With everything controversial that has been going on with X, which is formerly known as Twitter, a bit of good news is a nice change of direction. The platform's owner Elon Musk says that "soon," people will know if they are shadowbanned and why.
Transparency of Shadowban on X
Being shadowbanned is not a new thing on social media platforms. Even before Musk acquired Twitter, users already noticed that the reach of their content was sometimes limited. As part of the transition, the former X CEO wants it shadowbanning to be more transparent.
It's been a while since Musk addressed the lack of information available to impacted users, to which he apologized since the process is taking a while. He did try explaining why it hasn't been resolved until now, although it was too vague.
In a reply on X, he explained that there were many layers of "trust & safety" software that take people from the company hours to figure out factors such as who, how, and why the account was suspended or shadowbanned.
X's former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth shed light on the matter in his post on Bluesky, one of X's competitors. According to the former employee, there was some truth to Musk's statement, as per Tech Crunch, and added some clarifications.
According to Roth, social media sites would make notes when they ban an account. For smaller companies, the data was saved on a spreadsheet or other document apps. As the company grows, the data would be moved to some kind of metadata that is linked to the accounts.
The notes would say that someone banned the user for a specific reason, and should not be unbanned before checking with the person who implemented it. Until now, X has not upgraded the system since it prioritized other matters.
Roth said they were "very hard to parse pragmatically" which was what Musk was complaining about. While a human can do the manual work, it will be hard to automate since they need to be in a structured format. He added that it's a good thing if X was rebuilding infrastructures that handle it.
Other Good News from X
It's not just the work towards making a more transparent system in shadowbanning on X. Last month, the platform also announced that it will be sharing its ad revenue with content creators, which is also a nice change with all the new charges that come with the new Twitter.
The payouts will be shared every three months for the ads that appear on a content creator's reply threads. Some users already said they received up to $10,000. However, not everyone is eligible for the reward system.
According to The Verge, the account must be verified, meaning that the user has to pay for the Blue subscription every month. There are also metrics that should be met such as the account having at least five million impressions in all the eligible tweets within the three-month time frame.
