This article will update as the story develops…
The third installment of Elon Musk’s Twitter Files delved into what led to the removal of former President Trump’s account.
In “part one” of the third installment, which dates from October 2020-January 6th, Substack writer Matt Taibbi told his followers, “We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies.”
“Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech,” Taibbi wrote on Friday.
He then shared a screenshot of a Twitter employee asking, “Is this the first sitting head of state to ever be suspended?”
ELON MUSK’S SECOND INSTALLMENT OF ‘TWITTER FILES’ REVEALS ‘SECRET BLACKLISTS,’ BARI WEISS REPORTS
Taibbi reported that executives at Twitter “started processing new power” following their decision to ban Trump, indicating they were “prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses – perhaps even Joe Biden. The ‘new administration,’ says one exec, ‘will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.’”
One unnamed executive alleged the “context surrounding” the actions of Trump and his supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years” contributed to the ban.
“In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways,” Taibbi wrote. “The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.”
After alluding to the second installment of the Twitter Files that addressed the shadowbanning of conservatives, Taibbi reported, “As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.”
Taibbi then shared internal Slack messages from Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, who made light out of heightened discussions with federal agencies following Jan. 6. Roth joked about the lack of “generic enough” calendar descriptions to conceal the “very interesting” meetings he had.
“One particular slack channel offers an unique window into the evolving thinking of top officials in late 2020 and early 2021,” Taibbi reported. “On October 8th, 2020, executives opened a channel called ‘us2020_xfn_enforcement.’ Through J6, this would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved ‘high-profile’ accounts (often called ‘VITs’ or ‘Very Important Tweeters’).”
He continued, “There was at least some tension between Safety Operations – a larger department whose staffers used a more rules-based process for addressing issues like porn, scams, and threats – and a smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs like Roth and [Twitter’s former trust and policy chief Vijaya] Gadde. The latter group were 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, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content. While we’re still at the start of reviewing the #TwitterFiles, we’re finding out more about these interactions every day,” Taibbi added.
On Thursday, The Free Press editor Bari Weiss revealed Twitter’s efforts to suppress prominent conservatives, a resurfaced September 2018 clip of Dorsey’s testimony to a congressional committee was asked point-blank whether Twitter “censors” its users.
She pointed to Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.
“Twitter secretly placed him on a ‘Trends Blacklist,’ which prevented his tweets from trending,” Weiss reported.
She reported that Fox News host Dan Bongino was placed on a “Search Blacklist” and Twitter had Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk on “Do Not Amplify.”
Taibbi, who published the first installment of the “Twitter Files,” addressed what led to Twitter censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election.
