TwitterFiles 5: Staffers Couldn’t Find ‘Incitement’ But Twitter Banned Trump’s Account Anyway
The day after Trump was suspended, staffers were looking at expanding the newfound powers to tackle “medical misinformation” on the platform.
The Twitter Files are incredibly revealing. They provide proof that the things that conservatives have been suspecting for years are true — behind the scenes, the wokescolds at Twitter were putting their thumbs on the scales and taking action against views and accounts that they didn’t like.
One of those accounts was @RealDonaldTrump, the personal account of the 45th President of the United States.
And it looks like there were some 3-letter government agencies that have their hands dirty in this mess, too.
The last three editions (3, 4, and 5) of the Twitter Files have exposed the behind-the-scenes decisions on how Twitter execs and staffers made decisions concerning former President Trump’s account.
Related:
- TwitterFiles 4: Top Execs Changed The Platform’s Policies Specifically To Permanently Ban Trump
- TwitterFiles Trump Edition: — Guess Which 3 Letter Agencies Featured Prominently?
- Twitter Files 2’ Reveals Twitter DID Shadowban And Blacklist Conservatives — Here’s The 411
- ‘The Twitter Files’ Exposes How The Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was Suppressed By Twitter
Independent journalist Bari Weiss posted the latest installment at midday on Monday.
Weiss stated that although there was no violation by Trump’s account after January 6, Twitter employees organized to try to pressure their higher-ups in the company to permanently ban the sitting President.
It worked.
Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting US President, even though they themselves acknowledge that he didn’t violate the rules: https://t.co/60PplztV4k
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022
2. 6:46 am: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” pic.twitter.com/7L252fqqK6
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
4. For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
6. But after January 6, as @mtaibbi and @shellenbergermd have documented, pressure grew, both inside and outside of Twitter, to ban Trump.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
8. But voices like that one appear to have been a distinct minority within the company. Across Slack channels, many Twitter employees were upset that Trump hadn’t been banned earlier.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
10. “We have to do the right thing and ban this account,” said one staffer.
It’s “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,” said another. pic.twitter.com/9vgvSgqJBB
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
12. But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies.“I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
14. Another staffer agreed: “Don’t see the incitement angle here.” pic.twitter.com/6mbUU2Tma0
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
16. She does just that: “as an fyi, Safety has assessed the DJT Tweet above and determined that there is no violation of our policies at this time.” pic.twitter.com/wMQ68Hu2xA
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
18. Next, Twitter’s safety team decides that Trump’s 7:44 am ET tweet is also not in violation. They are unequivocal: “it’s a clear no vio. It’s just to say he’s not attending the inauguration” pic.twitter.com/zdxSsG1UBS
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Weiss then shows how Trump was treated uniquely among world leaders. Tweets that were far more egregious than his didn’t have action taken against the account, and in some cases, the tweets have not been removed.
20. In June 2018, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted, “#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.”
Twitter neither deleted the tweet nor banned the Ayatollah. pic.twitter.com/D6Cb1F05sY
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
22. Muhammadu Buhari, the President of Nigeria, incited violence against pro-Biafra groups.“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war,” he wrote, “will treat them in the language they understand.”
Twitter deleted the tweet but didn't ban Buhari.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
24. In early February 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government threatened to arrest Twitter employees in India, and to incarcerate them for up to seven years after they restored hundreds of accounts that had been critical of him.
Twitter did not ban Modi. pic.twitter.com/s7dyDlNbaS
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
26. Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be “coded incitement to further violence.” pic.twitter.com/llJRMfpOPi
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
28. Things escalate from there.
Members of that team came to “view him as the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.” pic.twitter.com/QD4DvrUEhO
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
30. “Multiple tweeps [Twitter employees] have quoted the Banality of Evil suggesting that people implementing our policies are like Nazis following orders,” relays Yoel Roth to a colleague. pic.twitter.com/cm5yzuSYSV
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
32. One hour later, Twitter announces Trump’s permanent suspension “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
34. And congratulatory: “big props to whoever in trust and safety is sitting there whack-a-mole-ing these trump accounts” pic.twitter.com/8ZssvH9ooH
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
36. “For the longest time, Twitter’s stance was that we aren’t the arbiter of truth,” wrote another employee, “which I respected but never gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.” pic.twitter.com/0g6aptJHJg
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
38. Outside the United States, Twitter’s decision to ban Trump raised alarms, including with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, and Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
40. Merkel’s spokesperson called Twitter’s decision to ban Trump from its platform “problematic” and added that the freedom of opinion is of “elementary significance.”
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny criticized the ban as “an unacceptable act of censorship.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
42. From the outset, our goal in investigating this story was to discover and document the steps leading up to the banning of Trump and to put that choice into context.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
44. They’re about the power of a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
46. Please click here to subscribe to The Free Press, where you can continue reading and supporting independent journalism: https://t.co/y0CnniwqaH
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Elon Smoked The Old Twitter Bird
ClashDaily’s Big Dawg has put his own spin on what’s been going down on the ol’ Bird App — the old Twitter is dead and Elon is building a new one.
Check out Doug’s latest piece, ‘Elon Smoked The Old Twitter Bird.’
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