Twitter ‘Shadowbans’ Bellingcat After Musk Attacks Them, Then Tries To Retcon A Nonsense Explanation

Content Moderation

from the another-day-down-at-the-shadowban-factory dept

Remember, according to Elon Musk, one of the worst things that old Twitter did was “shadowban” people. There was a whole “Twitter Files” about the practice, which Musk insisted was a horrible practice that was censorship. Except… at the same time he had no problem using it to silence accounts he personally disliked. Hilariously, he announced this as part of his “new Twitter policy” back in November, even though it had been existing Twitter policy since 2018.

This is a weird thing to claim is a “new Twitter policy” when it was publicly announced and covered by the media in 2018.

The main difference, however, seemed to be that when the old Twitter did it, it was actually focused on accounts that were “detracting” from the user experience on Twitter, not ones that annoyed the thin-skinned guy who ran the site.

One of Elon’s early moves at Twitter was to order that the ElonJet account, which he’d promised to leave alone, was “max deboosted” (it was later banned, following the banning of journalists who merely mentioned the fact that the account was banned). Here’s a leaked screenshot of Musk’s handpicked trust & safety boss telling the team to “apply heavy VF” (visibility filtering) to the ElonJet account:

He’s also used the tool to apply such “max deboosting” to other accounts he personally disliked including when he got into an argument with formerly favored “Twitter Files” journalist Matt Taibbi, only to have Taibbi’s tweets disappear from search.

So, it’s not particularly surprising that Musk’s Twitter applied “max deboosting” to Bellingcat, the investigative journalism operation that is famous for using open source intelligence to track down all sorts of nefarious activity.

Just days earlier, Musk had smeared Bellingcat for its investigation into Mauricio Garcia, the gunman who killed eight bystanders (and himself) at a mall in Allen, Texas. The investigation highlighted that Garcia appeared to have Nazi-associated tattoos and was active on a Russian social network. The investigation actually goes into great detail (in the usual Bellingcat fashion) explaining how they figured out this was Garcia’s account. But Musk (again, in typical fashion) had already bought into the far right nonsense peddlers insisting that there was no way that Garcia could be a far right extremist, and so he decided to smear Bellingcat, and claim (falsely) that it “specializes in psychological operations.”

This is a claim that has been spread for a few years by Russian officials, who get really, really angry every time Bellingcat exposes some nonsense by Russia.

Then, just days later, Bellingcat basically disappeared from Twitter search.

Twitter appears to have limited the reach of Bellingcat, an investigative news website, as its main account no longer appears in the app’s search tool.

It’s unclear when exactly the change was made but Eliot Higgins, the Bellingcat founder, first tweeted about it  Thursday. Bellingcat’s main handle did not appear in several searches made by Insider on Twitter Friday.

On Monday, after more tweeting by Higgins, saying that he had discovered that Bellingcat had been “marked as sensitive media,” Irwin finally responded, claiming that it was because they had posted a video of the Allen shooting.

To be clear, her wording is imprecise here. She notes that such a video “was posted recently,” but never says that such a video was posted by Bellingcat. Bellingcat says they never posted such a video, and Higgins asked Irwin to point out where they had posted such a video, and as of now, Irwin has not responded.

You could argue that if Bellingcat had actually posted such a video (which does not appear to be true), then it might make sense for Twitter to visibility filter that tweet. But, seeing as it has not done so, and merely reported on the shooter (combined with Elon Musk spewing utter nonsense about the Bellingcat account), it seems that a more plausible explanation is that Irwin is full of shit, and Musk is once again using his power as the owner of Twitter to do the very same things he (falsely) accused the old regime of doing.`

Filed Under: allen, eliot higgins, ella irwin, elon musk, mauricio garcia, shadow banning, shadowban, texas, visibility filters
Companies: bellingcat, twitter