‘Twitter Files’ Part 5 Reveals Trump May Not Have Violated Twitter Rules Despite Ban

© AP Photo / Jeff ChiuTwitter headquarters is shown in San Francisco, Friday, Oct. 28, 2022.
Twitter headquarters is shown in San Francisco, Friday, Oct. 28, 2022. - Sputnik International, 1920, 13.12.2022
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The ‘Twitter Files’ are a part of a series in which CEO Elon Musk is attempting to deliver on promises of transparency with Twitter users. The first batch of the series came just a month after Musk acquired the social media platform.
Former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss released the fifth installment of the 'Twitter Files' series on Monday, arguing that Twitter employees had felt “pressured” to ban Trump despite refusing to do so for the course of his presidency.

"For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate," Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press wrote in a Monday thread. "But after January 6, as @mtaibbi and @shellenbergermd have documented, pressure grew, both inside and outside of Twitter, to ban Trump."

Weiss went on to claim that there were some Twitter employees who behaved as “dissenters” and preferred not to ban Trump because they believed “censorship can destroy the public conversation.”
Weiss goes on to write: “In the early afternoon of January 8, The Washington Post published an open letter signed by over 300 Twitter employees to CEO Jack Dorsey demanding Trump’s ban.”
Meanwhile Twitter staffers were discussing amongst themselves whether or not Trump had actually violated any Twitter user rules. “It’s pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement while not violating the rules,” wrote one staffer. Weiss’ continued thread, which conservatives are honoring as “bombshell revelations,” reveals staffer Anika Navaroli, a Twitter policy official, was unable to find any violations relating to Trump’s tweets during the January 6 insurrection.
"Ultimately, the concerns about Twitter’s efforts to censor news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, blacklist disfavored views, and ban a president aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company. They’re about the power of a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy,” Weiss concluded.
In her conclusion Weiss refers to the first installment of the 'Twitter Files' which began on December 2, with a thread of posts alleging that Twitter had censored news about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
While the 'Twitter Files' don’t necessarily unveil anything nefarious about the company’s decision-making before Musk became the new CEO, the revelations are giving conservatives across the social media site something to drool over. And that begs the question: What exactly are Musk’s politics anyway? While he has called himself a centrist, Charlie Warzel, a writer for The Atlantic, has deemed Musk a “far-right activist” following erratic behavior on the company's platform.
Elon Musk's Twitter page displayed on the screen of a smartphone with Twitter logo in the background in Los Angeles. - Sputnik International, 1920, 11.12.2022
'Twitter Files' Part 4 Shows How Company Execs Built Case For Post-Jan. 6 Trump Ban
Twitter, meanwhile, continues to lose ad revenue as the company’s new head of Trust and Safety Council, Ella Irwin, wrote in a post last week that the company would continue to “aggressively de-amplify hate speech” on their platform.
The Monday release also came as Twitter abruptly dissolved the Trust and Safety Council less than an hour before the body was due to meet with executives to discuss recent company developments.An email signed "Twitter" reads in part: “We are grateful for your engagement, advice and collaboration in recent years and wish you every success in the future."
The latest drop in the 'Twitter Files' series was initially expected to be released on Sunday; it remains unclear why the recent publication was pushed to Monday.
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