TheQuartering [1/27/2023]
Political commentator Dave Rubin received a behind-the-scenes look at Twitter and why the code that owner Elon Musk called a “flaming dumpster rolling down the street” continues to limit engagement for some users.
Rubin wrote Thursday that he spent the last two days in San Francisco talking to Twitter engineers, product managers and owner Elon Musk and was given permission to share his findings. Musk has been open about his desire to expose once-secret communications that occurred inside Twitter before he took control of the social media juggernaut last year. He has been slowly allowing independent journalists to reveal their findings, and while Rubin’s thread is not technically part of the “Twitter Files,” he put a spotlight on the company’s inner workings.
“Learned a ton about what’s going on. Before I share, want to note that after couple hour meeting I asked Elon what I could share and he said, ‘anything that’s true,’” Rubin wrote.
The “Rubin Report” host said Musk calls Twitter a “A Fractal Rube Goldberg Machine” that features staffers working around-the-clock.
“As they fix the code more problems arise. A delicate balance he likened to a Jenga tower. One wrong move the whole thing collapses. They’re working nonstop, and both times I met him were after midnight,” Rubin wrote.
Twitter executives had long rejected claims by conservatives that they were being “shadowbanned,” a term referring to clandestine efforts to limit cetain users’ engagement and reach.
The second installment of the Twitter Files confirmed such a practice took place, and Rubin set out to find out why it’s still happening.
“I met with several engineers who were doing a deep dive on why my account and so many others seem to be absolutely crushed after that two or three week return to normalcy when Elon first took over. They still have more questions than answers, but they did learn a bunch of stuff,” he continued. “Accounts aren’t just hit with labels that are obvious to insiders. They now found more ‘secret’ labels which are causing shadowbans. My account was hit with all three; ‘Recent abuse strike,’ ‘Recent misinformation strike,’ ‘Recent suspension strike.’”
Rubin added that it’s “unclear so far what these strikes actually do, but for sure they suppress views and recommendations, they are trying to figure out to what extent.” He noted there are “many innocuous tweets labeled NSFW or NSFA (not safe for ads) which affect visibility in the timeline.”