James O'Keefe's Project Veritas released a bombshell report on Thursday that shows Twitter employees admitting to censoring right-leaning accounts, including banning them from the network because they do not agree with their political views.
The report, based on undercover videos, shows Twitter employees admitting that they "shadow ban" right-leaning accounts, which essentially bans them from the platform without letting them know that they have been banned while allowing left-leaning accounts to slip through without the same scrutiny.
Another Twitter employee, Pranay Singh, admitted that the majority of their algorithms are geared in such a manner that they target people with certain political views.
“I would say majority of it are for Republicans,” Singh said.
Key takeaways from James O'Keefe's
report:
- 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 [that] on 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”
