The Twitter Files Part 3 reveals what led to Trump’s removal from social media platform

The Removal Of Donald Trump – Part 1 • Matt Taibbi • (@mtaibbi)

Matt Taibbi reported on the third installment of Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’

The third installment of Elon Musk’s Twitter Files delved into what led to the removal of former President Trump’s account.

In “part one” of the third installment, which dates from October 2020-January 6th, Substack writer Matt Taibbi told his followers, “We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies.”

“Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech,” Taibbi wrote on Friday.

He then shared a screenshot of a Twitter employee asking, “Is this the first sitting head of state to ever be suspended?”

Taibbi reported that executives at Twitter “started processing new power” following their decision to ban Trump, indicating they were “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.’”

One unnamed executive alleged the “context surrounding” the actions of Trump and his supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years” contributed to the ban.

“In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways,” Taibbi wrote. “The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.”

After alluding to the second installment of the Twitter Files that addressed the shadowbanning of conservatives, Taibbi reported, “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’ as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.”

Taibbi then shared internal Slack messages from Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, who made light out of heightened discussions with federal agencies following Jan. 6. Roth joked about the lack of “generic enough” calendar descriptions to conceal the “very interesting” meetings he had.

“One particular slack channel offers an unique window into the evolving thinking of top officials in late 2020 and early 2021,” Taibbi reported. “On October 8th, 2020, executives opened a channel called ‘us2020_xfn_enforcement.’ Through J6, this would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved ‘high-profile’ accounts (often called ‘VITs’ or ‘Very Important Tweeters’).”

He continued, “There was at least some tension between Safety Operations – a larger department whose staffers used a more rules-based process for addressing issues like porn, scams, and threats – and a smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs like Roth and [Twitter’s former trust and policy chief Vijaya] Gadde. The latter group 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. While we’re still at the start of reviewing the #TwitterFiles, we’re finding out more about these interactions every day,” Taibbi added.

Taibbi then turned to correspondence involving Twitter’s policy director Nick Pickles with one employee asking him if Twitter should say it “detects ‘misinfo’ through ‘ML, human review, and **partnerships with outside experts?*’ adding, “I know that’s been a slippery process… not sure if you want our public explanation to hang on that.”

Pickles himself is seen asking if Twitter could “just say ‘partnerships,’ later writing, “e.g. not sure we’d describe the FBI/DHS as experts.”

Taibbi revealed that Roth not only met with the FBI, DHS and the Office of Director of National Intelligence, he apparently discussed the censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

“Some of Roth’s later Slacks indicate his weekly confabs with federal law enforcement involved separate meetings. Here, he ghosts the FBI and DHS, respectively, to go first to an ‘Aspen Institute thing,’ then take a call with Apple,” Taibbi wrote while sharing a screenshot of an exchange.

Taibbi shared another message, explaining, “Here, the FBI sends reports about a pair of tweets,” one from Twitter user John Basham claiming “Between 2% and 25% of Ballots by Mail are Being Rejected for Errors.”

“The FBI-flagged tweet then got circulated in the enforcement Slack. Twitter cited Politifact to say the first story was ‘proven to be false,’ then noted the second was already deemed ‘no vio on numerous occasions,’” Taibbi reported. “The group then decides to apply a ‘Learn how voting is safe and secure’ label because one commenter says, ‘it’s totally normal to have a 2% error rate.’ Roth then gives the final go-ahead to the process initiated by the FBI.”

“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,” Taibbi wrote.

Taibbi then turned to an October 2020 tweet made by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who joked that he voted with his mail-in ballot and then “voted the ballots of my deceased parents and grandparents. They vote just like me!”

This led to internal discussions with one Twitter employee saying “I agree it’s a joke… but he’s also literally admitting in a tweet a crime.”

“The group declares Huck’s an ‘edge case,’ and though one notes, ‘we don’t make exceptions for jokes or satire,’ they ultimately decide to leave him be, because ‘we’ve poked enough bears,’” Taibbi reported. “‘Could still mislead people… could still mislead people,’ the humor-averse group declares, before moving on from Huckabee. Roth suggests moderation even in this absurd case could depend on whether or not the joke results in ‘confusion.’ This seemingly silly case actually foreshadows serious later issues.”

Taibbi reported that Twitter executives “often expand criteria to subjective issues like intent (yes, a video is authentic, but why was it shown?), orientation (was a banned tweet shown to condemn, or support?), or reception (did a joke cause “confusion”?),” adding “This reflex will become key in J6.”

He then highlighted an October 2020 tweet Trump made declaring “A Rigged Election!” in response to a local report out of Ohio where nearly 50,000 voters received the wrong ballot.

Twitter employees were preparing to slap a “mail-in voting is safe” label on Trump’s tweet but ultimately refrained after realizing “the events took place” and was “factually accurate,” internal communications show.

Just days before the election, a tweet Trump made that read “Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA,” was “visibility filtered” so that no one could like or share the tweet.

“Here, senior execs didn’t appear to have a particular violation, but still worked fast to make sure a fairly anodyne Trump tweet couldn’t be ‘replied to, shared, or liked,'” Taibbi wrote.

“Very well done on speed,” Roth commended his staff for acting quickly on the Trump tweet.

Actor James Woods, who had a tweet flagged by the DNC as revealed in the first batch of the “Twitter Files” pertaining to Hunter Biden, resurfaced in the third batch, this time for a tweet angrily reacting to the warning label it slapped onto the Trump tweet.

Twitter Employees discussed punishing Woods and suggest they “hit him hard on future vio with firmer basis.”

Taibbi then pivoted to another tweet made by Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga, which was hit with a “stay informed” label after writing “Say NO to big tech censorship!… Mailed ballots are more prone to fraud than in-person balloting… It’s just common sense.”

Twitter decided to go with “soft intervention” with Roth concerned about “wah wah censorship” backlash, according to released discussions.

“Meanwhile, there are multiple instances of involving pro-Biden tweets warning Trump ‘may try to steal the election’ that got surfaced, only to be approved by senior executives. This one, they decide, just ‘expresses concern that mailed ballots might not make it on time.'” Taibbi reported.

The tweet, written by blue-check Twitter user Elijah Daniel, read “they’re going to try to steal the election. you have one week, if you haven’t voted yet- don’t mail. drop it off or vote early.”

Taibbi revealed that the hashtag #StealOurVotes, which referred to Trump and the conservative-leaning Supreme Court with the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett would steal the election, was “approved” by Twitter employees since it was “understandable.”

In another example, an October 2020 tweet from former Attorney General Eric Holder claimed the Postal Service was being “deliberately crippled” by the Trump administration. It was initially hit with a warning label, which Roth asked to reverse.

“Some executives wanted to use the new deamplification tool to silently limit Trump’s reach more right away,” Taibbi wrote, noting they wanted to suppress a Trump tweet from Dec. 10. “However, in the end, the team had to use older, less aggressive labeling tools at least for that day, until the ‘L3 entities’ went live the following morning.”

“The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before J6. The ban will come after other avenues are exhausted,” Taibbi tweeted. “In Twitter docs execs frequently refer to ‘bots,’ e.g. ‘let’s put a bot on that.’ A bot is just any automated heuristic moderation rule. It can be anything: every time a person in Brazil uses ‘green’ and ‘blob’ in the same sentence, action might be taken.”

He highlighted an example where Twitter moderators added a “bot” to a Trump claim made on Breitbart which would be “invisibly watching” both Trump and Breitbart.

Taibbi took time to explain what certain key terms Twitter employees used in its censorship practices. To “bounce,” for example, meant to give a Twitter account a timeout, which usually lasted 12 hours. “Interstitial” means putting physical label atop of a tweet so it cannot be seen. “PII,” which stands for “Public Interest Interstitial” is an “interstitial” applied for “‘public interests’ reasons.” “Proactive V” refers to proactive visibility filtering.

“This is all necessary background to J6. Before the riots, the company was engaged in an inherently insane/impossible project, trying to create an ever-expanding, ostensibly rational set of rules to regulate every conceivable speech situation that might arise between humans,” Taibbi wrote. “This project was preposterous yet its leaders were unable to see this, having become infected with groupthing, coming to believe – sincerely – that it was Twitter’s responsibility to control, as much as possible, what people could talk about, how often, and with whom.”

Taibbi shed light on the “panic” that erupted internally on Jan. 6. In one exchange Roth is shown executing the “bouncing” of Trump’s account.

“This theme of Policy perhaps being stressed by queries from Communications executives – who themselves have to answer the public’s questions – occasionally appears,” Taibbi wrote. “The first company-wide email from Gadde on January 6th announced that 3 Trump tweets had been bounced, but more importantly signaled a determination to use legit ‘violations’ as a guide for any possible permanent suspension.”

A screenshot of an exchange reacting lividly to a Trump tweet telling his supporters “”Go home with love & in peace.”

“What the actual f—?” one employee reacted. “Sorry, I actually got emotionally angry seeing that. Turns out I’m not a full robot. Who knew?”

“It’s gut-wrenching,” another replied. “He’s a horrible human being.”

A screenshot shared by Roth showed that Trump was hit with a “TON” of “duplicate” bots.

Taibbi foreshadowed of parts two and three of the Jan. 6-centric Twitter Files. On Saturday, journalist Michael Shellenberger will report on how Twitter internally contemplated the fluid changes that were made to its policies. On Sunday, Taibbi teased that The Free Press editor Bari Weiss will report on the “plaudits” Twitter received from “‘our partners’ in Washington,” referring to government agencies.

On Thursday, Weiss revealed Twitter’s efforts to suppress prominent conservatives, a resurfaced September 2018 clip of Dorsey’s testimony to a congressional committee was asked point-blank whether Twitter “censors” its users.

“It’s gut-wrenching,” another replied. “He’s a horrible human being.”

A screenshot shared by Roth showed that Trump was hit with a “TON” of “duplicate” bots.

Taibbi foreshadowed of parts two and three of the Jan. 6-centric Twitter Files. On Saturday, journalist Michael Shellenberger will report on how Twitter internally contemplated the fluid changes that were made to its policies. On Sunday, Taibbi teased that The Free Press editor Bari Weiss will report on the “plaudits” Twitter received from “‘our partners’ in Washington,” referring to government agencies.

On Thursday, Weiss revealed Twitter’s efforts to suppress prominent conservatives, a resurfaced September 2018 clip of Dorsey’s testimony to a congressional committee was asked point-blank whether Twitter “censors” its users.

Weiss also detailed Twitter’s actions towards popular viral personality Libs of TikTok, revealing that despite the numerous punishments the account faced for alleged “hateful conduct” policy violations, Twitter internally admitted Libs of TikTok had not done so.

Taibbi, who published the first installment of the “Twitter Files,” addressed what led to Twitter censoring the  Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election.

However, it was later revealed that Jim Baker, Twitter’s deputy general counsel, had vetted the first batch of “Twitter Files” without Musk’s knowledge, which led to his termination.

While revealing internal discussions over how to explain Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, Baker told his colleagues, “I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked” but added “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”

Additionally, Taibbi initially reported, “Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story.”

It is unclear whether Baker’s involvement in vetting the “Twitter Files” led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Musk had been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter’s past and present actions when it comes to curating content on the platform, including censored content. Twitter infamously blocked its users from sharing the New York Post’s reporting of Hunter Biden’s laptop in tweets and in direct messages.

At the time, Twitter Safety alleged that the articles were in violation of its “hacked materials policy.” Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey admitted his companies actions were a mistake.

Some critics believe the suppression of the Hunter Biden scandal by Big Tech and the media at large was enough to sway the election in favor of his father.

‘Twitter Files’ part 3 details ‘internal debate’ over Trump’s ban after Jan. 6 riot

Twitter executives decided to ban then-President Donald Trump from their social media platform after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, while maintaining regular check-ins with the FBI and other federal authorities as they decided what postings should be targeted for censorship, the latest report from new company CEO Elon Musk reveals.

In one of a series of tweets Friday evening, independent journalist Matt Taibbi said internal company messages showed how Twitter’s internal standards eroded during the months leading up to Jan. 6, with high-ranking executives violating their own policies while interacting with various federal agencies.

Taibbi posted messages that he said “show Twitter executives getting a kick out of intensified relationships with federal agencies.”

In one, Yoel Roth, then Twitter’s head of trust and safety, appears to describe how he struggled to disguise the purpose of weekly meetings with FBI and other government officials that helped guide the company’s decisions on policing posts on its platform.

“I’m a big believer in calendar transparency. But I reached a certain point where my meetings became…very interesting…to people and there weren’t meeting names generic enough to cover,” he wrote.

In response, someone whose identity is obscured, suggested, “Very Boring Business Meeting That Is Definitely Not About Trump :)”

Another message shows Yoel Roth, lamenting the personal fallout from Twitter’s apparently on-the-fly decision to suppress The Post’s exclusive, October 2020 scoop about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop on the unfounded assertion it was based on “hacked materials.”

“We blocked the NYP story, then we unblocked it (but said the opposite)…and now we’re in a messy situation where our policy is in shambles, comms [public relations] is angry, reporters think we’re idiots and refactoring an exceedingly complex policy 18 days out from the election,” he wrote.

Roth added: “In short, FML [f–k my life].

Taibbi said some redacted messages showed “the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban.”

One message said, “we currently analyze tweets and consider them at a tweet-by-tweet basis which does not appropriately take into account the context surrounding.”

It continued, “you can use the yelling fire into a crowded theater example — context matters and the narrative that trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly last 4+ years must be taken into account.”

Taibbi wrote, “Before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives.”

“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,” he added.

Before banning Trump, Twitter execs started slapping his tweets with warning labels and on Dec. 10, 2020, Taibbi said, a message shows that “Twitter executives announced a new ‘L3 deamplification’ tool” to also limit users from sharing Trump’s messages.

“Some executives wanted to use the new deamplification tool to silently limit Trump’s reach more right away,” Taibbi wrote.

Taibbi said the first tweet under consideration included a video of US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) appearing on the conservative Newsmax cable TV station over the false claim that “Trump got 11 million more votes.”

“However, in the end, the team had to use older, less aggressive labeling tools at least for that day, until the ‘L3 entities’ went live the following morning,” Taibbi wrote.

“The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before J6. The ban will come after other avenues are exhausted.”

Taibbi’s tweets came a day after fellow independent journalist Bari Weiss posted photos showing how Twitter used secret tools to “shadow ban” certain users and suppress their posts on the platform.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was put on Twitter’s “Trends Blacklist” after arguing against COVID-19 lockdowns, leading him to tweet Thursday, “I’m curious about what role the government played in Twitter’s suppression of covid policy discussion.”

“We will see with time, I suppose,” he added.

Conservative commentators Dan Bongino, a Fox News host, and radio host and conservative activist Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA were also put on a “Search Blacklist” and slapped with a “Do Not Amplify” label, respectively.

Bongino fumed on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Thursday night that his treatment was “some Soviet-style bulls–t” and Kirk tweeted Friday, “We’ll never know how different the country would be had they never put their thumb on the scale.”

“All of this is evil, un-American, and it should be criminal,” Kirk added.

Last week, Taibbi kicked off the series of “Twitter Files” tweets by revealing internal documents tied to the company’s suppression of The Post’s October 2020 scoop about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.

“They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography,” he wrote.

Download PDF Twitter Files Part 3 Summary PDF and here is the PDF source

The Twitter Files Part 2: Soviet-Style ‘Secret Blacklists’ and Shadow-Bans of Conservatives Exposed

What is in The Twitter Files, Part Two?

The document dump follows a similar batch of recent disclosures from fellow Substacker Matt Taibbi, who dove into the details of Twitter’s October 2020 decision to halt the spread of a New York Post story about a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. Both Weiss and Taibbi’s threads are part of what Musk is calling “The Twitter Files.”

The thesis of the publication of the documents is that Twitter enforced its policies unevenly, punishing Republicans. Musk made it plain in a Thursday tweet: “As @bariweiss clearly describes, the rules were enforced against the right, but not against the left.” Twitter has, in the past, uncovered internal and algorithmic bias in the opposite direction: In 2018, Twitter’s own researchers found a “statistically significant difference favoring the political right wing” in the United States and five other countries.

Weiss wrote in one of her examples, “Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a ‘Trends Blacklist,’ which prevented his tweets from trending.” In the internal view of Bhattacharya’s account, a yellow label reading “Trends Blacklist” appears, which would have excluded his tweets from “Trending Topics.” Another label reads “recent abuse strike.” Whether placement on the blacklist follows a strike is unclear.

The release of the controversial “Twitter Files” continues, confirming the previous left-wing agenda of the social media giant. The latest evidence reveals how conservatives were shadow-banned from the site despite not violating any rules or policies.  Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk continues his work to overhaul the site and is now uncovering the lengths former executives went to censor and block conservatives on the platform in surreptitious ways.  A new series of tweets published by former NY Times Editor Bari Weiss confirms that Twitter had a series of “secret blacklists”, which gave executives the capability of shutting down a person’s profile, even if they did not violate community standards.  “Teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss explained.

Another of Weiss’ screenshots showed that Fox News contributor Dan Bongino had been placed under “Search Blacklist.” MAGA activist Charlie Kirk’s profile had been labeled “Do not Amplify.”

Weiss also revealed the existence of a high-level Twitter team, “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support” (SIP-PES), which included the company’s chief legal officer, head of trust and safety, and CEO. User ‘Libs of TikTok,’ an account that re-posts individuals’ videos and calls them examples of liberal brain rot, was labeled “Search Blacklist” and “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.” That team, Weiss said, was responsible for suspending the account multiple times, but did not delete a viral tweet containing the owner’s address –the implication being that Twitter executives were liberal liars and hypocrites, as were the policies they enforced. Chaya Raichik, who runs the Libs of TikTok account, said she was “feeling entirely vindicated” by Weiss’ work.

Continuing, Weiss wrote, “What many people call ‘shadow banning,’ Twitter executives and employees call ‘Visibility Filtering’ or ‘VF.’ Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.” Whether you believe “shadow banning” and “visibility filtering” are synonymous determines whether you think the second group of Twitter Files are a scandal or a nothingburger.

To many of Twitter’s own employees, outside journalists, and the terminally online, the difference between the two is large and obvious—of course, they say, and Twitter had already disclaimed that it did such things. In May 2018, the company announced a slate of moderation features in a blog post headlined “Serving healthy conversation.” Ex-head of trust and safety head Del Harvey wrote, “There are many new signals we’re taking in, most of which are not visible externally… These signals will now be considered in how we organize and present content in communal areas like conversation and search.” That’s not very clear, it’s unmemorable, and most likely forgot about it. But put more plainly, it might say: Twitter will hide your tweets or your profile if you behave badly, and Twitter gets to choose what that means.

To those who remember that post, the documents make a mountain of a molehill. They describe how Twitter went about doing something that we knew it had been doing. But to the company’s critics, the screenshots are proof that the company was lying through its teeth when its chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde wrote in July 2018, “We do not shadow ban.”

To my mind, there is genuine news value in knowing whose accounts, exactly, Twitter de-amplified. The screenshots do not, however, prove that the company only banned the political right: Weiss’ cache may be representative of the larger corpus of accounts, or may not be. Without more documents and some assurance that we are viewing a complete or representative sample of limited accounts, we cannot know for certain.

Twitter’s former head of product, Kayvon Beykpour, said Weiss’ framing of the blacklists was “deliberately misleading.” His response provides the best illumination in the debate over how to interpret the second Twitter Files dispatch: “We never denied de-amplifying things… you are characterizing any de-amplification as equating to shadow banning which is either a lazy interpretation or deliberately misleading. De-amplification is obviously necessary and even Elon himself believes so.”

Elon himself does believe so. Beykpour quote-tweeted a Dec. 2 announcement from the Twitter CEO reading, “Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.”

What is the difference between “shadow banning” and “visibility filtering”?

To someone who is attempting to skim this news story—perhaps they do not use Twitter at all—the daylight between “de-amplification” and “shadow banning” is miniscule. The split between the hairs is thin.

Weiss’ side of the debate holds that any interference by Twitter that hides someone’s tweets is shadowbanning. She writes, “Twitter once had a mission ‘to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.’ Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.” The quote she deploys comes from Twitter’s mission statement.

In a July 2018 blog post, Beykpour wrote, “The best definition we found is this: deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster.” The key word there is “everyone.” To Beykpour and Gadde, the post’s coauthor, an action that hides tweets from some people is not a shadow ban.

Hidden from everyone? Shadow ban. Hidden from only some people? Not shadow ban. Got it?

Beykpour’s side of the debate argues for nuance. Twitter’s feed, its main feature, ranks tweets, and some accounts rank lower because of past behavior, he argues. Some are banned from auto-populating in search altogether, but if you visited a profile directly, you would see all the tweets from that account.

“We certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology. We do rank tweets and search results,” he wrote with Gadde.

Nuance is, of course, something that Twitter as a social network is famous for not having.

Perhaps Elon Musk wants to have it both ways. He may de-amplify accounts and filter their visibility, as Jack Dorsey and others had done before him, but he may say he will not enact any “shadow bans,” attempting to shed all the baggage those words arrive with. He desperately desires to be seen as a free speech champion while doing all the things that made Twitter appealing to the advertisers that are so hurriedly decamping. He has made strident statements about being a “free speech absolutist” while also declaring he would never allow bankrupt conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to return.

What’s next in the Twitter Files?

Could Twitter release all the documents it’s already given to hand-picked journalists, allowing the public and other news outlets to sift through them and make their own conclusions?

Ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has called on his former pal to do just that, writing that “If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions? Make everything public now.”

Alex Stamos, former Facebook security chief and current head of the Stanford Internet Observatory, replied to Musk’s remark about rules being enforced against the right, but not against the left, asking, “How about you provide the transparency necessary for external groups to verify that statement?”

Musk retorted, “You operate a propaganda platform.” Musk has found the journalists he trusts. It seems unlikely we will see the files for ourselves.

Weiss shared that Twitter shadow-banned or blocked a person’s tweets or trending themes to minimize their reach – without the users’ knowledge.   One engineer told her, “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do.”  Weiss adds that two additional Twitter employees confirmed that statement.   Weiss claimed former executives Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth, and subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal were aware of the practice.   “Twitter denied that it does such things. In 2018, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: “We do not shadow ban.” They added: “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology,” she wrote.  But in effect, that’s exactly what they did, using what employees called “visibility filtering.”  “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told Weiss’ new publication, The Free Press.  “‘VF’ refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the ‘trending’ page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches,” she added.   Weiss points to the account LibsofTikTok, a conservative account that brings attention to social media videos and posts that promote a progressive liberal agenda.

Weiss notes that the profile’s creator, Chaya Raichik, was subjected to six suspensions in 2022. Each time, she was blocked from posting to the site for a week.  Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.”  But an internal memo from the social media organization showed she did not violate any policy. Still, they justified her suspension claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.”  In a tweet Thursday, LibsofTikTok thanked Musk for his work to clean up Twitter.  “Twitter won’t be perfect in the future, but it will be *much* better,” he replied.  Musk also vowed to end the practice of shadow banning.  “Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadow banned, the reason why and how to appeal,” he tweeted.  He also defended former CEO Jack Dorsey alleging he was “unaware of systemic bias” at Twitter.   “The inmates were running the asylum,” he wrote.

Elon Musk Retweets “Twitter Files Part 2”, Reveals Secret Suppression Of Right-Wing Commentators

Bari Weiss published second instalment of the Twitter Files, a series of tweets exposing the microblogging platform’s efforts to suppress free speech.

The second installment of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” dropped Thursday night and reveals how the social media giant was secretly “blacklisting” conservative tweets and users.

Independent journalist Bari Weiss detailed in a series of posts how Twitter used so-called “shadow banning” to limit the visibility of tweets coming from far-right users.

Conservative talk show host Dan Bongino, Stanford University’s anti-COVID lockdown advocate Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk were among the users targeted for suppression by Twitter, according to Weiss.

The former New York Times and Wall Street Journal writer said the blacklists were built “in secret” and “without informing users.”

“A new [Twitter Files] investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics — all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss wrote in a tweet Thursday.

She notes that the company strayed from its original mission of giving “everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers” by developing the methods to suppress specific individuals.

Bhattacharya’s account, for example, was flagged as being on a “trends blacklist,” according to Weiss, who shared an image of his account from Twitter’s point of view with the yellow tag indicating the restriction.

“Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a ‘Trends Blacklist,’ which prevented his tweets from trending,” Weiss wrote.

An image of Bongino’s account showed a similar yellow notice that read “Search Blacklist.”

“Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino who at one point was slapped with a ‘Search Blacklist,’” Weiss wrote.

witter has vehemently denied that it “shadow bans” users.

Weiss notes that top Twitter executives, including former head of legal policy and trust Vijaya Gadde and head of product  Kayvon Beykpour, have denied in the past that the company “shadow bans” users.

“We do not shadow ban,” Gadde and Beykpour said in 2018, per Weiss. “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”

“People are asking us if we shadow ban. We don’t. Read more to get all the facts,” the company also said in a 2018 tweet.

That same year, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey also claimed that the company didn’t restrict accounts with certain “political viewpoints.”

“We don’t shadow ban, and we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints,” Dorsey wrote in a tweet.

“We do rank tweets by default to make Twitter more immediately relevant (which can be flipped off). More on ranking signals,” he added, linking to a company blog post co-authored by Gadde, known as the company’s “censorship chief.”

Weiss reports that the practice of suppressing conservative voices is known internally as “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.”

“Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” a senior Twitter employee told Weiss.

“Visibility Filtering” allows the company to “block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the ‘trending’ page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches,” according to Weiss.

“We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” a Twitter engineer told Weiss.

Weiss found that the group responsible for deciding which accounts to blacklist was known as the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET.

“It often handled up to 200 ‘cases’ a day,” according to Weiss.

But beyond SRT-GET, the secretive Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support team, or SIP-PES, was responsible for the most “politically sensitive decisions.”

“This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others,” according to Weiss.

“This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made,” she added.

The popular Libs of TikTok Twitter account is one conservative profile that Weiss says fell under the purview of the SIP-PES team.

In an image shared by Weiss, the Libs of TikTok account appeared to have a “Trends Blacklist” and had a red banner warning, “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.”

“Think high follower account, controversial,” a Twitter employee told Weiss of the types of accounts SIP-PES would handle. “There would be no ticket or anything” for these accounts, according to the employee.

Libs of TikTok , run by Chaya Raichik since November 2020, has over 1.4 million followers and is marked as “high profile” internally by Twitter.

According to Weiss, Raichik says Libs of TikTok was suspended six times in 2022, with the bans lasting as long as a week, for purportedly violating the company’s policy against “hateful conduct.”

However, an internal SIP-PES missive from October 2022, discovered by Weiss, notes that Libs of TikTok “has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy” since the account’s seventh suspension.

“The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of ‘hospitals and medical providers’ by insinuating ‘that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming,’” Weiss found, noting that “No action was taken” on a November 2022 tweet that revealed Raichik’s home address.

An internal Slack message obtained by Weiss from Twitter’s former global head of trust and safety revealed that the company uses technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects when a direct violation can’t be found.

Weiss also found that Roth sought to expand “non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering.”

“The hypothesis underlying much of what we’ve implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure, and limiting the spread/virality of content is a good way to do that,” Roth wrote.

“We got Jack on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations — especially for other policy domains,” added Roth.

Weiss’s tweets followed Friday’s bombshell revelations by fellow independent journalist Matt Taibbi, whose Twitter posts were promoted by new company owner Elon Musk as “what really happened with the Hunter Biden suppression story by Twitter.”

Taibbi said his reporting uncovered the “extraordinary steps” Twitter took in response to The Post’s blockbuster scoop about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop in October 2020, including “removing links and posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe.’”

“They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography,” he wrote.

Taibbi said the decision was made behind the back of Dorsey, with former general counsel Gadde — who was reportedly fired by Musk when he took over in October — “playing a key role.”

Undated internal company messages showed Gadde and others discussing how the company would cite concern that the story was based on “hacked materials,” even though it had no evidence to support that notion.

A former employee reportedly told Taibbi that “everyone knew this was f–ked.”

But the company’s “response was to essentially to err on the side of … continuing to err,” Taibbi said.

In addition to suppressing the story, Twitter locked out The Post from its main Twitter account after demanding the removal of six tweets — which The Post refused.

After a two-week stalemate sparked outrage at Twitter, the social media giant caved and unlocked the account, saying it was revising its “Hacked Materials Policy” and “updating our practice of not retroactively overturning prior enforcement.”

Last week, former Twitter head of trust and safety Roth admitted during a interview that it was wrong to suppress The Post’s reporting, saying that “for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter.”

And on Tuesday, Musk announced that he’d fired Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker, a controversial former top FBI lawyer, over his “possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue.”

Musk said he’d questioned Baker about Twitter’s response to the laptop story and found his answers “unconvincing.”

Taibbi also tweeted Tuesday that Baker was behind the delay Friday in releasing his “Twitter Files” tweets because he’d been “vetting” the underlying material “without knowledge of new management.”

Taibbi said Weiss uncovered Baker’s involvement when she learned “that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim.”

“When she called to ask ‘Jim’s’ last name, the answer came back: ‘Jim Baker,’” Taibbi wrote.

“‘My jaw hit the floor,’ says Weiss.”

Twitter users who were secretly “shadow-banned” by the social media giant under previous management praised new CEO Elon Musk for releasing records that show how their speech was suppressed on the platform.   Stanford University professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya offered his thanks to Musk and independent journalist Bari Weiss for revealing Thursday night that he’d been put on Twitter’s “Trends Blacklist” after arguing against COVID-19 lockdowns.  “Sunshine is the best disinfectant,” Bhattacharya tweeted.    The health policy expert also said that “censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures” and harmed “a generation of children.”  “I’m curious about what role the government played in Twitter’s suppression of covid policy discussion,” Bhattacharya added. “We will see with time, I suppose.”

The Twitter Files Part 1:
What Secret Details The Document Revealed And What Is It Impact?

The Twitter Files • Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi)

A look at the release of Twitter files, what it reveals,
what attempts to dilute the information showcase.
Why the 2nd round of Twitter files is not out yet?

The Twitter Files……

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk had promised to release the Twitter Files to uphold the principle of transparency. The files were meant to grant an insight into what happened at Twitter before Musk acquired the firm. It was specifically meant to release information about Twitter’s election interference. The Twitter Files were released on Friday and journalist Matt Taibii and Bari Weiss were the first journalists who gained access to the files.

Matt Taibii disclosed some of the information the Twitter Files had and added that more information will follow. Elon Musk said that the files that were released were just part one of the Twitter Files and more will come soon. When the Twitter Files were released, they did reveal a lot. Many people in America and around the world have for long suspected that Twitter has a political bias and it censors people who are not aligned with political ideology of the platform.

It was last week that Elon Musk dangled the arrival of a promised multiday blitz of internal company documents, a stunt he pumped up to his 120 million followers — starting with the backstory on the company’s late-2020 decision to block users from sharing coverage of Hunter Biden’s leaked laptop files.  The first episode came on Friday night, in a 40-tweet thread from journalist Matt Taibbi, who had been provided some of the company’s internal files and emails.

Twitter employees’ conversations revealing how Twitter’s former executives were being influenced by outsiders especially politican parties. Musk has shared the the thread of Tweets, originally published by an Independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who first shared on his official Twitter handle. Calling it ‘A Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out of the control of designer’, Matt Taibbi has shared internal sensitive documents revealing the conversation around the cenorship of a story published in the New York Post.

Thread 1: Twitter Files’ was exposing how the executives had started being influenced by the political parties from outside to suppress and remove some sensitive stories on the platform. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. Morover, thread 9 mentioned that celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party.

In further tweets, he revealed Twitter had taken steps to suppress the story from the New York Post. It involved removing links and posting warnings calling it ’Unsafe’.  “They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved to for extreme cases, e.g child pornography,” Taibbi said in the tweet thread.

Detailing about the New York published Biden Secret Emails on October 2, 2020, which was based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, Matt Taibbi called it Twitter files Part one on how and why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story.

In further tweets, he revealed Twitter had taken steps to suppress the story from the New York Post. It involved removing links and posting warnings calling it ’Unsafe’.  “They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved to for extreme cases, e.g child pornography,” Taibbi said in the tweet thread.

The thread informed that White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, Taibbi said. “It led public p policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams.”

Twitter replied Strom that the laptop story has been removed for violation of the company’s ‘Hacked materials’ policy.  The thread informed that decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.  Taibbi even quoted a former employee saying, “They just freelanced it. Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

The entire thread also reveals messages/emails from the US politicians concerned about the state of ‘free-speech’ and the kind of authority commanded by ‘big tech’ companies warning that the ‘government may need to intervene.’  Elon Musk shared the entire thread by saying ‘Handled’. He referred to the term used by Twitter employees for removing or suppressing some posts due to outside influence. He said Part 2 of Twitter files will be released tomorrow.

Just a freewheeling online chat Saturday night that featured a cast of colorful personalities talking about free speech.  The delay offers a window into some of the challenges Musk is facing as he attempts a radical overhaul of the platform he just bought — changing not just the company’s staffing and strategy, but its politics, shifting a largely progressive-leaning platform to one committed to a more libertarian vision of free speech.

Taibbi said Tuesday that complications involving a Twitter lawyer had been holding up the rest of the documents, suggesting the lawyer was working at odds with Musk’s executives. Musk had tweeted 20 minutes earlier that the lawyer had been “exited” from the company.  In an earlier text exchange with POLITICO, Taibbi had pointed to internal conflict — and Twitter’s own corporate culture — as the source of the delay. “The company is used to operating in open defiance of its CEO,” Taibbi said. “Now, most of those higher-ranking people are gone, but this is still a logistical battle more than anything. So if you see delays and other head-scratching things, please keep that in mind.”   didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some points to take in…

Twitter’s rights as a company

Whilst Twitter has received a lot of criticism for its political bias, it should be flagged that as a company, it is allowed to have bias. Many, including Elon Musk believe that Twitter is a public sphere, in the way Habermas conceptualised the public sphere. Ban on Twitter is equal to ban from the town square so to say. Whilst that may or may not be true, according to American law, Twitter is not a town square but simply a company, it can decide what kinds of tweets it will allow and what kind of tweets it won’t allow. Of courcs, if a consistent pattern is noticed, where it is discriminating against a certain race, group or politcal ideology, people have the option to knock the door of courts.

Sanctity of democracy

What Twitter does not have a right to is colluding with an American political party to suppress speech that is against the interest of that political party. The part 1 of Twitter Files published by Matt Taibii reveals exactly that. In the run up to the 2020 elections, Democrats would send email to Twitter with links of tweets that were against the interest of the Democratic party and Twitter would respond by writing “we’ll handle them”. “Handling” in this context meant suppressing those tweets, deleting them or deleting the account which wrote those tweets. Democrats are avoiding the story and downplaying it. It is crucial to understand what the Twitter Files reveal – an American political party colluded with an American social media firm to suppress information that is against the interest of the political party, just before the 2020 elections. Information for example about actions of the president candidate’s son, which suggest he was using his relationship with his father to sell access. Prevention of dissemination of this news story might have impacted the election results of 2020, according to the Republicans.

Why was a former FBI employee vetting the release of Twitter Files without informing Musk?

All of this information is public now just because of Elon Musk’s decision to release internal documents and communication of Twitter. However, something else has happened. The new files which Musk promised to release are not public yet and the time which Musk gave for their release has long passed. So, what happened? The word “extremely” is often thrown out uselessly but it fits rather aptly in this situation. What happened is extremely important so let’s go over this slowly. The person who was vetting the release of Twitter Files to journalists was Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker.

He was vetting these files to control what kind of information was being made public under the release of Twitter Files, without the knowledge of new management at Twitter. In other words, without the knowledge of Elon Musk. The journalist Bari Weiss, who was following this story along with Matt Taibii, said that her jaw hit the floor when she found that Jim Baker was vetting the release of these documents, without the knowledge of Twitter’s new management. She had to confirm what Jim’s surname is to make sure she was hearing the right thing. Before becoming Twitter Deputy General Counsel, Jim Baker was FBI’s General Counsel.

sources https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/08/twitter-files-hunter-biden-laptop-00072919
sources https://zeenews.india.com/companies/twitter-files-part-1-elon-musk-shares-sensitive-old-twitters-employees-conversation-revealing-censorship-on-the-platform-2543278.html
sources https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/social-media-news/twitter-files-part-1-what-secret-details-the-document-revealed-and-what-is-it-impact-articleshow.html

Download PDF Twitter Files Part 1 Summary PDF and here is the PDF source