As parts 3 and 4 of the Twitter Files were posted over the weekend, the company’s CEO Elon Musk called his organization “both a social media platform and a crime scene.”
More revelations emerged concerning the shadow-banning of conservatives as well as the decision to permanently suspend former President Donald Trump’s account in January, 2021. Incoming Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer, says “We will roll out the red carpet” for Musk to testify as the committee attempts to investigate the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Independent author Michael Shellenberger published Part 4 of the Twitter Files late Saturday. Among his findings: Twitter senior executives following the January 6th protests in 2021 decided to “create justifications to ban Trump, and “express(ed) no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban.”
Shellenberger found that pressure built on then-CEO Jack Dorsey to ban Trump, and that the demands came not only from Twitter employees (who had donated to Democrats by margins exceeding 96 percent in the two preceding election years) but from outside sources such as former First Lady Michelle Obama.
The permanent ban on the sitting president was announced on January 8, 2021, and was not based on the content of his tweets, but “specifically how they are being received and interpreted.”
Shellenberger discovered that in sifting through all the communications, he could find an objection to the Trump ban on free speech grounds from only one unnamed Twitter employee who said, “This might be an unpopular opinion, but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are (in my humble opinion) a slippery slope and reflect an unequal dictatorial program.” The dissenter added, “This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world — which seems unsustainable.”
Former President Trump reacted to the release of Part 4 by posting a message on Truth Social: “The biggest thing to come out of the Twitter Targeting Hoax is that ther Presidential Election was RIGGED – And that’s as big as it can get!!!”
The decision to suspend Trump’s account, as Shellenberger writes, was a clear policy shift from a statement the company made in a tweet on January 5, 2018. Then the company stated, “Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
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