Another day, another Twitter File. This one is from journalist Bari Weiss and it details the internal conversations around booting former President Trump from the platform.
It is clear from internal communication that even Twitter employees were not sure which rules they could cite to boot Trump permanently. They wanted to boot him, surely, but wanting something and citing an actual violation are two entirely different things.
The documents over the weekend showed that leaders at Twitter had been waiting for Trump’s next move to assign another strike that would lead to a permanent ban. When Trump did Tweet again on January 8, 2020, they analyzed the words carefully with the intent of banning. There were very few dissenters to this idea.
Weiss points out how other world leaders have said far more inflammatory things on Twitter without the same punishments and how this move looked to other world leaders. After this decision, Weiss shows that Twitter executives said that they would turn their attention on Covid misinformation next. That is the content we expect from the next round of Twitter Files and we are here for it. Watch our interpretation of Monday’s document dump on this episode of Redacted.
Some of the executives who made these autocratic decisions at Twitter say that they’ve had to go into hiding because of these reveals. In related news, Twitter says that it has dissolved the Trust and Safety Council because the company says that the council was no longer the “best structure” to gain outside insights on policies.
