“We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.
The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team - Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 "cases" a day.
But there existed a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper. That is the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” known as “SIP-PES.”
This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.
This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. “Think high follower account, controversial,” another Twitter employee told us. For these “there would be no ticket or anything.”
One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was @libsoftiktok—an account that was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.”
The account—which Chaya Raichik began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers—was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik says. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week.
Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.”
But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy." See here: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601020845224128512
Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes.
When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: "We reviewed the reported content, and didn't find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules." No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up.
He [Yoel Roth] added: “We got Jack on board with implementing this [shadowbanning] for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations – especially for other policy domains.”
If I was to be charitable, it's because it could be easily buried releasing it all at once
People are stupid and lazy, if you give them a lot information all at once and tell them to search through it, large majority will go 'no' and wait for someone else to do it for them
By drip feeding it this way, keeps people engaged, coming back to the platform constantly to see each drop and leaves time for them to be 'outraged', stir some drama then release the next part when it's dying down.
We control the horizontal and the vertical.
We will control all that you see, and hear.
On Libs of TikTok: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601016446930124800
The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team - Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 "cases" a day.
But there existed a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper. That is the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” known as “SIP-PES.”
This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.
This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. “Think high follower account, controversial,” another Twitter employee told us. For these “there would be no ticket or anything.”
One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was @libsoftiktok—an account that was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.”
The account—which Chaya Raichik began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers—was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik says. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week.
Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.”
But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy." See here: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601020845224128512
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601021562085208070
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601022887556571136
In case anyone starts to see Jack as a good guy: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601024233739407360
They want to throw it to the cycle. This slow release is creating larger visibility
They also want to drown signal in noise. The only way to get it all would be to spend every waking moment on /pol/ for days.
If I was to be charitable, it's because it could be easily buried releasing it all at once
People are stupid and lazy, if you give them a lot information all at once and tell them to search through it, large majority will go 'no' and wait for someone else to do it for them
By drip feeding it this way, keeps people engaged, coming back to the platform constantly to see each drop and leaves time for them to be 'outraged', stir some drama then release the next part when it's dying down.
Archived thread rollout: https://archive.vn/NmKAd
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1601007575633305600.html
https://twiiit.com/