Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 7, 2022 | Sundance

In the past week the mainstream media and U.S. government interests have collectively been in a state of apoplexy as Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter and began announcing changes.

As a result of the management change, there have been some new discoveries about the internal operations of the social media platform that are worth highlighting.  [Background Context Here] Additionally, it seems likely that Musk’s focus on the technology side of the operation might soon lead to [¹]interesting discoveries.  However, let’s start by reviewing information discovered in the management change.

First, it is important to recognize that Twitter is simply a massive global commenting and information sharing system.  Twitter, the platform itself, does not provide any content, all content (comments, pictures, videos, links to articles etc) is provided by the users of the platform.  In essence it is a big chat room or commenting system.  The main point to remember is that Twitter does not provide any content, the platform simply provides the hosting system for the conversation itself.

♦ “Verification” – Individual accounts on Twitter could request to be ‘verified’ by Twitter to validate their identity as a specific user of the platform.  This is the “blue check” process that assigns a blue check badge to the user upon verification.

Apparently, the verification badge morphed into some form of enhanced credibility for the user almost like a tiered social system or class system.  The ‘Blue Checks’ considered themselves more important than the average user and that verification system then became something of a status symbol.

Inside the administration system of Twitter, the assignment of the verification badge became a tool for the Twitter admins to elevate some user accounts as more important than others.

However, apparently with the new management in place, it has been discovered that verification badge status was also for sale.  For a secret fee, if you knew the right people, you could purchase a verified status.  Of course, no one ever knew this before, and it seems very sketchy. [See comment above left]

Knowing that some users purchased their verification status, the apoplexy over Elon Musk deciding to allow any user to verify their status for an $8/month fee, now takes on a new perspective.

Obviously, the verified users who purchased their elevated status would feel ripped off if anyone could now get verified, that’s issue #1.

Issue #2 is the diminished level of importance of a ‘blue check’ badge or credential if it is available to anyone.  The internal class system is removed.

This is the second point of contention amid those who are not happy with the verification proposed by Elon Musk.  It sounds absurd, but the level of anger over this leveling of the caste system has led to claims of widespread verification status being called a national security threat.

Apparently, many of the ‘Blue Checks’ on Twitter are really full of themselves, and do not like the idea that under new management any of the unwashed masses could gain a verification badge.  Combined with the knowledge that U.S. government and intelligence officials were part of the background Twitter discussion prior to Elon Musk, it would appear the ‘blue check’ system was akin to a verified user license, ID or passport.

It all sounds really weird, but that’s the type of internal dynamic that was ongoing within the platform.

♦ Next up, speech control.  We discover from the people who were notified of their job loss, that Twitter had individual specialized groups or units within the admin functions who monitored the conversation.

There was a “climate change unit”, a “human rights” unit, a “public health” unit and various other moderation divisions within the platform.

These “units” are groups of people who monitored the public discussion with special interest.   Again, for emphasis, Twitter never provided any content, so the workers in these units were simply conversation monitors or moderators who were tasked with reviewing, approving or removing comments (user content) specific to their unit specialty.  This is where the censorship stuff originated.

If you posted a comment about the subject of climate change, your comment was subject to review by internal Twitter monitors who were authorized to control the comment itself.   The same outlook applied to a host of subjects as defined by the Twitter organization.  There are thousands of these conversation monitors, each with a specific subject they are assigned to monitor.  Again, it sounds absurd, but that is what was taking place.

It is not yet fully understood how many different subjects were monitored by specialized thought police, but it seems to be a rather extensive network of very costly employees as moderators depending on the subject matter of the conversation being controlled.   This reality explains why opinions or comments that ran counter to the ideological orthodoxy of the monitors were removed.

Again, a bizarre moderation system akin to conversation monitors being placed in the workplace lunchroom, each assigned to look out for discussion of topics they were assigned to control, and then correcting anyone who spoke about an issue in violation of the acceptable company opinion.  It’s all just bizarre, but thousands of those jobs were what Elon Musk removed in last week’s wave of layoffs.

The removal of these conversation monitors, public comment moderators, is another big point of contention by the leftists who now fear that anyone will be able to speak on the platform without being censored or controlled.

The media and government officials are worried about seeing comments from government skeptics, election deniers, climate change deniers, or people in other countries with different social outlooks toward sex, gender, traditional marriage, religion or geopolitical worldviews that run counter to the interests of the United States government.  This seems to be the foundation of the Intel Community claim about a national security threat created by the removal of moderators.

This level of conversational control explains why the U.S. government held a vested interest in Twitter as a global communication platform.  Example: a Russian national might start to compare the FBI to the FSB, plant seeds of intellectual inquiry amid the U.S. reader/user and stir up discontent on a larger scale.  Thousands of Twitter moderators were assigned to filter through the commenting system while various flags and algorithmic warnings were created to facilitate tight control.

The entire moderation system sounds like an Orwellian construct because it is.

Removing this level of control over the platform is what has made Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk a threat to the global order of things.

We’ll keep watching….