Elon Musk’s revamping of Twitter continues with full force. As the man himself announced via a tweet, the platform is currently working on an update that will show “your true account status,” so you will know if your account has been shadowbanned. In addition to that, you will receive information explaining why your account has been restricted and how you can appeal the ban.
Now, Musk didn’t explain what it means to be “shadowbanned” on the platform. However, journalist Bari Weiss, who has been given access to corporate files, explains that Twitter employees prevent tweets made by disfavored accounts from becoming trending and restrict the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics. All this happens secretly, without informing the affected users.
Disfavored accounts get added to various blacklists, such as the “Trends Blacklist,” which prevents tweets from becoming trending, and the “Search Blacklist,” which Weiss doesn’t explain what it does but most likely restricts tweets from appearing in searches. Weiss also notes that Twitter doesn’t call these techniques “shadow banning.” Instead, employees call these methods “Visibility Filtering,” or “VF.”
To better understand what VF does, a senior Twitter employee told Weiss that this is a way for Twitter employees to “suppress what people see to different levels.”
Interestingly, Instagram recently launched a similar feature to what Twitter is working on. The platform now informs users with professional accounts if their posts have been restricted from appearing as recommendations to others. If there are indeed posts that violate Instagram’s recommendation rules, creators and businesses can edit or delete them to become eligible again, or they can appeal the decision.