A former Twitter employee anonymously testified at the Jan 6 hearing detailing how then-president Donald Trump was “seemingly speaking” to extremist organizations directly for the “first time” when he tweeted about crowds gathering at Capitol Hill. The anonymous employee expressed concern since this sort of “direct communication” hadn’t been seen before. 

The ex-employee was asked whether they and others at Twitter were worried that Trump might use Twitter to directly speak to people who might be incited to violence. 

During the testimony, the former employee said that they believed “Twitter relished” the knowledge that they were the favourite and “most used” service of the former president and enjoyed having “that sort of power within the social media ecosystem”. 

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When asked whether anyone apart from Trump would have been allowed to have an active account till Jan 8, 2021, the former employee said “absolutely not”, asserting that if the account belonged to anyone apart from the former president, it’d have been blocked a long time ago. 

Elsewhere in the deposition, the former employee who worked with the social media company’s team responsible for platform and content moderation policies said that they were on “pins and needles” on January 5, the night before the insurrection. 

“For months I had been begging and anticipating and attempting to raise the reality that if nothing, if we made no intervention into what I saw occurring, people were going to die”, the ex-employee added. 

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However, Trump remained unchecked on the platform despite the warnings, the former Twitter employee noted, adding “It felt as if a mob was being organized and they were gathering together their weaponry and their logic and their reasoning behind why they were prepared to fight”. 

The ex-employee continued, “It became clear not only with these individuals ready and willing, but the leader of their cause was asking them to join him in this cause and fighting for this cause in DC on Jan. 6 as well”.