Staff Reports
In a statement, Elon Musk said that Twitter had "blacklisted" political candidates and politicians from its previous ownership.
The statement came after the second part of the "shadow Twitter Files," which had revealed details about the company's alleged efforts to ban conservatives and other political figures.
In response to a question, Musk confirmed that political candidates were subject to shadowbanning on the platform. He did not provide further details.
So here’s a question for @elonmusk and @bariweiss: were any political candidates — either in the US or elsewhere — subject to shadowbanning while they were running for office or seeking re-election?
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 9, 2022
In a Saturday post on Twitter, Musk said that he was not aware of the documents' contents. He also noted that he had not read the documents.
The latest batch of documents was released by journalist Bari Weiss on Thursday. She posted a series of images from Twitter's internal interface, which showed how the platform restricted the tags associated with certain conservative accounts. She also revealed that executives, such as Parag Agrawal and Yoel Roth, made content moderation decisions regarding major accounts.
Ella Irwin, Twitter's new head of safety and trust, took the images used by Weiss.
Matt Taibbi, a journalist, released the first part of the Twitter Files last week. It showed details about the company's decision to suppress news about Hunter Biden's private laptop.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Washington Examiner.
