Part four of the ongoing “Twitter Files” series of shocking disclosures was released on Saturday evening, focused on Donald Trump’s expulsion from the popular social media network in early 2021.
On Saturday, CEO Elon Musk and journalist Michael Shellenberger revealed the fourth set of Twitter papers containing internal business interactions from January 6-8, 2021, including and immediately following the Capitol Building disturbance.
In this chapter of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files,” writer Michael Shellenberger details Twitter’s decision to ban Donald Trump on January 8, 2022. As Shellenberger describes, former CEO Jack Dorsey was under tremendous pressure from all parties to ban Trump.
“On Jan 7 [2021],” Shellenberger wrote, Twitter executives “create[d] justifications to ban Trump … [sought] a change of policy for Trump alone, distinct from other political leaders” and “…express[ed] no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban.”
Following the Capitol brawl on January 6, Shellenberger stated that “internal and external pressure” grew on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to implement the ban.
According to Fox News, among the files, Shellenberger cited “internal and external pressure” on the corporation, notably from former First Lady Michelle Obama, to prohibit Trump from using Twitter.
He highlighted that Dorsey had contacted workers on January 7, 2021, “saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension.”
Red State saw the situation:
Dorsey was intent on staying the course, but he had a problem – he had a vacation coming up.
As a result, he handed over control to Yoel Roth, Twitter’s global head of trust and safety, and Vijay Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal, policy, and trust. Dorsey had made it clear, though, that he wanted the business to stay “consistent in its policies” and that he did not want any drastic measures taken.
Roth proceeded to reassure Twitter’s progressive workforce that he understood how they felt (effectively undermining Dorsey), and a short time later, Roth informs the team that Dorsey has approved a system to begin counting strikes against Trump’s account, using a “repeat offender for civic integrity” system. It appears that Trump’s account had five opportunities to not violate restrictions it was apparently never informed it was violating.
As demonstrated by the response to Roth’s comments, the team, however, continued to hunt for a justification to suspend him more rapidly.
The “incitement to violence” issue appears to be where Twitter finally landed; as Shellenberger notes, this was the judgment Twitter took on January 8 when it blocked Trump’s account permanently. Now that Shellenberger has continued, Twitter’s action contradicts its prior decision-making process.
“Their January 8 decision was based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted,” he notes. “But in 2019, Twitter said it did ‘not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.’” He links to the site’s own blog post on world leaders to back him up on that.
For years, Twitter had resisted calls to ban Trump.
“Blocking a world leader from Twitter,” it wrote in 2018, “would hide important info… [and] hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”https://t.co/qaqklHOHjc
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 10, 2022
More on this story via The Republic Brief:
So there’s a clear inconsistency there, and that is a seriously big issue because it’s further proof that Twitter was using whatever excuse they could find to shut Trump down. Keep in mind, Trump had tweeted out on his account the day of the January 6 riot for rioters to go home, and had explicitly called for them not to be violent. That does not appear to be the incitement to violence that the progressive activists running Twitter were claiming Trump was guilty of. CONTINUE READING…