvon Beykpour, Head of Product, had said back in 2018. "We do not shadow ban,” they said per Weiss. “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”

A 'secret team' and censorship on Twitter

Weiss revealed that the group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team-Global Escalation Team (SRT-GET) which handles 200 cases every day. This team would apply 'shadow banning' or 'Visibility filtering' as called by Twitter executives. "Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool," a senior Twitter employee told the investigators. 

However, there was another 'secret team' which included Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth, the Global Head of Trust and Safety and former CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal among others. According to Weiss, this team made bigger political decisions and suspension of accounts with a higher number of followers. One such example is Chaya Raichik, the account holder behind the popular right-wing social media profile Libs of Tik Tok, per Newsweek. 

The account, which has 1.6 million followers, was suspended six times in 2022 alone and one of the suspensions was justified as a source of online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” as "gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming". Weiss tweeted that the investigation into what went behind Twitter before Elon Musk's takeover is still underway and a lot is still left to be unveiled.