“Roth immediately DMs a colleague to ask that they add ‘stopthesteal’ & [QAnon conspiracy term] ‘kraken’ to a blacklist of terms to be deamplified. Roth’s colleague objects that blacklisting ‘stopthesteal’ risks ‘deamplifying counterspeech’ that validates the election,” Shellenberger wrote.

“Indeed, notes Roth’s colleague, ‘a quick search of top stop the steal tweets and they’re counterspeech,'” Shellenberger’s thread continued. “But they quickly come up with a solution: ‘deamplify accounts with stopthesteal in the name/profile’ since ‘those are not affiliated with counterspeech.'”

Shellenberger also highlighted how Twitter employees struggled deciding whether to punish users who posted screenshots of Trump’s deleted January 6th tweets with one saying that “we should bounce these tweets with a strike given the screenshot violates the policy” and another saying “they are criticising Trump, so I am bit hesitant with applying strike to this user.”

“What if a user dislikes Trump *and* objects to Twitter’s censorship?” The thread continued. “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.’”

“Around noon, a confused senior executive in advertising sales sends a DM to Roth,” Shellenberger continues.

“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.”

What happens next, according to Shellenberger, is “essential” to understanding the justification” used to ban Trump.

“Sales exec: ‘are we dropping the public interest [policy] now…’ Roth, six hours later: ‘In this specific case, we’re changing our public interest approach for his account…'”

“The ad exec is referring to Twitter’s policy of ‘Public-interest exceptions,’ which allows the content of elected officials, even if it violates Twitter rules, ‘if it directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern,” Shellenberger wrote.

Shellenberger then reported Twitter moderation looked to ban Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, even though it “doesn’t quite fit anywhere (duh).”

Roth even mentioned personally “trying to talk [Twitter’s] safety [team] into…  removal as a conspiracy that incites violence.”

“Around 2:30, comms execs DM Roth to say they don’t want to make a big deal of the QAnon ban to the media because they fear ‘if we push this it looks we’re trying to offer up something in place of the thing everyone wants,’” Shellenberger reported.

“Yep,” Roth simply responded.

Later that evening, Roth corresponded with a Twitter engineer, who reached out via direct message.

The engineer said: “Trump’s account is not technically different from anybody else’ and yet treated differently due to his personal status, without corresponding Twitter rules to clarify the responsibilities that should come with that status.”

A photo of Donald Trump with his suspended Twitter account. (Getty Images)

“Roth’s response hints at how Twitter would justify deviating from its longstanding policy,” Shellenberger wrote, as Roth said Twitter felt comfortable deviating from its own policy.

“To put a different spin on it: policy is one part of the system of how Twitter works… we ran into the world changing faster than we were able to either adapt the product or the policy,” Roth said in response.

Amid the company’s push for banning Trump and those who spoke out about the 2020 presidential election, one “junior employee” attempted to call for Twitter to stick to its own policies.

“The evening of January 7, the same junior employee who expressed an ‘unpopular opinion’ about ‘ad hoc decisions… that don’t appear rooted in policy,’ speaks up one last time before the end of the day,” Shellenberger reported.

Shellenberger said that same employee said the decisions to ban and suspend certain users on a whim could push an idea of Twitter tyranny. He wrote: “My concern is specifically surrounding the unarticulated logic of the decision by FB. That space fills with the idea (conspiracy theory?) that all… internet moguls… sit around like kings casually deciding what people can and cannot see.”

Shellenberger reported: “The employee notes, later in the day, ‘And Will Oremus noticed the inconsistency too…,’ linking to an article for OneZero at Medium called, ‘Facebook Chucked Its Own Rulebook to Ban Trump.’”

In the article, Oremus said: “dominant platforms have always been loath to own up to their subjectivity, because it highlights the extraordinary, unfettered power they wield over the global public square and places the responsibility for that power on their own shoulders.”

e added: “So they hide behind an ever-changing rulebook, alternately pointing to it when it’s convenient and shoving it under the nearest rug when it isn’t.”

“Facebook’s suspension of Trump now puts Twitter in an awkward position. If Trump does indeed return to Twitter, the pressure on Twitter will ramp up to find a pretext on which to ban him as well,” Oremus said. And Twitter executives did, Shellenberger said.