In the third installment of Elon Musk’s ongoing Twitter Files, Substack writer Matt Taibbi provided details about the internal Twitter correspondence that led to the ban of former President Donald Trump after the 2021 Jan 6 Capitol attack. The documents highlight conversations between former Twitter executives and federal agencies that led to Trump’s from the platform.
The 67-post Twitter thread attempted to disclose “the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies.”
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Taibbi shared Slack screenshots of internal communications of Twitter executives. He is covering the time period from October 6, 2020, to January 6, 2021. Musk has named the new series of tweets “Deplatforming the President.” Taibbi claims that Twitter violated its own policies and its executives were prepared to ban future presidents, including perhaps even Joe Biden.
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Taibbi said despite whatever view users might have had about Trump’s actions, what happened within Twitter during the entire process, is of historical importance. Twitter executives had close ties with federal agencies and were actively moderating content at the request of their representatives. According to Taibbi, on October 8, 2020, executives started a channel called “us2020_xfn_enforcement” to allow them to discuss the removal of election-related content and high-profile accounts.
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Taibbi also added that Twitter’s moderation process was based on “guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President.” He called the group of Twitter executives a “high-speed Supreme Court of moderation.” Taibbi noted that no moderation requests were received from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans.
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Yoel Roth, the former head of Trust and Safety had weekly meetings with central agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as per the documents. The screengrabs show conversations where Roth was seen ghosting some of these FBI meetings.
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However, the thread failed to acknowledge that much of this information had already been in the public domain and therefore studied ever since the former president incited a riot at the Capitol and was subsequently banned.