In the wake of the tumultuous 2020 election, Americans witnessed something that only the 21st century could provide: The leader of the free world being banned by the world’s most powerful communication tool.
Twitter, at the time not under the control of Elon Musk, made the decision to ban Donald Trump after a number of rather innocuous tweets regarding the 2020 contest were posted by the President.
As it turns out, even Twitter’s safety team didn’t believe that Trump’s activity constituted a ban-able fence.
The latest installment of the “Twitter Files,” a series of disclosures lifting the curtain on Twitter’s internal wrangling ahead of controversial censorship decisions, reveals more details on the decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform in January 2021.
The disclosures, given to former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, reveal that members of Twitter’s Trust & Safety department did not believe that the former President violated any rules on the day that he was banned, only for this determination to be overruled following an intervention by arch-progressive Vijaya Gadde.
And then…
The disclosures also reveal that CEO Jack Dorsey was involved in the decision to suspend Trump’s account, putting an end to longstanding rumors that Gadde had taken the decision herself while Dorsey was on vacation and unreachable.
But these employees were drowned out by a louder chorus, which demanded, among other things, that Twitter should view Trump as the “leader of a terrorist group.”
On January 8, Donald Trump posted two tweets, which some Twitter employees attempted to characterize as “incitement.”
The news will almost certainly attract some harsh words from both sides of aisle, as it surely appears as though the former President was being selectively censored for overtly political purposes.
