Earlier this week, Instagram rolled out a new feature that indicates if users are “shadowbanned.” While shadowbanned isn’t official Instagram terminology, it means that your content is deprioritized and barred from being recommended to other users. It can also affect one’s entire account, so that they’ll be difficult to discover by the platform’s wider audience.
Days later, Elon Musk has reported that Twitter is working on a similar feature of its own, set to arrive in a future software update. The CEO offered little details about what the feature will look like, only saying that it will show a user their “account status,” so they’ll know if they’ve been shadowbanned and give them the option to appeal the ban.
Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
Musk’s announcement notably arrives after Bari Weiss released part two of her Twitter Files investigation, where she accused Twitter of employing “visibility filtering” on certain conservative public figures, Engadget observed.
“A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss wrote in a tweet, describing what essentially sounds like shadowbanning.
While Musk hasn’t directly addressed the report, he’s been making moves to reinstate controversial figures who were previously banned since taking the reins at Twitter. It appears that shedding light on shadowbanning slots into his greater plan to shift content and account moderation policies on the platform.
In other tech news, a Japanese billionaire has tapped Steve Aoki for a 2023 SpaceX Moon mission.
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