Twitter Trust and Safety VP Ella Irwin says she took the screenshots of internal systems that Bari Weiss shared and that “reporters were not accessing user DMs”
do Weiss and Taibbi have access to users' DMs? It would be good to get clear explanation about this screen and yes/no answer to this straightforward question. https://twitter.com/... Bari Weiss / @bariweiss : 16. 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.” https://twitter.com/... Davey Alba / @daveyalba : Summing the reactions of ex-Twitter workers to “The Twitter Files Pt 2” Ex-employees seemingly saying three main things: 1) This has long been public; 2) The platform features called out are innocuous; 3) The new T&S head handed everything over, making this little more than PR https://twitter.com/... @unusual_whales : BREAKING: Twitter Files released by Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi & Bari Weiss, have suggested that a secret group headed by Vijaya Gadde, the Head of Legal, Yoel Roth, the Head of Trust, CEOs Jack Dorsey & Parag, & others, made decisions secretly & without overview to moderate Twitter. @spdustin : @44 @emptywheel eirwin4903ZWlyd21u863, repeated over and over on all the screenshots from that internal tool. https://twitter.com/... Jeremy Littau / @jeremylittau : Can think of several moments when as a young reporter I thought I had a bombshell story and then it became a merely average story or not news at all after an editor poked at it with skeptical questions. Beware media folks who think they're too big-brained for editorial standards. https://twitter.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : Feels like Weiss' thread should be enough for the FTC to open an investigation into a violation of the consent decree and perhaps get a subpoena for Twitter's internal access logs. Matt Binder / @mattbinder : everything that Bari Weiss is currently “breaking” as part of Twitter Files 2 has been reported on and known about for two and a half years https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/... @scottjshapiro : BREAKING: Explosive evidence from the #GoogleFiles showing that Google runs a program called “AdSense” through which website publishers pay *money* to serve *advertisements* *targeting* the site *audience*. Elon Musk / @elonmusk : @unusual_whales Controversial decisions were often made without getting Jack's approval and he was unaware of systemic bias. The inmates were running the asylum. Jack has a pure heart imo. Alejandra Caraballo / @esqueer_ : Did Elon just give Bari Weiss and Abigail Shrier access to everyone's DM's? This would be a clear violation of the Stored Communications Act by sharing with them. Not to mention, potentially handing the most transphobic “journalists” access to trans people is dangerous. https://twitter.com/... Jeff Bercovici / @jeffbercovici : How did Bari Weiss become a member of Elon Musk's inner circle? We'll never know. https://twitter.com/... Don Moynihan / @donmoyn : The people Twitter appointed to offer an outside perspective on trust and safety are basically saying that Musk's reassurances on safety can't be trusted. No doubt Musk will just label them as “woke” and move on, but this seems like a big deal. https://twitter.com/... Fergal Gallagher / @gallagherfergal : Good piece on how the Twitter Files are just part of Elon's general temper tantrum. Gem of a line summing up the whole problem with social media platforms 1/2 https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... @pwnallthethings : “without overview” is a funny way to describe a group comprising the CEO and the main heads of departments. https://twitter.com/... Nick Martin / @nickmartin : The right has pushed the narrative that tech companies were biased against conservatives, but that's always been a lie. Researchers have repeatedly found big social media platforms like Twitter favor conservatives. Twitter's own research even said so. https://www.theverge.com/... Orin Kerr / @orinkerr : <Looks at his mentions, sees people wondering if Bari Weiss violated the Stored Communications Act by looking through private DM's with Twitter's permission but not that of sender/receivers.> Nope, no violation, see the 18 U.S.C. 2701(c)(1) exception. https://www.law.cornell.edu/ ... https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : There are some mildly interesting details in here but presenting it as some new and shocking and secret finding is either ignorant or disingenuous. There have been whole news cycles about Twitter shadowbans. I know because I've written about them multiple times over the years. https://twitter.com/... @emptywheel : So Twitter replaced a department full of communications professionals whom journalists could call with two pundits with a grievance and flimsy grasp of basic logic? Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : If you zoom in on the images shared by Bari Weiss yesterday, you'll see they carry a watermark that shows they were taken via the account of Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of trust and safety: https://www.bloomberg.com/... @the_nerd_skull : And now we have word that Musk has revealed PII (Personally identifiable information) to outside actors without permission. This is the absolute biggest no-no in the entire GDPR framework. Don Moynihan / @donmoyn : If there is litigation or any federal/EU investigation, not sure how well the “well yes, we had a General Counsel who advised against this, but we fired him” defense will play https://twitter.com/... @stevanzetti : Ey, what's an FTC reportable security incident between friends, forget about it https://twitter.com/... Jeremy Littau / @jeremylittau : Consider their constant claims of “bombshell” as a necessary side effect of going it alone. They have to overhype everything to keep their paid subs, spin banal data into conspiracy. Otherwise there is no rationale to pay for paid propaganda you can get for free anywhere. James Surowiecki / @jamessurowiecki : Bari Weiss didn't describe anything of the sort. And Taibbi explicitly said that Twitter took down material at the request of the Trump White House. https://twitter.com/... Charles Arthur / @charlesarthur : Bhattacharya is one of the people allegedly “suppressed” in the latest round of “we discover that social media companies have internal systems and groups” brainboiling. https://twitter.com/... @scottjshapiro : Breaking: Content moderators at Twitter moderated content on Twitter. Ted Scheinman / @ted_scheinman : “Taibbi's willingness to caper about while Musk clapped his hands, in itself, instantly recreated the very power structure that his reporting was supposedly meant to assail....” — @ToLey88: https://defector.com/... via @DefectorMedia https://twitter.com/... Tom Mckay / @thetomzone : uh well, here's the new head of Twitter trust and safety saying she's the one taking photos of the moderation backend for Bari Weiss https://twitter.com/... Dan Nguyen / @dancow : Seriously, this just underscores how flawed & limited Weiss's reporting has been so far. OK let's compare Maddow & E. Klein to C. Kirk and Bongino — can you screencap their internal profiles, @jason? Do either Maddow / Klein have a “Recent Abuse Strike”? Or “SPMA”? What is SPMA? https://twitter.com/... Davey Alba / @daveyalba : 3) The T&S head handed everything over, making this little more than PR. People pointed out last night that Bari's screenshots included new Twitter T&S head Ella Irwin's LDAP in the background, and she admitted to handing everything over in her own tweet https://twitter.com/... @thatianelliott : This is absurd! The new head of Twitter's Trust and Safety, just out here openly admitting she's not even smart enough to cover own own ass, admitting the “journalists” on the Twitter Files lied about their access, and admitting there was no methodology. Enjoy the courts, Ella. https://twitter.com/... Quinta Jurecic / @qjurecic : my takeaway so far is that the folks involved in this mini-episode may not fully understand a) the SCA and b) journalism https://twitter.com/... Paris Marx / @parismarx : Here's Elon Musk promising Libs of TikTok that he'll ensure the account's posts — which explicitly target queer and trans folks with violence — won't be suppressed on the platform. https://twitter.com/... Zoë Schiffer / @zoeschiffer : Twitter's new head of trust and safety says the company did not give reporters access to peoples' DMs. The screenshots came from her, she says: https://twitter.com/... @44 : The Twitter files continue to be a big dud, already long-public information presented as scandal. The real story here is third parties getting uncontrolled access to tooling which reveals private information of Twitter users. This is bad, and seems to be escalating. https://twitter.com/... Nicole Perlroth / @nicoleperlroth : I have never felt such second hand embarrassment as I do for the “Twitter Files” “journalists.” There's just no coming back from this. https://twitter.com/... @whiteroseafa : Elon gave Bari Weiss access to people's DMs and shit? https://twitter.com/... Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : Business translator: “Secret group” aka public company management, who are described in all regulatory filings in copious detail, whose job it is to deal with such sensitive issues and — stick with me here since it is apparently murky to some — run the company. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Orin Kerr / @orinkerr : The more important question: Is Twitter civilly liable for giving private communications to Weiss? If they disclosed private user DMs, yes, they probably are liable, under 2702 and 2707. https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : “secret group” and “without overview” are very funny ways to describe a group of decision-makers at a company that included the CEO, CTO, general counsel, and head of trust and safety. https://twitter.com/... Tom Mckay / @thetomzone : this couldn't possibly be new twitter head of trust and safety Ella Irwin (@ellagirwin) letting Bari Weiss rifle around in a backend tool that clearly says “Direct Messages” in the sidebar could it? 🤔 https://twitter.com/... Will Saletan / @saletan : Feels like there's 2 layers to these Musk crusades. 1. The analysis written by the Musk-approved journalist who was given the material. 2. The overstated version Musk wanted in the first place, so he just goes ahead and puts that out to the world, with the journalist as cover. https://twitter.com/... Luke Zaleski / @zaleskiluke : Elon Musk Brings in Cousins, Confidants, and Bari Weiss to Twitter https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... Noah Kulwin / @nkulw : Elon musk trying to drive engagement on Twitter by letting attention-hungry narcissists root around in corporate history so long as they publish stuff that doesn't hurt musk and they also publish it on Twitter in the form of tedious threads https://twitter.com/... Matt Binder / @mattbinder : a secret group made decisions secretly without overview and who was on that group, folks? the CEO of the company and the head of every relevant department lol do you hear what you're saying? these are the very people who would overview these decisions https://twitter.com/... Paris Marx / @parismarx : With the “Twitter Files,” Musk isn't so much revealing things about Twitter we didn't know, but using former journalists to rewrite Twitter's history — at least for the cult and the right-wing — in a way that serves him, his insider circle, and the right-wing media ecosystem. https://twitter.com/... Aaron Rupar / @atrupar : Musk is trying to turn Twitter into a Project Veritas message board @joshuaphilll : Oh my god. Stochastic terrorist wants a larger reach and Musk is looking into it https://twitter.com/... Tom Nichols / @radiofreetom : One thing Trump spread across the American right: The inability (or unwillingness, or indifference) to remembering anything from five minutes ago https://twitter.com/... Paris Marx / @parismarx : Probably a good time to remind everyone that regardless of what Elon Musk, his reactionary advisors, and fake journalists want you to believe, Twitter admitted its algorithms were biased in favor of right-wing accounts just last year. https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : In October last year, Twitter shared that its algorithm promotes right-leaning content more often than left — but the reasons for that remain unclear. The findings drew from an internal study on Twitter's algorithmic amplification of political content https://www.theverge.com/... Noah Garfinkel / @noahgarfinkel : The Twitter Files thing feels like someone reading a recipe with a suspicious angry voice for no reason. After padding the chicken dry, it says to salt AND pepper BOTH sides before dredging it in egg and flour that was NEVER SIFTED. Adrian Weckler / @adrianweckler : Hope Elon and his new execs didn't let this investigative unit rifle through user DMs. They're supposed to be private. Level of access still unclear. If DMs exposed, @DPCIreland might be interested. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Tom Scocca / @tomscocca : How did they know which DMs to request screenshots of https://twitter.com/... @amuse : Democrats are asking Biden's FTC to investigate @elonmusk for allowing @mtaibbi and @bariweiss to access Twitter's internal systems and documents. They argue there is no ‘business purpose’ in providing access that is being used to prove malfeasance. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/ ... Carl Quintanilla / @carlquintanilla : “.. Feels like Weiss' thread should be enough for the @FTC to open an investigation into a violation of the consent decree and perhaps get a subpoena for #Twitter's internal access logs ..” @business @alexstamos https://www.bloomberg.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : Hopefully that button doesn't actually work for them; Twitter has put a lot of work into internal access controls. If those two have been provisioned DM access, I expect that's, at a minimum, an FTC reportable security incident. Matt Binder / @mattbinder : what Bari Weiss is “unveiling” in her Twitter Files part 2 is also how Elon Musk said he was going to run content moderation on the platform https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... @juliusgoat : Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss are like Woodwood & Bernstein, if Woodward & Bernstein never learned investigative reporting, and were hired by Nixon to break into Democratic Committee HQ, and then documented the break-in and the theft. https://twitter.com/... Matt Binder / @mattbinder : lol wait this shows Libs of TikTok got special treatment from Twitter DO NOT TAKE ACTION ON USER https://twitter.com/... @tupp_ed : Personal Data, under Article 4 of the GDPR, is a wider term than the US concept of PII. I see plenty of Personal Data being disclosed in this screenshot. I have trouble working out which Article 6 legal basis for data processing would cover it. https://twitter.com/... @jtlol : If so, who had access to it before Musk was in charge? https://twitter.com/... Elon Musk / @elonmusk : Truth brings reconciliation Ella Irwin / @ellagirwin : @MrAndyNgo @elonmusk Yes. Jeff works for me, which is why I can correct this info. He has been at Twitter since 2021 but working in a different role. He recently stepped into his new role as part of Twitter 2.0 and has been integral in helping us drive transparency and fairness. Eliza / @elizableu : I'm not going to lie the new Twitter trust and safety folks are really cool. @spdustin : @44 @emptywheel In other words, Ella Irwin (who took over Trust and Safety from @yoyoel) is likely the logged in account for those screenshots. https://twitter.com/... Jo Maugham / @jolyonmaugham : It would be a brave decision to continue to use Twitter DMs to send confidential information... https://twitter.com/... @izzykamikaze : It looks like selected right-wing churnalists are being given privileged access to all your personal data on Twitter, including your DMs. Hopefully The Mother of All Data Protection cases is pending, but anybody who isn't far right should be thinking of abandoning Twitter ASAP. https://twitter.com/... Matt Binder / @mattbinder : this is a great catch. Bari Weiss' Twitter Files pics all have the same watermark on them. either she was provided a login to a specific employees account or she is physically standing over the Twitter employee told to give her this access snapping pics https://twitter.com/... Tom Nichols / @radiofreetom : The big reveal about Twitter moderation is a classic death of expertise moment: people who didn't know about something until now assume not knowing about it meant that it was a huge secret Michael Edison Hayden / @michaelehayden : Bari Weiss wants you to find it nefarious that Twitter did the bare minimum in limiting the reach of anti-LGBTQ+ bigot Chaya Raichik. Any responsible company would have suspended Libs of Tik Tok before it got such a big audience. https://twitter.com/... Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D / @rvawonk : Everything Bari Weiss is tweeting about was already widely known. Furthermore, Elon Musk literally just publicly announced 5 days ago the same policy she's presenting as a secret in her 2nd tweet. https://twitter.com/... Paris Marx / @parismarx : This account's whole purpose is to direct violence and hatred at various individuals and groups, including queer and trans folks. But Bari Weiss and Elon Musk are out here defending it and allowing it to pretend it never broke any rules. Absolutely vile. https://twitter.com/... @stevanzetti : The Bari Weiss version of the Twitter Files basically is that a social media company has moderation tools that are not entirely public in nature and that a leadership committee talked to each other about high profile moderation decisions — but told like it's Watergate. @theserfstv : The new Twitter files have revealed that Libs of TikTok, despite the dangers she presented to schools and hospitals, actually GOT preferential protection! https://twitter.com/... Mr. Chau / @srirachachau : This is the opposite of a ban...what are you talking about https://twitter.com/... @marinamedvin : BTW Twitter employees can see your DMs https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Elon Musk / @elonmusk : @bariweiss @libsoftiktok 🤨 https://twitter.com/... Roberto Aram Ferdman / @robferdman : The most obvious and hilarious PR campaign masquerading as investigative journalism you will ever see https://twitter.com/... Don Moynihan / @donmoyn : Weiss is an opinion writer/activist, not an investigative journalist. Her whole MO is to look for stories that might be generally unrepresentative, but reflect her worldview, and not do any additional digging that challenges that worldview. View the scoops that follow accordingly https://twitter.com/... Elad Nehorai / @eladnehorai : So Bari Weiss, one of the loudest anti-"cancel culture" warriors and supposed fighter of antisemitism is: 1. Destroying the lives of former Twitter employees. 2. Working with a man who has done more to spread antisemitism in the past month than anyone in America. https://twitter.com/... @wilson__valdez : Bari Weiss, anti-cancel culture warrior, combing through people's private communications in order to find something to ‘cancel’ them with, is just too too on point. https://twitter.com/... @7im : it's a strange world where @catturd2 is verified ($8) and twitter's head of trust and safety has no blue check at all https://twitter.com/... Patrick Monahan / @pattymo : Seems like a fair question, in the interest of transparency or whatever the Dork Squad is pretending this is about https://twitter.com/... Max Burns / @themaxburns : The guy who was supposedly worried about Big Tech snooping on people has given Bari Weiss access to your DMs. https://twitter.com/... Arieh Kovler / @ariehkovler : A couple of weeks ago, Musk and his team were boasting about how Twitter under his leadership would aggressively deamplify hate speech. So this whole kerfuffle isn't about the principle of deamplification. It's just about who gets deamplified and who gets to decide. @respectablelaw : @ellagirwin @thetomzone “The screenshots requested” is very interesting language that suggests this was likely an even bigger clown show than many suspected. @wilson__valdez : So here's Twitter's new head of Trust and Safety saying she gave Bari the ‘screenshots requested’. So if this is accurate, it's confirmation of the obvious: that they're just cherry-picking shit for their narrative and they have no clue whether their ‘full picture’ is true. https://twitter.com/... @emptywheel : There is literally NO WAY Weiss is doing real research w/o assessing non-right wing accounts. It's either a cherry pick or a privacy violation. https://twitter.com/... Hannah Gais / @hannahgais : the current head of twitter trust and safety just verified that she's the source of the photos of a screen that bari weiss posted showing twitter's backend. https://twitter.com/... @nycsouthpaw : The new head of twitter trust and safety admits to this skullduggery only after someone notices a watermark containing her id on the screens she photographed and gave to Weiss et al. https://twitter.com/... @golikehellmachi : musk let weiss and taibbi direct several more existential asteroids at twitter on the same day musk's creditors started considering whether they should start taking bites out of tesla as collateral https://twitter.com/... Eliot Higgins / @eliothiggins : I hope Elon and pals are working in their answers to assure EU officials journalists definitely didn't have access to private DMs https://twitter.com/... Hannah Gais / @hannahgais : taibbi et al. can get mad about their little stunt being portrayed as PR, but no real journalist would take and then use a computer provided to them by a source as if it's a gift like this. nothing about this is ethical. https://twitter.com/... Ted Scheinman / @ted_scheinman : so bari weiss is doing: a.) an internal witch-hunt for a private company and b.) external PR for said company no real journalist would agree to this unholy amalgamation. the basest hackery. https://twitter.com/... Parker Molloy / @parkermolloy : How funny was it the other day when a bunch of right-wingers were like, “How DARE you suggest that Taibbi was doing PR for the richest man on earth! This is journalism!” and now Weiss is just straight up being plugged into Twitter's system. It's PR. For the richest man on Earth. https://twitter.com/... Sarah Posner / @sarahposner : Has Musk brought on Bari to deflect attention from the fact that he's bringing actual Nazis back to the platform, using her (a purported arbiter of what is antisemitic) as a shield against that criticism https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... Jared Holt / @jaredlholt : If Bari isn't taking money from Elon already she might as well just do it since that seems to be the only tangible thing separating her from other Twitter employees in this charade. If you're gonna be a billionaire's minion might as well get in on the take https://twitter.com/... Ed Zitron / @edzitron : is this not quite literally media corruption https://twitter.com/... Elon Musk / @elonmusk : @MarinaMedvin DMs should be encrypted, so that it is impossible for anyone at Twitter to see the public's DMs, just as is the case with Signal or iMessage Charlie Kirk / @charliekirk11 : I'm happy Elon Musk and Bari Weiss have confirmed my account was targeted, but every Twitter user deserves to know if they too were targeted in some way. Twitter should publicly release ALL information on shadowbans, no matter how large or small the target was. Let the truth out. Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : Prof. Kerr confirms my hunch that Twitter would face liability under the SCA if they do give anybody access to DMs or release them publicly: https://twitter.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : The new head of T&S denies that Weiss and team have access to DMs, which has to be squared with claims that their access was extensive and unfiltered. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : “Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of reach” - elmo repeating what civil society has been saying for five years. https://twitter.com/... Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : I want Twitter Files Part #3, where someone literally takes pictures of all the secretive internal feature prototypes https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
14. 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.
Three of us resigned from Twitter's Trust & Safety Council today: @eirliani @podesta_lesley and me. Here's why https://www.netfamilynews.org/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@thetomzone Correct. For security purposes, the screenshots requested came from me so we could ensure no PII was exposed. We did not give this access to reporters and no, reporters were not accessing user DMs.
“Now, Weiss has been given access to Twitter's employee systems, added to its Slack, and given a company laptop, two people familiar with her presence said. The level of access to Twitter systems given to Weiss is typically given only to employees...” https://www.businessinsider.…
.@elonmusk, yes or no — do Weiss and Taibbi have access to users' DMs? It would be good to get clear explanation about this screen and yes/no answer to this straightforward question. https://twitter.com/...
16. 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.” https://twitter.com/...
Summing the reactions of ex-Twitter workers to “The Twitter Files Pt 2” Ex-employees seemingly saying three main things: 1) This has long been public; 2) The platform features called out are innocuous; 3) The new T&S head handed everything over, making this little more than PR ht…
BREAKING: Twitter Files released by Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi & Bari Weiss, have suggested that a secret group headed by Vijaya Gadde, the Head of Legal, Yoel Roth, the Head of Trust, CEOs Jack Dorsey & Parag, & others, made decisions secretly & without overview to moderate Twitter.
Can think of several moments when as a young reporter I thought I had a bombshell story and then it became a merely average story or not news at all after an editor poked at it with skeptical questions. Beware media folks who think they're too big-brained for editorial standards.…
Feels like Weiss' thread should be enough for the FTC to open an investigation into a violation of the consent decree and perhaps get a subpoena for Twitter's internal access logs.
everything that Bari Weiss is currently “breaking” as part of Twitter Files 2 has been reported on and known about for two and a half years https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/...
BREAKING: Explosive evidence from the #GoogleFiles showing that Google runs a program called “AdSense” through which website publishers pay *money* to serve *advertisements* *targeting* the site *audience*.
@unusual_whales Controversial decisions were often made without getting Jack's approval and he was unaware of systemic bias. The inmates were running the asylum. Jack has a pure heart imo.
Did Elon just give Bari Weiss and Abigail Shrier access to everyone's DM's? This would be a clear violation of the Stored Communications Act by sharing with them. Not to mention, potentially handing the most transphobic “journalists” access to trans people is dangerous. https://t…
The people Twitter appointed to offer an outside perspective on trust and safety are basically saying that Musk's reassurances on safety can't be trusted. No doubt Musk will just label them as “woke” and move on, but this seems like a big deal. https://twitter.com/...
Good piece on how the Twitter Files are just part of Elon's general temper tantrum. Gem of a line summing up the whole problem with social media platforms 1/2 https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
The right has pushed the narrative that tech companies were biased against conservatives, but that's always been a lie. Researchers have repeatedly found big social media platforms like Twitter favor conservatives. Twitter's own research even said so. https://www.theverge.com/...
<Looks at his mentions, sees people wondering if Bari Weiss violated the Stored Communications Act by looking through private DM's with Twitter's permission but not that of sender/receivers.> Nope, no violation, see the 18 U.S.C. 2701(c)(1) exception. https://www.law.cornell.edu/…
If you zoom in on the images shared by Bari Weiss yesterday, you'll see they carry a watermark that shows they were taken via the account of Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of trust and safety: https://www.bloomberg.com/...
There are some mildly interesting details in here but presenting it as some new and shocking and secret finding is either ignorant or disingenuous. There have been whole news cycles about Twitter shadowbans. I know because I've written about them multiple times over the years. ht…
So Twitter replaced a department full of communications professionals whom journalists could call with two pundits with a grievance and flimsy grasp of basic logic?
And now we have word that Musk has revealed PII (Personally identifiable information) to outside actors without permission. This is the absolute biggest no-no in the entire GDPR framework.
If there is litigation or any federal/EU investigation, not sure how well the “well yes, we had a General Counsel who advised against this, but we fired him” defense will play https://twitter.com/...
Consider their constant claims of “bombshell” as a necessary side effect of going it alone. They have to overhype everything to keep their paid subs, spin banal data into conspiracy. Otherwise there is no rationale to pay for paid propaganda you can get for free anywhere.
Bari Weiss didn't describe anything of the sort. And Taibbi explicitly said that Twitter took down material at the request of the Trump White House. https://twitter.com/...
Bhattacharya is one of the people allegedly “suppressed” in the latest round of “we discover that social media companies have internal systems and groups” brainboiling. https://twitter.com/...
“Taibbi's willingness to caper about while Musk clapped his hands, in itself, instantly recreated the very power structure that his reporting was supposedly meant to assail....” — @ToLey88: https://defector.com/... via @DefectorMedia https://twitter.com/...
uh well, here's the new head of Twitter trust and safety saying she's the one taking photos of the moderation backend for Bari Weiss https://twitter.com/...
Seriously, this just underscores how flawed & limited Weiss's reporting has been so far. OK let's compare Maddow & E. Klein to C. Kirk and Bongino — can you screencap their internal profiles, @jason? Do either Maddow / Klein have a “Recent Abuse Strike”? Or “SPMA”? What is SPMA? …
3) The T&S head handed everything over, making this little more than PR. People pointed out last night that Bari's screenshots included new Twitter T&S head Ella Irwin's LDAP in the background, and she admitted to handing everything over in her own tweet https://twitter.com/...
This is absurd! The new head of Twitter's Trust and Safety, just out here openly admitting she's not even smart enough to cover own own ass, admitting the “journalists” on the Twitter Files lied about their access, and admitting there was no methodology. Enjoy the courts, Ella. h…
Twitter's new head of trust and safety says the company did not give reporters access to peoples' DMs. The screenshots came from her, she says: https://twitter.com/...
The Twitter files continue to be a big dud, already long-public information presented as scandal. The real story here is third parties getting uncontrolled access to tooling which reveals private information of Twitter users. This is bad, and seems to be escalating. https://twitt…
I have never felt such second hand embarrassment as I do for the “Twitter Files” “journalists.” There's just no coming back from this. https://twitter.com/...
Business translator: “Secret group” aka public company management, who are described in all regulatory filings in copious detail, whose job it is to deal with such sensitive issues and — stick with me here since it is apparently murky to some — run the company. https://twitter.co…
Here's Elon Musk promising Libs of TikTok that he'll ensure the account's posts — which explicitly target queer and trans folks with violence — won't be suppressed on the platform. https://twitter.com/...
“secret group” and “without overview” are very funny ways to describe a group of decision-makers at a company that included the CEO, CTO, general counsel, and head of trust and safety. https://twitter.com/...
The more important question: Is Twitter civilly liable for giving private communications to Weiss? If they disclosed private user DMs, yes, they probably are liable, under 2702 and 2707. https://twitter.com/...
Feels like there's 2 layers to these Musk crusades. 1. The analysis written by the Musk-approved journalist who was given the material. 2. The overstated version Musk wanted in the first place, so he just goes ahead and puts that out to the world, with the journalist as cover. ht…
this couldn't possibly be new twitter head of trust and safety Ella Irwin (@ellagirwin) letting Bari Weiss rifle around in a backend tool that clearly says “Direct Messages” in the sidebar could it? 🤔 https://twitter.com/...
Elon musk trying to drive engagement on Twitter by letting attention-hungry narcissists root around in corporate history so long as they publish stuff that doesn't hurt musk and they also publish it on Twitter in the form of tedious threads https://twitter.com/...
a secret group made decisions secretly without overview and who was on that group, folks? the CEO of the company and the head of every relevant department lol do you hear what you're saying? these are the very people who would overview these decisions https://twitter.com/...
With the “Twitter Files,” Musk isn't so much revealing things about Twitter we didn't know, but using former journalists to rewrite Twitter's history — at least for the cult and the right-wing — in a way that serves him, his insider circle, and the right-wing media ecosystem. htt…
One thing Trump spread across the American right: The inability (or unwillingness, or indifference) to remembering anything from five minutes ago https://twitter.com/...
Probably a good time to remind everyone that regardless of what Elon Musk, his reactionary advisors, and fake journalists want you to believe, Twitter admitted its algorithms were biased in favor of right-wing accounts just last year. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
In October last year, Twitter shared that its algorithm promotes right-leaning content more often than left — but the reasons for that remain unclear. The findings drew from an internal study on Twitter's algorithmic amplification of political content https://www.theverge.com/...
Hope Elon and his new execs didn't let this investigative unit rifle through user DMs. They're supposed to be private. Level of access still unclear. If DMs exposed, @DPCIreland might be interested. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Democrats are asking Biden's FTC to investigate @elonmusk for allowing @mtaibbi and @bariweiss to access Twitter's internal systems and documents. They argue there is no ‘business purpose’ in providing access that is being used to prove malfeasance. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/ .…
“.. Feels like Weiss' thread should be enough for the @FTC to open an investigation into a violation of the consent decree and perhaps get a subpoena for #Twitter's internal access logs ..” @business @alexstamos https://www.bloomberg.com/...
The Twitter Files thing feels like someone reading a recipe with a suspicious angry voice for no reason. After padding the chicken dry, it says to salt AND pepper BOTH sides before dredging it in egg and flour that was NEVER SIFTED.
Hopefully that button doesn't actually work for them; Twitter has put a lot of work into internal access controls. If those two have been provisioned DM access, I expect that's, at a minimum, an FTC reportable security incident.
what Bari Weiss is “unveiling” in her Twitter Files part 2 is also how Elon Musk said he was going to run content moderation on the platform https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss are like Woodwood & Bernstein, if Woodward & Bernstein never learned investigative reporting, and were hired by Nixon to break into Democratic Committee HQ, and then documented the break-in and the theft. https://twitter.com/...
Personal Data, under Article 4 of the GDPR, is a wider term than the US concept of PII. I see plenty of Personal Data being disclosed in this screenshot. I have trouble working out which Article 6 legal basis for data processing would cover it. https://twitter.com/...
@MrAndyNgo @elonmusk Yes. Jeff works for me, which is why I can correct this info. He has been at Twitter since 2021 but working in a different role. He recently stepped into his new role as part of Twitter 2.0 and has been integral in helping us drive transparency and fairness.
@44 @emptywheel In other words, Ella Irwin (who took over Trust and Safety from @yoyoel) is likely the logged in account for those screenshots. https://twitter.com/...
It looks like selected right-wing churnalists are being given privileged access to all your personal data on Twitter, including your DMs. Hopefully The Mother of All Data Protection cases is pending, but anybody who isn't far right should be thinking of abandoning Twitter ASAP. h…
this is a great catch. Bari Weiss' Twitter Files pics all have the same watermark on them. either she was provided a login to a specific employees account or she is physically standing over the Twitter employee told to give her this access snapping pics https://twitter.com/...
The big reveal about Twitter moderation is a classic death of expertise moment: people who didn't know about something until now assume not knowing about it meant that it was a huge secret
Bari Weiss wants you to find it nefarious that Twitter did the bare minimum in limiting the reach of anti-LGBTQ+ bigot Chaya Raichik. Any responsible company would have suspended Libs of Tik Tok before it got such a big audience. https://twitter.com/...
Everything Bari Weiss is tweeting about was already widely known. Furthermore, Elon Musk literally just publicly announced 5 days ago the same policy she's presenting as a secret in her 2nd tweet. https://twitter.com/...
This account's whole purpose is to direct violence and hatred at various individuals and groups, including queer and trans folks. But Bari Weiss and Elon Musk are out here defending it and allowing it to pretend it never broke any rules. Absolutely vile. https://twitter.com/...
The Bari Weiss version of the Twitter Files basically is that a social media company has moderation tools that are not entirely public in nature and that a leadership committee talked to each other about high profile moderation decisions — but told like it's Watergate.
The new Twitter files have revealed that Libs of TikTok, despite the dangers she presented to schools and hospitals, actually GOT preferential protection! https://twitter.com/...
Weiss is an opinion writer/activist, not an investigative journalist. Her whole MO is to look for stories that might be generally unrepresentative, but reflect her worldview, and not do any additional digging that challenges that worldview. View the scoops that follow accordingly…
So Bari Weiss, one of the loudest anti-"cancel culture" warriors and supposed fighter of antisemitism is: 1. Destroying the lives of former Twitter employees. 2. Working with a man who has done more to spread antisemitism in the past month than anyone in America. https://twitter.…
Bari Weiss, anti-cancel culture warrior, combing through people's private communications in order to find something to ‘cancel’ them with, is just too too on point. https://twitter.com/...
A couple of weeks ago, Musk and his team were boasting about how Twitter under his leadership would aggressively deamplify hate speech. So this whole kerfuffle isn't about the principle of deamplification. It's just about who gets deamplified and who gets to decide.
@ellagirwin @thetomzone “The screenshots requested” is very interesting language that suggests this was likely an even bigger clown show than many suspected.
So here's Twitter's new head of Trust and Safety saying she gave Bari the ‘screenshots requested’. So if this is accurate, it's confirmation of the obvious: that they're just cherry-picking shit for their narrative and they have no clue whether their ‘full picture’ is true. https…
There is literally NO WAY Weiss is doing real research w/o assessing non-right wing accounts. It's either a cherry pick or a privacy violation. https://twitter.com/...
the current head of twitter trust and safety just verified that she's the source of the photos of a screen that bari weiss posted showing twitter's backend. https://twitter.com/...
The new head of twitter trust and safety admits to this skullduggery only after someone notices a watermark containing her id on the screens she photographed and gave to Weiss et al. https://twitter.com/...
musk let weiss and taibbi direct several more existential asteroids at twitter on the same day musk's creditors started considering whether they should start taking bites out of tesla as collateral https://twitter.com/...
I hope Elon and pals are working in their answers to assure EU officials journalists definitely didn't have access to private DMs https://twitter.com/...
taibbi et al. can get mad about their little stunt being portrayed as PR, but no real journalist would take and then use a computer provided to them by a source as if it's a gift like this. nothing about this is ethical. https://twitter.com/...
so bari weiss is doing: a.) an internal witch-hunt for a private company and b.) external PR for said company no real journalist would agree to this unholy amalgamation. the basest hackery. https://twitter.com/...
How funny was it the other day when a bunch of right-wingers were like, “How DARE you suggest that Taibbi was doing PR for the richest man on earth! This is journalism!” and now Weiss is just straight up being plugged into Twitter's system. It's PR. For the richest man on Earth. …
Has Musk brought on Bari to deflect attention from the fact that he's bringing actual Nazis back to the platform, using her (a purported arbiter of what is antisemitic) as a shield against that criticism https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
If Bari isn't taking money from Elon already she might as well just do it since that seems to be the only tangible thing separating her from other Twitter employees in this charade. If you're gonna be a billionaire's minion might as well get in on the take https://twitter.com/...
@MarinaMedvin DMs should be encrypted, so that it is impossible for anyone at Twitter to see the public's DMs, just as is the case with Signal or iMessage
Prof. Kerr confirms my hunch that Twitter would face liability under the SCA if they do give anybody access to DMs or release them publicly: https://twitter.com/...
The new head of T&S denies that Weiss and team have access to DMs, which has to be squared with claims that their access was extensive and unfiltered. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
I'm happy Elon Musk and Bari Weiss have confirmed my account was targeted, but every Twitter user deserves to know if they too were targeted in some way. Twitter should publicly release ALL information on shadowbans, no matter how large or small the target was. Let the truth out.
23. In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects. Here's Yoel Roth, Twitter's then Global Head of Trust & Safety, in a direct message to a colleague in early 2021: https://twitter.com/...
The actual scandal is these two creeps and who knows who else seem to have unfettered access to your Twitter account at the behest and encouragement of the company's CEO https://twitter.com/...
No wonder every C-level executive responsible for privacy and compliance resigned. When under an FTC consent decree, it's not even appropriate for all employees to have access to such screens let alone random outsiders who're given access for clout. https://twitter.com/...