Elon Musk made a post on Twitter in the early hours of this morning to announce that a unexpected new feature that is currently being developed that will let you know whether you’re “shadowbanned.”
Shadow banning is when an account of a user is blocked or removed and they don’t know the ban is in effect. Their tweets and comments appear normal, however nobody else will be able to view their posts, or at the very least a small portion of the community won’t be able to. The result is that the content of a person becomes inaccessible on purpose.
It’s an unexpected announcement from Musk since shadow bans are something that Twitter has repeatedly stated that it doesn’t do. platform does not do(Opens with a brand new tab). The evidence that it is true first was reported in the year the year 2018 in the form of an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about Republicans being banned from shadowbanning, however it was due to an Twitter algorithm modification that prevented the hundreds of thousands of users from getting auto-suggested. Many of them were later found as conservative Republican political figures.
Musk tweeted about the new feature. Musk declares that it will come in on the form of a genuine account status. Users will be able to determine the shadowbans they have received or not, the reason and what they can do to appeal the decision to ban it.
If you’re wondering the reason why this feature is now being revealed the reason is most likely due to the information “The Tweet Files” have revealed. These Files contain internal Twitter documents that Musk shared recently together with journalist Matt Taibbi and The Free Press editor Bari Weiss. In an earlier Twitter thread(Opens within an entirely fresh tab) by Weiss, it’s revealed(Opens in an entirely New window opens) that “Twitter employees create blacklists, block undesirable tweets from trending, as well as actively restrict the accessibility of whole accounts, or even topics that are trending — all hidden, and without notifying users.”
Weiss continues to state that Twitter refers to shadow banning as ” Visibility Filtering(Opens in an entirely brand new tab)” and said one Twitter employee said, “Think about visibility filtering as a means to limit the things people are seeing to various levels. It’s a useful tool.”
