Headline RoundupDecember 9th, 2022

Second 'Twitter Files' Drop Shows Filtering of Conservative Accounts

Summary from the AllSides News Team

The latest "Twitter Files" installment shows how Twitter moved to limit the reach of certain accounts belonging to conservatives, COVID-19 lockdown skeptics, and others.

Key Quotes: The release reveals that Twitter employees "build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users," Weiss tweeted Thursday.

The Details: Weiss published screenshots showing how Twitter assigned labels like "Search Blacklist" and "Do Not Amplify" to accounts of conservative commentators Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, and Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya, a leading promoter of the COVID-19 herd immunity theory. Weiss described how "multiple high-level sources" at Twitter confirmed the use of "visibility filtering" to "suppress what people see to different levels." The tweets also showed how the @LibsOfTikTok account was suspended several times for "hateful conduct," despite an internal memo saying the account "has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy."

Background: The "Twitter Files" are new boss Elon Musk's transparency initiative regarding Twitter's controversial content moderation decisions, like the move to censor the New York Post's (Lean Right bias) Hunter Biden laptop story.

How the Media Covered It: Right-rated outlets covered the release prominently, and many framed it as evidence that Twitter moved to secretly censor conservative accounts. Left- and center-rated sources covered the news much less. A Bloomberg article focused less on the details while highlighting concerns about Musk "giving outside writers unprecedented access to internal Twitter Inc. information."

Featured Coverage of this Story

More headline roundups

More News about Free Speech from the Left, Center and Right

From the Left

From the Center

From the Right