Elon Musk Says X (Twitter) Is Making Progress on Letting Users See Their Shadowban Status
Written By Sundance of The Conservative Treehouse
Shadowbanning is the term given to social media backroom activity that uses computer algorithms to shrink user account engagement, without informing the user. The process involves putting friction upon the account to block amplification and control engagement. The user doesn’t see the process, they just notice a severe drop in the engagement by other users on the platform.
Last year, Elon Musk promised to start letting the account holders see what level of friction they were assigned to by letting the users see their shadowban status. However, that promise was never fulfilled. Musk was questioned about why the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, has not followed through on the transparency pledge. Continuing the process of pretending not to know things, Musk says transparency is hard.
The long-hated process of shadowbanning on X, formerly Twitter, soon will change, according to owner Elon Musk. At the Viva Tech conference this week, the billionaire said he plans to address the issue soon. He said the company is working on a plan that will let people see if the Twitter system affected their account.
“Sorry it’s taking so long,” Mr. Musk posted. “There are so many layers of ‘trust & safety’ software that it often takes us hours to figure out who, how and why an account was suspended or shadowbanned. A ground up rewrite is underway that simplifies the X codebase dramatically.”
Shadowbanning is a practice where users have their accounts partially silenced without their knowledge. If users are shadowbanned, they can still post, but they will notice engagement drops significantly. Since there is no way to officially know that a user is shadowbanned, the issue has been politicized. Conservative accounts consistently claimed they were shadowbanned for speaking out against vaccines or the 2020 election.
Linda Yaccarino
This statement from Musk follows on the heels of CEO Linda Yaccarino saying;
“If you are going to post something that is illegal or against the law, you’re gone. Zero tolerance. But more importantly, if you are going to post something that is lawful, but it’s awful, you get labeled. You get labeled, you get deamplified, which means it cannot be shared, and it is certainly demonetized… So, they [advertisers] are protected from the risk of being next to that content.” Read More
It doesn’t take a deep thinker to understand why X-Corp (Twitter) would not want users to know the reason for their shadowbanning or de-amplification. Once people become aware of the content they generate that assigns them a label, the control units within X-corp then need to justify their labeling. Transparency runs counter to the intentions of those who control information; that’s why Musk has never followed through.
In the bigger picture, there are legal ramifications when this shadowbanning, labeling and definition system is rolled out for the entire North American internet. This is the conversation taking place now in the closed-door meetings of DHS and the various organizations conscripted to develop the process.
Elon Musk Is No John Galt
Elon Musk has one prism that is at the forefront of his decision-making; Money. By my calculations, less than eight weeks remain before Musk and Yaccarino need to go into the capital markets to look for additional funding. Watch the next two months.