Internally, Twitter has quietly reduced the visibility of certain content.
Posted on 14.1.2023
RT reports that in 2020, Twitter made sure to reduce the visibility of accounts particularly critical of the Biden administration. At the time, the Democratic camp multiplied the solicitations in order to stifle the voice of some of its detractors
One day after posting a multitude of documents Bearing witness to how Twitter teams had to deal with a Democratic campaign aimed at influencing the platform’s moderation policy in early 2018, American journalist Matt Taibbi published an “additional” series of publications on January 13 relating to the same problem: the determination of Democratic officials to influence certain decisions of the social network.
We learn in particular that in 2020, Twitter discreetly made sure to reduce the visibility of certain accounts particularly critical of the Biden administration, the practice then echoing repeated requests from the Democratic camp in order to stifle the voice of some of its detractors by deleting publications, even wanting the pure and simple closure of accounts.
Intense Democratic political pressure
As he has demonstrated in several of his previous revelations, Matt Taibbi explains that the social network has often been confronted with abusive requests from the Democratic camp, which has sometimes sought to censor humorous content.
In April 2020, for example, an internal exchange testified to the uneasiness encountered by senior Twitter official Yoel Roth, regarding a request from the Democratic National Committee for deletion of publication relating to tweets showing a sarcastic photo montage vis- against the US President. This request had also been made to the social network Adam Schiff, chairman of the Intelligence Committee of the United States House of Representatives since 2019.
“Twitter, to his credit, refused to remove them,” notes the American journalist here, relying on an e-mail in which Yoel Roth considers the humorous intention of the publication claiming that he is obvious to everyone that this is a retouched photo.
Failing to remove certain content, Twitter has reduced their visibility…
Nevertheless, according to Matt Taibbi, the relentlessness of elected Democrats such as that of Adam Schiff could have had an impact on certain decisions of Twitter. Indeed, in October 2020, faced with reports from the Democratic camp on QAnon publications, the social network would have, failing to delete the accounts and tweets in question, discreetly reduced their reach on the platform.
“At the time, Twitter policy did not ban QAnon, but ‘de-amped’ such accounts. [Pour certains tweets]Twitter officials wrote: “We can internally confirm [mot écrit en caractère gras dans le texte] that a certain number of the reported accounts are already included in this deamplification”, indeed reports the American journalist, document in support.
This latest salvo of revelation is part of the “Twitter files” investigation which is based on internal documents to the social network, made public by Elon Musk after his arrival at the head of the company.
