A second set of ‘Twitter Files’ released by Elon Musk to former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss reveals that Twitter “blacklisted” figures including Jay Bhattacharya – a Stanford University professor who opposed COVID-19 lockdowns, Charlie Kirk, Dan Bonjino, and Libs of TikTok.
The Twitter Files revealed that employees at Twitter could secretly build blacklists, prevent tweets from trending, and limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics without informing the users.
The files tell of a secret group, which included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde, Global Head of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth, CEOs Jack Dorsey followed by Parag Agrawal, and others. This group directly made all the decisions for high follower count controversial accounts.
One of the accounts that “rose to this level of scrutiny” was Libs of Tiktok, which was put on the “Trends Blacklist” and designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.”
16. One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was @libsoftiktok—an account that was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.” pic.twitter.com/Vjo6YxYbxT
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Weiss writes that the Libs of Tiktok account, which was started by Chaya Raichik and now has 1.4 million followers, was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week, and Raichik was informed that she was blocked for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.”
But, Weiss says that in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, the committee acknowledged that Libs of Tiktok had not “directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.”
19. But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy." See here: pic.twitter.com/d9FGhrnQFE
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
The committee justified the suspensions by claiming the account’s posts encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.”
However, when Raichik, the creator of LTT, herself was doxxed and a picture of her home with the address was posted in a tweet, Twitter responded with the message, “We reviewed the reported content, and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.” The tweet is still up.
In an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday, Raichik said she had felt as if her tweets were receiving less engagement than usual despite having a large number of followers.
When asked why she feels she was targeted for simply reporting the truth, Raichik said that she thinks it’s clear that their views don’t stand up to scrutiny, and that’s what they’re scared of. “The craziest part of this whole thing is that they admitted I’m not even violating policy, and they still suspended me seven times,” Raichik said.
