A few years ago a contested news report alleged that Twitter took steps to decrease the reach of conservative users on its website, President Donald Trump seized upon the claim and contended that such a move constitutes illegal discrimination, even as the company and digital experts defended the platform and pointed to faults and misunderstandings in the story.
The controversy originated with a Vice News article that claimed Twitter was “shadow banning” notable Republican accounts by limiting their appearance in its automatically populating search suggestions.
Among those purportedly affected by the practice included Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, Freedom Caucus Reps. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and a spokesperson for Donald Trump Jr., according to the Vice piece.
But despite their denial, early in the morning hackers posted alleged screenshots of Twitter’s internal systems indicate that the company keeps “blacklists” for users it deems undesirable, according to multiple reports. The leaks followed the largest hack in the platform’s history.
The image, said to be screencaps of an internal control panel on the site’s back end, appear to show that Twitter marks user accounts with tags such as “Trends Blacklist,” Search Blacklist” and “Compromised.” At the time of writing that account has been suspended.
Image below:
Citing privacy violations, Twitter has reportedly scrambled to cleanse the site of posts featuring the screenshots.
Responding to the leaked images, the company claimed that it has always been upfront about the fact that tweets and accounts are monitored for “quality” and can be prevented from trending if found to be creating a “bad search experience.” However, critics noted that the screenshots suggest that this process can be done manually, opening the door to potential abuse.
After the hackers posted screenshots of Twitter’s internal dashboard showing they shadow ban accounts from the Search and Trending section, Jack Dorsey retweeted this executive who admitted they *do* exactly what we’ve suspected them of doing. https://t.co/zhG6nCsS4Y
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) July 16, 2020
Notice @Jack Dorsey hasn’t mentioned whether the hacker(s) had access to the DMs of the accounts they took control of.
Gonna have to haul him into Congress and question him under oath, because he won’t answer questions otherwise.
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) July 16, 2020
Twitter is now banning users for posting the screenshot:
Twitters admin panel has a button to “blacklist trends.”
So yeah twitter lied, they manually edit trends. The ones advocating violence are kept up. By their choice.
They aren’t a platform. They are a publisher.
Abolish Section 230.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) July 16, 2020
As Vice reported a Twitter insider was responsible for a wave of high profile account takeovers on Wednesday, according to leaked screenshots obtained by Motherboard and two sources who took over accounts.
On Wednesday, a spike of high profile accounts including those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Uber, and Apple tweeted cryptocurrency scams in an apparent hack.
