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Twitter files part 2: Indian-origin doctor who opposed Covid school lockdowns in 'secret blacklist'

Dr Jay Bhattacharya argued against Covid school lockdowns in the US

Musk Twitter

Twitter's top executives allegedly kept a 'secret blacklist' to suppress accounts and topics and 'prevent disfavored tweets' from trending, data obtained by independent journalist Bari Weiss has revealed.

The investigation carried out by Weiss based on the internal company documents, disclosed that Twitter's previous management curbed the reach of particular accounts with what it called a 'Trends Blacklist' and 'Search Blacklist' as well as a 'Do Not Amplify' tag. All these were done in secret without informing the user. 

In part 2 of the internal 'Twitter Files,' Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, described how Twitter used 'shadow banning' to limit the visibility of tweets from far-right users. 

She added that the accounts which were blacklisted include that of Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a 'Trends Blacklist' which prevented his tweets from trending. 

Bhattacharya, an Indian-origin Professor of Medicine at Stanford University whose work focuses on the economics of health care, was one of the researchers who opposed US Covid restrictions. He argued that school closures and lockdowns would be damaging and harmful to children. 

After Weiss's revelation, Bhattacharya took to Twitter to say that he was "still trying to process my emotions."

"The thought that will keep me up tonight: censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures and a generation of children were hurt," he tweeted, adding that he was "curious about what role the government played in Twitter's suppression of covid policy discussion."

Other accounts that were blacklisted include popular right-wing talk show host Dan Bongino (@dbongino) who was slapped with a 'Search Blacklist.' The account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) was tagged 'Do Not Amplify.'

Weiss claimed that this happened despite Twitter's then head of legal policy and trust Vijaya Gadde and head of product Kayvon Beykpour stating that "we do not shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology."

The Twitter executives called this "visibility filtering" and the group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was called the 'Strategic Response Team - Global Escalation Team.' The team often handled up to 200 "cases" a day, Weiss added.

"We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit," Weiss quoted an unnamed Twitter engineer as saying. "And normal people do not know how much we do."

This comes as Twitter's new owner Elon Musk shared internal company documents with Weiss and fellow independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who released Twitter files part one last week. 

Musk soon retweeted Weiss's revelation, adding that Twitter is working on a software update that "will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal."

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