Liberal reporter Bari Weiss is doing honest, straight-down-the-line reporting of the Twitter Files and posted Twitter Files #5 that show Twitter officials knew DJT hadn’t violated the rules, not even in a coded way. They knew there was no incitement to violence.
So far, the three reporters, including Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberg, who are posting the files, are liberals. Other reporters are helping and are tied to Ms. Weiss’s substack, The Freedom Press: @IsaacGrafstein. @SnoozyWeiss, @Olivia_Reingold, @petersavodnik, @NellieBowles.
Twitter employees knew they had no basis for banning it, but they did it anyway. As Elon Musk said, Twitter is a crime scene.
SUMMARY OF THE TWEETS
On January 8th, Donald Trump had one remaining strike and tweeted twice.
3. 7:44 am: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” pic.twitter.com/bRF7O4Ijcf
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
The pressure to ban was on.
11. In the early afternoon of January 8, The Washington Post published an open letter signed by over 300 Twitter employees to CEO Jack Dorsey demanding Trump’s ban. “We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Most Twitter employees who were consulted wanted him banned but couldn’t figure out how to hit him with the “incitement” label. They even decided they couldn’t say it was “coded” language. Despite DJT not violating any Twitter rules, the overwhelming majority eventually decided to ban his account permanently.
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
[One of the things that struck me was how our uniparty said at the time and continues to say Donald Trump incited the violence. Even these young radicals knew he hadn’t.]
There was an occasional dissenter, like a Chinese man who understood what silencing people does to a nation.
7. There were dissenters inside Twitter.
“Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.” pic.twitter.com/LtonK0gfS3
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Ms. Weiss also pointed to horrendous tweets by public officials that Twitter left up. She gave several examples. One was from the Nigerian Prime Minister telling his people to attack the Tigray Region.
23. In October 2021, Twitter allowed Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to call on citizens to take up arms against the Tigray region.
Twitter allowed the tweet to remain up, and did not ban the prime minister. pic.twitter.com/DThmGsJM1r
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
23. In October 2021, Twitter allowed Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to call on citizens to take up arms against the Tigray region.
Twitter allowed the tweet to remain up, and did not ban the prime minister. pic.twitter.com/DThmGsJM1r
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
The radical left-wingers were angry they didn’t ban DJT yet. They accused others of being Nazis while they ironically fit the description.
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
But Twitter still banned Trump even though the execs concluded he did not violate any policies.
25. But Twitter executives did ban Trump, even though key staffers said that Trump had not incited violence—not even in a “coded” way.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
It sounds like Dorsey responded to pressure, and Roth is the actual banally evil employee.
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
Foreign leaders were deeply concerned.
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
A handful of people at a social media company were able to shut down the speech of the President of the United States. Isn’t something wrong here?
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
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