LOS ANGELES — Twitter owner Elon Musk this morning announced an official shadow-banning policy, aimed at limiting the visibility and profitability of what he termed “negative/hate tweets.”
This is a rare admission of platform-wide shadow-banning by any principal of a major social media service, though adult industry and sex worker accounts have repeatedly denounced discriminatory shadow-banning by Twitter, Instagram and other platforms.
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” Musk tweeted this morning. “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”
Musk did not specifically define “negative/hate tweets” or clarify what process would be used to determine and/or appeal such a designation.