Elon Musk discloses decade-old censorship code buried in Twitter algorithms -- Society's Child -- Sott.net

This revelation was made public during Musk's conversation with The Babylon Bee, which was published on Twitter this Wednesday. Notably, Twitter's prior censorship of The Babylon Bee was a significant factor that led Musk to consider acquiring the social media giant.

During a recent interview, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, unveiled that Twitter's engineers stumbled upon an old line of code, over ten years old, programmed to suppress tweets containing specific keywords.

This revelation was made public during Musk's conversation with The Babylon Bee, which was published on Twitter this Wednesday. Notably, Twitter's prior censorship of The Babylon Bee was a significant factor that led Musk to consider acquiring the social media giant.

In the interview, Kyle Mann, the editor-in-chief of The Babylon Bee, brought up Musk's unusual decision to disclose the 'Twitter files' after taking over the company. He questioned why anyone would want to highlight the problematic elements within the company they have just taken charge of.

"One of the craziest things you did when you took over Twitter was start releasing the Twitter files," Mann said. "Who takes over a company and then says, 'Look, how horrible all this stuff is that's going on'?"

Musk replied that without admitting to the past wrongdoings, it would be unreasonable to expect people to trust the company in the future.

"If we're not going to expose the things that were done wrong, why should people believe us in the future? That's why we're trying to be as transparent as possible," Musk replied. "Don't take my word for it - literally look at the algorithm, you should be able to recreate the results that you see on Twitter using that algorithm."

Adding to this, Musk stated that the aim is to uncover any hidden layers or obscured elements within Twitter. He pointed out a recent discovery of a censorship mechanism coded into the platform back in 2012.

While Musk admitted that the term 'censorship' might not be the most accurate description for the code, he confirmed that Twitter indeed had a list of words which, if included in a tweet, would trigger suppression of that tweet. For instance, a tweet containing the word 'suck' would not get amplified on the platform.

Describing it as a 'relic of code' from 2012, Musk revealed that this mechanism was still in place as of last week. He also confirmed that the line of code was universally applicable across all tweets. Approximately a thousand words were included in this list, and their presence in any tweet would lead to suppression of that tweet on the platform.

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Reader Comments

Buffalo_Ken · 2023-06-03T18:11:16Z

I'd like to see a list of the 1000 words - that would be most informative.

Odds are if the list is published those words are going to be used way more by way more folks who are indignant.

Is "indignant" one of the words on the list - if so that explains a lot.

Based on a check I just did not I don't think the list has been published.

If you going to "chat" about then publish it.

Buffalo_Ken · 2023-06-03T18:15:58Z

Buffalo_Ken - regardless as to whether it is published or not, I'd like to know how this list was created - who directly was responsible for choosing the words selected to be in the algorithm?

With that said, I think Twitter would be advised to publish all the words now.

If they don't, then how can anybody ever trust Twitter ever again for all eternity?

Lemuel Gulliver · 2023-06-04T04:48:56Z

Buffalo_Ken

who directly was responsible for choosing the words selected to be in the algorithm?

That would be, I suspect, a bombshell revelation. Thank you for mentioning it. I can suggest a whole list of possibilities, from Hillary Clinton to George Soros to the FBI to the CIA to the Democratic National Committee. Our government is not supposed to censor speech, according to the First Amendment, so they and their friends got corporations - Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter - to do the nasty work for them. That was the censorship. In tandem, they got the Hebrew-owned-and-controlled media to create mass psychosis by keeping the entire population in a constant state of mindless terror.

HashAttack2 · 2023-06-04T11:44:34Z

Buffalo_Ken The code would simply be a function to look up a table of restricted words / phrases and return a status flag indicating the level of "offense"

That list of word would be stored in a table which could contain any number of word and be maintained / updated at will ... i.e. maybe the list contained "Trump" for a while, maybe they recently added Nord Stream

Note that technically a function could look up a table on a different server / network - maybe one managed by an alphabet agency

So the real question is who maintained the list and whether there was any oversight or tracking

HashAttack2 · 2023-06-04T11:48:08Z

HashAttack2 e.g.

Set Status = 0

Status = Status + CheckListCIA("tweet text")

Status = Status + CheckListFBI("tweet text")

Status = Status + CheckListDNC("tweet text")

Status = Status + CheckListCLINTON("tweet text")

Status = Status + CheckListSoros("tweet text")

Status = Status + CheckListWEF("tweet text")

Status = Status + CheckListCFR("tweet text")

Set TweetVisibility = 1000 - Status

Note that a function such as this call also increase a tweet's visibility if so desired

HashAttack2 · 2023-06-04T12:00:37Z

This is actually all BS

Their presence in any tweet would lead to suppression of that tweet on the platform

What they are admitting is that inbuilt into the core system is that ability to suppress tweets, presumably something above the level of outright banning them. Maybe they have cleared that one list but did they disable the actual discrimination of tweets ... which they have known about far longer that just since stumbling across one of many old functions that can set the discrimination level

TBoris · 2023-06-04T12:20:23Z

HashAttack2 My thought is this article is just another Elon PR stunt. The republicans are going to be the "good" guys again [Link]

HashAttack2 · 2023-06-04T12:40:16Z

TBoris Why so much! - Still hard to believe that Russia won the 2016 election for Trump with just $1400 of FB ads

HashAttack2 · 2023-06-04T12:43:06Z

HashAttack2 What about 2,000 mules and $500 million of FB "assistance"

2,600 people at $15/hr is $39,000 per hour. Anticipating 1,000 hrs per campaign worker, that’s $39 million. At $25/hr that’s $65 million. At $40/hr that’s $104 million

“No one has ever contemplated the scale of this organization or operation, let alone done it,”