Twitter Engineers To “Ban a Way of Talking” Through “Shadow Banning,” Algorithms to Censor Opposing Political Opinions
UNDERCOVER VIDEO: Twitter Engineers To “Ban a Way of
Talking” Through “Shadow Banning,” Algorithms to Censor Opposing Political
Opinions
by Staff Report
January 11, 2018
Steven Pierre, Twitter engineer explains “shadow
banning,” says “it’s going to ban a way of talking”
Former Twitter software engineer Abhinav Vadrevu on
shadow banning: “they just think that no one is engaging with their content,
when in reality, no one is seeing it”
Former Twitter Content Review Agent Mo Norai explains
banning process: “if it was a pro-Trump thing and I’m anti-Trump… I banned his
whole account… it’s at your discretion”
When asked if banning process was an unwritten rule,
Norai adds “Very. A lot of unwritten rules… It was never written it was more
said”
Olinda Hassan, Policy Manager for Twitter Trust and
Safety explains, “we’re trying to ‘down rank’… shitty people to not show up,”
“we’re working on [that] right now”
“Shadow banning” to be used to stealthily target
political views- former Twitter engineer says, “that’s a thing”
Censorship of certain political viewpoints to be
automated via “machine learning” according to Twitter software engineer.
Parnay Singh, Twitter Direct Messaging Engineer, on
machine learning algorithms, “you have like five thousand keywords to describe
a redneck…” “the majority of it are for Republicans”
(San Francisco) In the latest undercover Project Veritas
video investigation, current and former Twitter employees are on camera
explaining steps the social media giant is taking to censor political content
that they don’t like.
This video release follows the first undercover Twitter
exposé Project Veritas released on January 10th which showed Twitter Senior
Network Security Engineer Clay Haynes saying that Twitter is “more than happy
to help the Department of Justice with their little [President Donald Trump]
investigation.” Twitter responded to the video with a statement shortly after
that release, stating “the individual depicted in this video was speaking in a
personal capacity and does not represent of speak for Twitter.” The video
released by Project Veritas today features eight employees, and a Project
Veritas spokesman said there are more videos featuring additional employees
coming.
On January 3rd 2018 at a San Francisco restaurant,
Abhinov Vadrevu, a former Twitter Software Engineer explains a strategy, called
“shadow banning,” that to his knowledge, Twitter has employed:
“One strategy is to shadow ban so you have ultimate
control. The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone but they don’t know
they’ve been banned, because they keep posting and no one sees their content.
So they just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality,
no one is seeing it.”
Twitter is in the process of automating censorship and
banning, says Twitter Software Engineer Steven Pierre on December 8th of 2017:
“Every single conversation is going to be rated by a
machine and the machine is going to say whether or not it’s a positive thing or
a negative thing. And whether it’s positive or negative doesn’t (inaudible),
it’s more like if somebody’s being aggressive or not. Right? Somebody’s just
cursing at somebody, whatever, whatever. They may have point, but it will just
vanish… It’s not going to ban the mindset, it’s going to ban, like, a way of
talking.”
Olinda Hassan, a Policy Manager for Twitter’s Trust and
Safety team explains on December 15th, 2017 at a Twitter holiday party that the
development of a system of “down ranking” “shitty people” is in the works:
“Yeah. That’s something we’re working on. It’s something
we’re working on. We’re trying to get the shitty people to not show up. It’s a
product thing we’re working on right now.”
Former Twitter Engineer Conrado Miranda confirms on
December 1st, 2017 that tools are already in place to censor pro-Trump or
conservative content on the platform. When asked whether or not these
capabilities exist, Miranda says, “that’s a thing.”
In a conversation with former Twitter Content Review
Agent Mo Norai on May 16th, 2017, we learned that in the past Twitter would
manually ban or censor Pro-Trump or conservative content. When asked about the
process of banning accounts, Norai said, “On stuff like that it was more
discretion on your view point, I guess how you felt about a particular matter…”
When asked to clarify if that process was automated Norai
confirmed that it was not:
“Yeah, if they said this is: ‘Pro-Trump’ I don’t want it
because it offends me, this, that. And I say I banned this whole thing, and it
goes over here and they are like, ‘Oh you know what? I don’t like it too. You
know what? Mo’s right, let’s go, let’s carry on, what’s next?'”
Norai also revealed that more left-leaning content would
go through their selection process with less political scrutiny, “It would come
through checked and then I would be like ‘Oh you know what? This is okay. Let
it go.’”
Norai explains that this selection process wasn’t exactly
Twitter policy, but rather they were following unwritten rules from the top:
“A lot of unwritten rules, and being that we’re in San
Francisco, we’re in California, very liberal, a very blue state. You had to be…
I mean as a company you can’t really say it because it would make you look bad,
but behind closed doors are lots of rules.”
“There was, I would say… Twitter was probably about 90%
Anti-Trump, maybe 99% Anti-Trump.”
At a San Francisco bar on January 5th, Pranay Singh
details how the shadow-banning algorithms targeting right-leaning are
engineered:
“Yeah you look for Trump, or America, and you have like
five thousand keywords to describe a redneck. Then you look and parse all the
messages, all the pictures, and then you look for stuff that matches that
stuff.”
When asked if the majority of the algorithms are targeted
against conservative or liberal users of Twitter, Singh said, “I would say
majority of it are for Republicans.”
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe believes the power
over speech Silicon Valley tech giants has is unprecedented and dangerous:
“What kind of world do we live in where computer
engineers are the gatekeepers of the ‘way people talk?’ This investigation
brings forth information of profound public importance that educates people
about how free they really are to express their views online.”
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