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New ‘Twitter files’ release shows Trump ban violated its own policy

'Many at Twitter were ecstatic' when President Trump's account was banned.
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Andreas
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Andreas Wailzer
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(LifeSiteNews) — Recently published information on the so-called “Twitter files” show how Twitter acted against its own “public interest policy” to justify the permanent ban of Donald Trump’s account, even though it internally determined that his tweets after January 6 did not incite violence.

The information about Trump’s suspension was released in three parts. Journalist Matt Taibbi posted the first part on December 10 covering the time leading up to January 6, 2021, starting from October 2020.

According to Taibbi, “[t]he bulk of inter debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days [January 6-8],” but “the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.”

Taibbi describes how Twitter’s “content moderation” became more restrictive in the months leading up to January 6.

On October 8, 2020, an internal channel was opened that “would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved “high-profile” accounts (often called ‘VITs’ or ‘Very Important Tweeters’).”

Shortly after the opening of the new channel, on October 14, 2020, the infamous social media censorship of the New York Post’s blockbuster report about the scandalous contents of a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter took place.

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Taibbi explained how senior policy executives such as former head of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth and former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde became a “high-speed Supreme Court of moderation, issuing content rulings on the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President.”

During this time, Twitter executives also had frequent meetings with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Taibbi lays out a case where the FBI flagged a tweet by a Republican named John Basham, who warned about the error rate of mail-in ballots. After reviewing the tweet, Twitter decided to put a “Learn how voting is safe and secure” label underneath the post.

According to Taibbi, they “didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally,” adding that “[t]hey may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.”

The next installment of the “Twitter files” was published on December 11 by the author and reformed climate activist Michael Shellenberger. He detailed how on Twitter executives on January 7 created a “justification to ban Trump” that was “distinct from other political leaders” and expressed “no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban.”

According to Shellenberger, Roth and his colleagues had been urging then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to implement “greater restrictions on the speech Twitter allows around elections.”

At around 11:30 am on January 7, Roth said that Dorsey had just approved a new “repeat offender for civic integrity” rule. “The new approach would create a system where five violations (‘strikes’) would result in permanent suspension,” Shellenberger explained, providing the screenshots of the internal messages.

Shellenberger wrote that the members of the Twitter Trust & Safety team discussed how to handle Trump’s alleged “incitement of violence” and how this would eventually be the reason for Trump’s suspension:

Roth’s colleague’s query about “incitement to violence” heavily foreshadows what will happen the following day.

On January 8, Twitter announces a permanent ban on Trump due to the “risk of further incitement of violence.”

Furthermore, Shellenberger cites Twitter’s explanation for banning Trump due to “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted.” This contradicts Twitter’s statement from 2019, when the company said it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent,” as Shellenberger pointed out.

Shellenberger showed how the “Stop the Steal” hashtag was “deamplified” using Twitter’s shadow ban tactics revealed in a previous installment of the Twitter files.

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In order not to suppress “counter-speech” to the claim that the 2020 election was stolen, Twitter decided to only de-amplify accounts with the hashtag “Stop the Steal” in their name or profile.

Members of Twitter’s Trust & Safety team also discussed whether or not to take action against users who shared screenshots of Trump’s censored tweets from January 6. One employee was hesitant to put a strike on a person who shared such a screenshot because she was critical of Trump, while people who agreed with Trump would receive a strike, showing Twitter’s obvious bias in the matter.

“What happens next is essential to understanding how Twitter justified banning Trump,” Shellenberger wrote.

Roth wrote on January 7 that Twitter would change its “public interest approach” specifically for Trump’s account. Roth’s statement refers to a policy that states that the content posted by elected officials is not to be censored “if it directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern,” even if it violates Twitter policy.

Roth justified the decision to change the public interest policy for Trump by stating that “policy is one part of the system of how Twitter works […] we ran into the world changing faster than we were able to either adapt the product or the policy.”

The next part of the of Twitter files was released on December 12 by independent journalist Bari Weiss, who detailed the events that took place on January 8, the day that Trump’s account was permanently suspended.

According to Weis, there was a minority of employees within Twitter that objected to banning Trump, but the majority “organized to demand their employer ban Trump.”

According to the screenshots Weiss provided, Twitter employees discussed whether the two tweets Trump had sent that day violated any policy, but they concluded that there was no violation.

Weiss pointed out that while Twitter did not ban many politicians who had explicitly called for violence, it did ban Trump, even though he did not incite violence.

Shortly after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets had not incited violence, Gadde asked if it could have been “used as coded incitement to further violence.”

Some Twitter employees then suggested that the term “American Patriots” could refer to the “rioters” on January 6 and that he is the “leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler.”

After a 30-minute all-staff meeting where Dorsey and Gadde answered questions as to why Trump had not been banned yet, some employees got even angrier, according to Weiss.

Roth said that many Twitter employees “have quoted the Banality of Evil suggesting that people implementing our policies are like Nazis following orders,” according to a screenshot of his message.

“One hour later, Twitter announces Trump’s permanent suspension ‘due to the risk of further incitement of violence,’” Weiss reported.

“Many at Twitter were ecstatic,” she wrote.

Weiss said that “[b]y the next day, employees expressed eagerness to tackle ‘medical misinformation’ as soon as possible” since it was “harmful content.”

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