Twitter confirms it runs Project Guardian service to protect VIP accounts from trolls and haters

Twitter ‘Project Guardian’: Twitter has a secretive ‘Project Guardian’ that protects users having a large number of followers, as well as controversial characters from being attacked by haters and trolls. A report by Bloomberg has said that the microblogging site maintains a list of numerous users – amounting in thousands – who might be deemed by Twitter as being at a high risk of harassment. Among this list are professional athletes, musicians, journalists and other users who are prominent, even if the prominence is momentary.

It is being said that when the company receives abusive post-related reports in the context of one of these accounts, the content moderation team of Twitter takes up such reports on priority. This could be because of Twitter wanting to prevent the spread of harmful content, while also trying to keep prominent users happy in a bid to stop them from speaking out against the prevalent harassment on the platform.

Who can be included in Twitter’s ‘Project Guardian’?

According to Bloomberg, the project has been confirmed, and it cited Twitter’s head of site integrity Yoel Ruth as saying that a range of people make up the list under ‘Project Guardian’ with not all of them being celebrities. In fact, Twitter can also include users who get caught up in viral Twitter drama, but mostly, such users are added temporarily, with Twitter removing such users once their fame ends.

In fact, sometimes, Twitter may itself add some users who are getting a lot of hate or abusive messages, even without the user realising it. On the other hand, high-profile users may sometimes, through their managers, ask Twitter to provide more protection.

The list has included makeup artists James Charles, former US FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, and Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim in the past, and the platform has also used the project to safeguard journalists covering controversial areas.