One Twitter user noted the trend happening with progressive voices and how shadowbanning went from “There is no shadowbanning” to “Shadowbanning is a good thing.”
Journalist Bari Weiss tweeted out the second installment of the "Twitter Files," on Thursday, and reported that the social media giant engaged in extensive shadowbanning of conservative voices for years, and by Friday, establishment media and progressive voices have sprouted up to say shadowbanning was not happening, but it could have been depending on the definition, and in that case shadowbanning is necessary.
Huffington Post contributor Ashley Feinberg wrote, "this has literally been on twitter's help page since at least 2018" and posted an image of Twitter's Terms of Service, which read, "Abusive or spammy behavior. When abuse or manipulation of our service is reported or detected, we may take action to limit the reach of a person's Tweets."
Son of Richard Dreyfuss, actor and Mother Jones contributor Ben Dreyfuss retweeted, "Like, I guess it depends on how you define 'shadow-ban.' If your definition covers 'the algorithm thinks you post garbage no one wants to read because of reader signals that have nothing to do with any malevolent political agenda' then sure you might have been shadow-banned."
https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1586082228735352832?s=20&t=3lpByTTKufRO27TOxTo8Ww
Dreyfuss' stance is that "spammy or abusive behavior" covers political beliefs antithetical to those of progressives.
Conservative John Hasson called out NBC's Ben Collins for thinking "shadowbanning is good" as it produces political results Ben Collins agrees with.
https://twitter.com/SonofHas/status/1601042485341347841?s=20&t=HF93qPEoAaIR5PmHzZe6pw
One Twitter user noted the trend happening with progressive voices and how shadowbanning went from "There is no shadowbanning" to "Shadowbanning is a good thing."
https://twitter.com/Marshal_Dov/status/1601082069848715264?s=20&t=GkPHpngq4uH3Tj9fhXTk0Q
Liberal columnist Matthew Yglesias echoed Feinberg and wrote he found the "secret document" and posted another ToS excerpt that said the outlet may "limit distribution or visibility of any Content on the service."
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1601065007235710977?s=20&t=rf_zZ9P2F9dhjgmIdLbqwg
In neither Feinberg nor Yglesias' excerpts do the Terms of Service say Twitter would take action without letting the user know. Further, the phrase "abusive or spammy" behavior is undefined and former Twitter lead counsel Vijaya Gadde said in 2018 that "Twitter exists to serve the public conversation, enabling important discussions around the world to occur. Favoring one specific ideology or belief goes against everything we stand for."
https://twitter.com/thevivafrei/status/1601054920983334912?s=20&t=UJb-CX_ZxY1B81UqEiHkFQ
According to Weiss' reporting, Gadde and other Twitter executives, including founder Jack Dorsey, lied about shadowbanning and redefined the act as "Visibility Filtering" or limited their definition to a narrow scope.
Shadowbanning's most common definition according to dictionary.com is "preventing a user’s content from being seen by others—either partially or totally—without the user being notified or aware of it." The common usage means that the site would manipulate the full reach of a tweet without the users' knowledge and limit the visibility of both the tweets and the account.
In 2018, Twitter defined the word as "deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster."
Ben Dreyfuss also defended the very narrow and uncommon definition of shadowbanning to defend Twitter.
https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1601019554980761600?s=20&t=3lpByTTKufRO27TOxTo8Ww
Weiss' reporting has shown that Twitter shadowbanned under the moniker of "Visibility Filtering," and tagged users in various ways to execute these bans. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was tagged with a "Do Not Amplify" tag, talk show host Dan Bongino was tagged with "Search Blacklist," Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was tagged with "trend blacklist."
Jon Levine commented on this suppression along political lines and wrote, "Now the new line is shadow banning was always happening it was just 'reducing spam' and I guess just a coincidence that it just happened to net all these high profile conservative accounts.
Libby’s Desk
Commentary and must-reads from Libby’s desk, straight to your inbox.
TPM Newsletter
The Post Millennial’s top stories, delivered to your inbox.
Megan McArdle said "Marveling at the seamless transition from 'Shadowbanning is ultra-MAGA paranoia' to 'LOL of course they were de-amplifying the hard right, who thought this was news?'
Noam Blum made it clear that the issue of suppression is the key factor in defining shadowbanning.
