In recent days, we can’t trust anything we see on the internet. So much so that even Elon Musk announced that they found source codes that no one knew about, even on Twitter, the company he bought. So what were these source codes for and why were they there?
According to Musk, these codes showed “shadowban”, that is, hidden bans applied on Twitter. According to these secret prohibitions; some words were banned and tweets and accounts using those words were not recommended to other users.
Elon Musk announced these source codes after a post by his Twitter Daily News account.
NEWS: The Twitter team continue to find shadowbans buried deep in the Twitter code.
Just last week they found a measure that stopped accounts assigned a low 'Reputation score' from trending.
This shadowban even applied to Elon's account and prevented his tweets from trending. pic.twitter.com/6qjO3hXo5p
— T(w)itter Daily News (@TitterDaily) June 17, 2023
“The Twitter team continues to find hidden bans buried deep within the Twitter code. Last week, they found a measure to prevent accounts with low ‘reputation ratings’ from trending. This secret ban was even applied to Elon Musk’s account, preventing his tweets from trending.”
After this post by Twitter Daily News, a response came from Elon Musk soon after.
True. So many skeletons in the closet. No one at the company knew this code existed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 17, 2023
“Correct. Too many skeletons in the closet. No one in the company even knew this code existed.”
With this answer, Musk; Twitter also acknowledged that secret bans and restrictions were applied to accounts and tweets. However, a very interesting response came from Ruby Media Group President Kristen Ruby to her claim that “No one in the company knew these codes”:
1. People at the company knew it existed. They didn’t tell you because you fired them. Instead they told me.
2. My source spent two months training me on how Twitters ML functioned.
3. They transferred critical knowledge to me instead of to one of your employees.
4. You…
— Kristen Ruby (@sparklingruby) June 17, 2023
- People at the company knew it existed. They didn’t tell you because you fired them. Instead they told me.
- My source spent two months teaching me how Twitter’s machine learning works.
- They passed on critical information to me instead of one of your employees.
- You keep ignoring this fact and pretending that everything is a secret.
- Here we are – almost a year later.