Twitter Admits It Was Hiding Some People’s Tweets by Mistake — Again
A popular Satan parody account was among those unfairly affected by a feature that critics have called ‘shadow banning’
Twitter is giving the devil his due.
After a OneZero article about a Satan parody account whose owner felt his tweets were being unfairly hidden from public view, the company acknowledged late last week that a feature intended to limit trolls had been mistakenly affecting some legitimate accounts, including his. Twitter would not say how many other users were inadvertently caught up by its algorithm, which limits the public visibility of certain accounts based on their behavior and other signals, even if they haven’t broken the platform’s rules.
“Upon further investigation, we realize some of these systems were impacting people using Twitter in a healthy way and so we adjusted them,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “Thank you for surfacing this to us, we’re always working to improve.” The owner of the Satan account, a 26-year-old British man named Michael, confirmed to me that his account had been restored to good standing and has been rapidly gaining followers since then.
