The slow release of the Twitter files continued, last week. Some really juicy stuff about one of Twitter’s formerly most senior execs has also emerged, but we’ll get to that later. The “Twitter Files 3” thread concerned itself with Twitter’s actions leading up to the suspension of then-President Donald Trump.
They show that, contrary to supporter’s denials that Twitter has anything to do with free speech, “even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech”. Even more alarming, given that self-awareness of the effects on free speech, was the collusion of the company with the Deep State and decisions by senior executives to violate their own policies.
As soon as they finished banning Trump, Twitter execs started processing new power. They prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses – perhaps even Joe Biden. The “new administration,” says one exec, “will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.”
Although the internal debate at Twitter intensified on three key days around 6 January 2021, the groundwork was laid over months, if not the four years of the Trump presidency. This was no spontaneous decision by Twitter execs: it was the culmination of a slow tightening of the screws on free speech, in close collusion with the Deep State.
Before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives. As @BariWeiss reported, the firm had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6.
As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” [violations] as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.
More tellingly, Twitter execs were “getting a kick out of” their close collaboration with federal agencies. They were getting to put their hands on the wheels of power in Washington, and it was going to their heads. A series of tweets from Yoel Roth show him practically giddy with excitement over getting to meet real, live FBI agents.
All that quickly went to their heads.A smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs like Roth and Vijaya Gadde […] were a high-speed Supreme Court of moderation, issuing content rulings on the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President.
During this time, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content.
And trying to keep it hush-hush. Some of their communications show them arguing whether to publicly semi-announce their collusion with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by euphemistically calling it “partnerships with outside experts”, or even just “partnerships”. In the run-up to the election, as one post shows, Roth was meeting weekly with not just the FBI and DHS, but the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
What were they discussing? Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Roth’s report to FBI/DHS/DNI is almost farcical in its self-flagellating tone:
“We blocked the NYP story, then unblocked it (but said the opposite)… comms is angry, reporters think we’re idiots… in short, FML” (fuck my life)
Some of Roth’s later Slacks indicate his weekly confabs with federal law enforcement involved separate meetings.
What’s also notable is what isn’t there:
Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.
Matt Taibbi
In other words, the war on free speech, the collusion with the Deep State, the suppression of vital news stories… all ran just one way.
Now, I promised to get back to the juicy stuff about a particular Twitter exec…
You’ll notice the name Yoel Roth popping up a lot. Roth was Global Head of Trust & Safety at Twitter. He also has some, ah, interesting ideas.
Roth’s PhD thesis revolved around gay hookup apps like Grindr. In part of it, Roth argued, as PJMedia reports, “that Grindr should be ‘safely connecting queer young adults’ — including minor children.”
He also retweeted a Salon (an online platform that has published openly pro-paedophile articles) piece on Student-teacher sex: When is it OK? “Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?” Roth tweeted.
Roth also tweeted “I enjoy having the kinds of meetings where googling ‘gay bareback porn’ is considered academic work”.
This was all at the same that Twitter banned the word “Groomer” as a supposed “anti-LGBT slur”. At the same time, Twitter refused to take down videos of what it knew were minors being sexually exploited. In the end, DHS had to intervene. The abused minors are now pursuing a lawsuit against Twitter.
Oddly enough, within the first few weeks of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (and the firing of many of the aforementioned senior execs), hundreds, if not thousands of accounts trading child exploitation material were removed. More are being banned every day.
So, why did it take a new broom to start sweeping Twitter clean?