In part four of the Twitter Files, Michael Shellenberger described how the decision to ban President Trump from the platform played out behind the scenes. Today, Bari Weiss has more on that topic:
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
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
9. After January 6, Twitter employees organized to demand their employer ban Trump. “There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,” said one Twitter employee. pic.twitter.com/x9Xty6ndYP
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Twitter employees who were demanding the ban got an assist from the Washington Post:
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
Internally, it wasn’t so clear that Trump had actually violated TOS.
13. “It’s pretty clear he’s saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
15. “I also am not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet,” wrote Anika Navaroli, a Twitter policy official. “I’ll respond in the elections channel and say that our team has assessed and found no vios”—or violations—“for the DJT one.” pic.twitter.com/DnJk2UUuf6
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
17. (Later, Navaroli would testify to the House Jan. 6 committee:“For months I had been begging and anticipating and attempting to raise the reality that if nothing—if we made no intervention into what I saw occuring, people were going to die.”)
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
They are looking for a reason but there’s nothing in those two tweets.
19. To understand Twitter’s decision to ban Trump, we must consider how Twitter deals with other heads of state and political leaders, including in Iran, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
For comparison purposes:
21. In October 2020, the former Malaysian Prime Minister said it was “a right” for Muslims to “kill millions of French people.”
Twitter deleted his tweet for “glorifying violence,” but he remains on the platform. The tweet below was taken from the Wayback Machine: pic.twitter.com/7tgxgCw9I9
— 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
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
After the decision not to ban Trump was made, Vijaya Gadde was still looking for a justification on the grounds that Trump was using coded language.
27. A few minutes later, Twitter employees on the “scaled enforcement team” suggest that Trump’s tweet may have violated Twitter’s Glorification of Violence policy—if you interpreted the phrase “American Patriots” to refer to the rioters. pic.twitter.com/Wszq4zBqnW
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
That quickly turned into we must ban Hitler.
29. Two hours later, Twitter executives host a 30-minute all-staff meeting.
Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde answer staff questions as to why Trump wasn’t banned yet.
But they make some employees angrier.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Even Yoel Roth seems a bit uncomfortable with comparing Trump to Hitler noting that the tone among employees has devolved to the point that it could “close of meaningful engagement.”
31. Dorsey requested simpler language to explain Trump’s suspension.
Roth wrote, “god help us [this] makes me think he wants to share it publicly” pic.twitter.com/KTMumR0rDD
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
When the suspension was announced Twitter employees were doing the Yub-Yub dance from Return of the Jedi.
33. Many at Twitter were ecstatic. pic.twitter.com/wgxuwQBLkU
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
35. By the next day, employees expressed eagerness to tackle “medical misinformation” as soon as possible: pic.twitter.com/kJKqZaSekt
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Inside Twitter, it was clear to some that something significant had changed, probably permanently.
37. But Twitter’s COO Parag Agrawal—who would later succeed Dorsey as CEO—told Head of Security Mudge Zatko: “I think a few of us should brainstorm the ripple effects” of Trump’s ban. Agrawal added: “centralized content moderation IMO has reached a breaking point now.” pic.twitter.com/8f5bSXRKk5
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
There was concern outside Twitter too.
39. Macron told an audience he didn’t “want to live in a democracy where the key decisions” were made by private players. “I want it to be decided by a law voted by your representative, or by regulation, governance, democratically discussed and approved by democratic leaders.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
41. Whether you agree with Navalny and Macron or the executives at Twitter, we hope this latest installment of #TheTwitterFiles gave you insight into that unprecedented decision.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Weiss attempting to look at the big picture.
43. Ultimately, the concerns about Twitter’s efforts to censor news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, blacklist disfavored views, and ban a president aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
45. This was reported by @ShellenbergerMD, @IsaacGrafstein, @SnoozyWeiss, @Olivia_Reingold, @petersavodnik, @NellieBowles. Follow all of our work at The Free Press: @TheFP
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
And it sounds like that is it for the Twitter Files. Previous installments have ended with a promise that more was coming but this time it sounds like that’s the end.
