Executive

Trump suspended – how

Twitter invented, or kicked into overdrive, its making up of rules as it went, to “get” Donald Trump – at the behest of government agencies.

Published

1 year ago

December 10, 2022

Terry A. Hurlbut

The Twitter Files now have seen their third installment, less than twenty-four hours after the second. This time, in nearly seventy tweets, Matt Taibbi tells how and why Twitter actually removed a sitting President. Never mind that he was due to leave office in less than two weeks. The fact remained that Donald J. Trump was still President – yet Twitter removed him from their platform. But Matt Taibbi sought to tell not only who said what at what meeting, but how Twitter could bring itself to do such a thing. His is a tale of a company breaking its own rules – and colluding with rogue government agents.

Twitter Files 3: The Removal of Donald Trump

The Trump removal thread began at 3:04 p.m. PST (6:04 p.m. EST). Herewith the thread, as every other tweet, to save space:

2. The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th…— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

4. This first installment covers the period before the election through January 6th. Tomorrow, @Shellenbergermd will detail the chaos inside Twitter on January 7th. On Sunday, @BariWeiss will reveal the secret internal communications from the key date of January 8th.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

6. 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.” pic.twitter.com/lr66YgDlGy— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

8. 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.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

10. 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.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

12. These initial reports are based on searches for docs linked to prominent executives, whose names are already public. They include Roth, former trust and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, and recently plank-walked Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

14. 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”). pic.twitter.com/xH29h4cYt9— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

16. 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. pic.twitter.com/5ihsPCVo62— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

18. Policy Director Nick Pickles is asked if they should say Twitter detects “misinfo” through “ML, human review, and **partnerships with outside experts?*” The employee asks, “I know that’s been a slippery process… not sure if you want our public explanation to hang on that.” pic.twitter.com/JEICGRTyz7— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

20. This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI): pic.twitter.com/s5IiUjQqIY— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

23. 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. pic.twitter.com/i771hD8aCD— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

The FBI's second report concerned this tweet by @JohnBasham: pic.twitter.com/8J8j5GlUVx— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

26. 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: pic.twitter.com/lyZm4gmT19— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

27. 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 (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

At this point Taibbi included a tweet about former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) jokingly tweeting about getting mail-in ballots on behalf of his “deceased parents and grandparents.” Taibbi mistakenly listed Arizona as Huckabee’s home state. When someone snidely pointed out the error, he deleted the tweet. But the Wayback Machine captured it first, so CNAV provides the link.

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.”— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

33. 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: pic.twitter.com/nOi50BdeaC— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

35. In another example, Twitter employees prepare to slap a “mail-in voting is safe” warning label on a Trump tweet about a postal screwup in Ohio, before realizing “the events took place,” which meant the tweet was “factually accurate”: pic.twitter.com/4r6nJ3JDmY— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

"VERY WELL DONE ON SPEED": the group is pleased the Trump tweet is dealt with quickly pic.twitter.com/WMyQjbWqNW— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

38. After Woods angrily quote-tweeted about Trump’s warning label, Twitter staff – in a preview of what ended up happening after J6 – despaired of a reason for action, but resolved to “hit him hard on future vio.” pic.twitter.com/dusFylxAXS— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

40. Twitter teams went easy on Hice, only applying “soft intervention,” with Roth worrying about a “wah wah censorship” optics backlash: pic.twitter.com/PGuihwNSu6— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

42. “THAT’S UNDERSTANDABLE”: Even the hashtag #StealOurVotes – referencing a theory that a combo of Amy Coney Barrett and Trump will steal the election – is approved by Twitter brass, because it’s “understandable” and a “reference to… a US Supreme Court decision.” pic.twitter.com/6BjJhjypD2— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

44. Later in November 2020, Roth asked if staff had a “debunk moment” on the “SCYTL/Smartmantic vote-counting” stories, which his DHS contacts told him were a combination of “about 47” conspiracy theories: pic.twitter.com/QiYGlZE202— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

46. Some executives wanted to use the new deamplification tool to silently limit Trump’s reach more right away, beginning with the following tweet: pic.twitter.com/U7AJLF2wIt— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

48. 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— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

50. In this instance, it appears moderators added a bot for a Trump claim made on Breitbart. The bot ends up becoming an automated tool invisibly watching both Trump and, apparently, Breitbart (“will add media ID to bot”). Trump by J6 was quickly covered in bots. pic.twitter.com/UhYQ31qIgn— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

52. To “bounce” an account is to put it in timeout, usually for a 12-hour review/cool-off: pic.twitter.com/rGUIhGF6w8— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

54. PII has multiple meanings, one being “Public Interest Interstitial,” i.e. a covering label applied for “public interest” reasons. The post below also references “proactive V,” i.e. proactive visibility filtering. pic.twitter.com/GSCjAPaBjG— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

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.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

57. The firm’s executives on day 1 of the January 6th crisis at least tried to pay lip service to its dizzying array of rules. By day 2, they began wavering. By day 3, a million rules were reduced to one: what we say, goes— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

57. This “Freedom or Death” tweet from #StopTheSteal gadfly Mike Coudrey elicits heated reactions: pic.twitter.com/NeBnL4e5YB— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

59. At 2:39 p.m. PST, a comms official asked Roth to confirm or deny a story that they’d restricted Trump’s ability to tweet. Roth says, “We have not.” pic.twitter.com/MeaHgN0FUQ— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

This theme of Policy perhaps being stressed by queries from Communications executives – who themselves have to answer the public’s questions – occasionally appears. Two days later, you see chatter about pulling Comms out of the loop: pic.twitter.com/sPxGcXtOpy— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

62. “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?” Safe to say Trump’s “Go home with love & in peace” tweet mid-riot didn’t go over well at Twitter HQ: pic.twitter.com/yhi5uv4QXI— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

64. By the end of the first day, the top execs are still trying to apply rules. By the next day, they will contemplate a major change in approach. Watch @shellenbergerMD this weekend for the play-by-play of how all that went down.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

66. Lastly, people on the left, right, and in between want to know what else is in the #TwitterFiles, from suppression/shadow-banning of leftists to lab-leak theorists, or amplification of military propaganda or conservative accounts. We know everyone has questions.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

67. And while we’ve stumbled on tidbits here and there about topics ranging from COVID to foreign policy, the reality is the data sets are enormous and we’re still working through them.

More is coming. Good night, all.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022

Analysis

This is only the first of three releases that Matt Taibbi and his colleagues have planned. The most significant lesson from the above is that Twitter management determined even before the election to help Biden win. To that end they ruthlessly suppressed actionable news about irregularities in the Election of 2020.

That, of course, is a story for another day. The lessons here is that Twitter moderation took on themselves to pretend that large-scale, any-reason-or-no-reason absentee balloting was secure. But that was never the case, and management knew it was not the case. They had the testimony of witnesses, which they suppressed as surely as they did the Hunter Biden Laptop. At the same time they gave passes to leftist commentators and politicians who promoted their own conspiracy theories. (Like Eric Holder saying Trump had deliberately crippled the United States Postal Service.)

In the most Providential part of this story, the “Politburo of Twitter,” for lack of a better name, preserved screencaps of tweets they deleted. This applies not only to Trump but also to his allies, many of whose accounts remain suspended to this day. (The Trump account is active again, though Trump hasn’t touched it since Elon Musk reinstated it.)

A banana company?

But this tweet sums up the banana-republic attitude of Twitter executives best of all:

The firm’s executives on day 1 of the January 6th crisis at least tried to pay lip service to its dizzying array of rules. By day 2, they began wavering. By day 3, a million rules were reduced to one: what we say, goes.

And so it remained from that day forward, if not earlier. That has already been shown.

Some reactions to this Twitter Files thread shows that this attitude has the sympathy of all too many users. But other users are just as quick to call them out. Consider this example:

Except for when Jack was under oath and testified they do not censor. And also two tweets flagged by the FBI for action….. may be a problem— Jacob (@Jacobwpg) December 10, 2022

In fact, Jack Dorsey did testify under oath that Twitter did not censor, shadow-ban (whatever they called it), or act in any similar manner. Twitter Files Part Two clearly shows that he perjured himself before Congress.

Elon Musk has already pronounced Twitter’s old management guilty of election interference. This thread proves that Twitter interfered with Trump directly, as well as suppressing the Hunter Biden Laptop Story. Had telephone companies selectively interdicted telephonic conversation, the spectacle would have been no less – or more – problematic.

But Twitter did not act alone. Yoel Roth boasted of his relationships with the FBI, DHS, and other agencies. Thus Twitter lent itself to a plot by those same agencies to remove Donald Trump from office. Even if that effort limited itself to making Trump lose an election, that alone is an unforgivable disgrace.

This is evidence of a coup. https://t.co/UXjPWRMQkX— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) December 10, 2022

Terry A. Hurlbut

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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.