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The internal discussions around the 2021 suspension of then-President Donald Trump are broken down in new information released in a “Twitter Files” release.
Internal platform correspondence that author Michael Shellenberger was able to collect and publish on Saturday shows that Twitter management had a particular strategy in place to eliminate Trump’s presence after the Capitol incursion on January 6, 2021.
In internal conversations, Twitter’s “trust and safety” team leader Yoel Roth boasted about the strategy.
On January 7, @Jack emails employees saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension
After, Roth reassures an employee that "people who care about this… aren't happy with where we are" pic.twitter.com/IfDpEVnOtR
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 10, 2022
Trump was immediately subject to the new limitation, and on January 8, 2021, he was permanently banned from Twitter.
“Progress!” exclaims a member of Roth’s Trust and Safety Team.
The exchange between Roth and his colleagues makes clear that they had been pushing @jack for greater restrictions on the speech Twitter allows around elections.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 11, 2022
Following the incident, Trump’s account had already been smacked with a brief 12-hour suspension.
Twitter cited a “risk of further incitement of violence” when it announced Trump’s indefinite ban.
Around the same time, Roth was successful in getting a clear standard for Trump’s permanent suspension, which was a decision made by Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter at the time.
Trump will be permanently banned for any speech code infractions under the new standard.
What if a user dislikes Trump *and* objects to Twitter's censorship? The tweet still gets deleted. But since the *intention* is not to deny the election result, no punishing strike is applied.
"if there are instances where the intent is unclear please feel free to raise" pic.twitter.com/8bdG6b38ej
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 11, 2022
Roth abandoned a long-standing Twitter ruling in the instance of Trump’s suspension, according to which content that was against the terms of service would be permitted if it was of sufficient public significance.
Around noon, a confused senior executive in advertising sales sends a DM to Roth.
Sales exec: "jack says: 'we will permanently suspend [Trump] if our policies are violated after a 12 hour account lock'… what policies is jack talking about?"
Roth: "*ANY* policy violation" pic.twitter.com/ExSFNM7BAb
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 11, 2022
Some of the unique speech limitations imposed on Trump’s Twitter account also applied to users who uploaded screenshots of blocked messages, which the platform’s staff found difficult to enforce.
Employees struggle with whether to punish users who share screenshots of Trump's deleted J6 tweets
"we should bounce these tweets with a strike given the screen shot violates the policy"
"they are criticising Trump, so I am bit hesitant with applying strike to this user" pic.twitter.com/dhHF2nXsHz
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 11, 2022
In response to Elon Musk’s proposals to strengthen speech rights on the network, Roth quit Twitter in November.
Roth has since been named by Musk as Twitter’s “true” CEO, with tremendous control over the platform’s major decisions.
More on this story via The Western Journal