Changing the Words Shadow Banning to the Less Stigmatic Visibility Filtering
12/15/2022 1:22 AM UTC by Jack
The term shadow banning is, "a practice used in online moderation that consists of preventing a user’s content from being seen by others—either partially or totally—without the user being notified or aware of it. This is typically done as a consequence of violating a platform’s rules."1
In 2018, Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter, appeared before Congress and testified about the "Transparency and Accountability" of Twitter. He testified that Twitter was not rigged to censor conservatives, was not censoring people, and was not shadow banning prominent Republicans.2
After Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 he released the Twitter Files which revealed the activities of Twitter before his purchase. In the second Twitter Files it was revealed that Twitter used visibility filtering, i.e. shadow banning. "Visibility filtering is Twitter’s control over user visibility, Weiss tweeted, and it used the switch to block searches of individual users, limited the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; blocked posts from certain users from ever appearing on the 'trending' page; and blocked them from hashtag searches, without the user ever knowing."3
In 2018, Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter, appeared before Congress and testified about the "Transparency and Accountability" of Twitter. He testified that Twitter was not rigged to censor conservatives, was not censoring people, and was not shadow banning prominent Republicans.2
After Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 he released the Twitter Files which revealed the activities of Twitter before his purchase. In the second Twitter Files it was revealed that Twitter used visibility filtering, i.e. shadow banning. "Visibility filtering is Twitter’s control over user visibility, Weiss tweeted, and it used the switch to block searches of individual users, limited the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; blocked posts from certain users from ever appearing on the 'trending' page; and blocked them from hashtag searches, without the user ever knowing."3