(FreedomBeacon.com)- Last week, journalist Bari Weiss released the second installment of the Twitter Files that outlined how Twitter used filtering tools to effectively “shadow-ban” conservatives. And in one of the tweets, Weiss noted that many Twitter execs denied shadow-banning happened on the platform.
However, these Twitter execs were technically telling the truth. They didn’t “shadow-ban.” Instead, they engaged in “visibility filtering.”
By changing the term while redefining “shadow-ban,” Twitter was able to technically claim that what they were doing wasn’t shadow-banning.
For instance, in 2018, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified to Congress under oath that Twitter never shadow-banned conservative users.
Dorsey appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in September 2018 to discuss “Transparency and Accountability” on Twitter.
When Democrat Congressman Mike Doyle asked Dorsey if it was true that Twitter was censoring conservatives, the former Twitter CEO said no.
Doyle then asked Dorsey if Twitter was shadow-banning “prominent Republicans,” and again, Dorsey said no. But because Twitter redefined what a shadow ban was, he technically wasn’t lying.
Dorsey later told Republican Congressman Steve Scalise that if any Republican lawmakers were being shadow-banned by Twitter’s algorithm, it was “not written with that intention.”
Former Twitter exec Vijaya Gadde also denied claims that Twitter was shadow-banning conservatives while testifying before Congress. But since shadow-banning was redefined to mean only the user can see his tweets, Gadde was technically telling the truth.
Over the weekend, Weiss, along with journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, began releasing the Twitter Files related to the platform’s decision to ban then-President Trump.
Taibbi kicked off the release by outlining what happened leading up to the January 6 riot.
Shellenberger then covered the “chaos” at Twitter on January 7, 2021.
Then Bari Weiss released the internal communications on January 8, 2021, the day Twitter officially banned Trump.
In a nutshell, Twitter decided to permanently ban the sitting President of the United States even though nothing he tweeted had violated their terms of service.
