Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Dec 10, 2022 40 tweets 19 min read Read on X
1. TWITTER FILES, PART 4

The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7

As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban
On Jan 7, senior Twitter execs:

- create justifications to ban Trump

- seek a change of policy for Trump alone, distinct from other political leaders

- express no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban

This #TwitterFiles is reported with @lwoodhouse
For those catching up, please see:

Part 1, where @mtaibbi documents how senior Twitter executives violated their own policies to prevent the spread of accurate information about Hunter Biden’s laptop;

Part 2, where @bariweiss shows how senior Twitter execs created secret blacklists to “de-amplify” disfavored Twitter users, not just specific tweets;

And Part 3, where @mtaibbi documents how senior Twitter execs censored tweets by Trump in the run-up to the Nov 2020 election while regularly engaging with representatives of U.S. government law enforcement agencies.

For years, Twitter had resisted calls to ban Trump.

“Blocking a world leader from Twitter,” it wrote in 2018, “would hide important info... [and] hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”

But after the events of Jan 6, the internal and external pressure on Twitter CEO @jack grows.

Former First Lady @MichelleObama , tech journalist @karaswisher , @ADL , high-tech VC @ChrisSacca , and many others, publicly call on Twitter to permanently ban Trump. ImageImageImageImage
Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia the week of January 4-8, 2021. He phoned into meetings but also delegated much of the handling of the situation to senior execs @yoyoel , Twitter’s Global Head of Trust and Safety, and @vijaya Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust.
As context, it's important to understand that Twitter’s staff & senior execs were overwhelmingly progressive.

In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff's political donations went to Democrats.

In 2017, Roth tweeted that there were “ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.”

In April 2022, Roth told a colleague that his goal “is to drive change in the world,” which is why he decided not to become an academic. ImageImage
On January 7, @jack emails employees saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension

After, Roth reassures an employee that "people who care about this... aren't happy with where we are" Image
Around 11:30 am PT, Roth DMs his colleagues with news that he is excited to share.

“GUESS WHAT,” he writes. “Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.”

The new approach would create a system where five violations ("strikes") would result in permanent suspension. Image
“Progress!” exclaims a member of Roth’s Trust and Safety Team.

The exchange between Roth and his colleagues makes clear that they had been pushing @jack for greater restrictions on the speech Twitter allows around elections.
The colleague wants to know if the decision means Trump can finally be banned. The person asks, "does the incitement to violence aspect change that calculus?”

Roth says it doesn't. "Trump continues to just have his one strike" (remaining). Image
Roth's colleague's query about "incitement to violence" heavily foreshadows what will happen the following day.

On January 8, Twitter announces a permanent ban on Trump due to the "risk of further incitement of violence." Image
On J8, Twitter says its ban is based on "specifically how [Trump's tweets] are being received & interpreted."

But in 2019, Twitter said it did "not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.”

blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/c… ImageImage
The *only* serious concern we found expressed within Twitter over the implications for free speech and democracy of banning Trump came from a junior person in the organization. It was tucked away in a lower-level Slack channel known as “site-integrity-auto." Image
"This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope... This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world..." Image
Twitter employees use the term "one off" frequently in their Slack discussions. Its frequent use reveals significant employee discretion over when and whether to apply warning labels on tweets and "strikes" on users. Here are typical examples. ImageImage
Recall from #TwitterFiles2 by @bariweiss that, according to Twitter staff, "We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do."

Twitter employees recognize the difference between their own politics & Twitter's Terms of Service (TOS), but they also engage in complex interpretations of content in order to stamp out prohibited tweets, as a series of exchanges over the "#stopthesteal" hashtag reveal. ImageImage
Roth immediately DMs a colleague to ask that they add "stopthesteal" & [QAnon conspiracy term] "kraken" to a blacklist of terms to be deamplified.

Roth's colleague objects that blacklisting "stopthesteal" risks "deamplifying counterspeech" that validates the election. Image
Indeed, notes Roth's colleague, "a quick search of top stop the steal tweets and they’re counterspeech"

But they quickly come up with a solution: "deamplify accounts with stopthesteal in the name/profile" since "those are not affiliated with counterspeech" Image
But it turns out that even blacklisting "kraken" is less straightforward than they thought. That's because kraken, in addition to being a QAnon conspiracy theory based on the mythical Norwegian sea monster, is also the name of a cryptocurrency exchange, and was thus "allowlisted" Image
Employees struggle with whether to punish users who share screenshots of Trump's deleted J6 tweets

"we should bounce these tweets with a strike given the screen shot violates the policy"

"they are criticising Trump, so I am bit hesitant with applying strike to this user" Image
What if a user dislikes Trump *and* objects to Twitter's censorship? The tweet still gets deleted. But since the *intention* is not to deny the election result, no punishing strike is applied.

"if there are instances where the intent is unclear please feel free to raise" Image
Around noon, a confused senior executive in advertising sales sends a DM to Roth.

Sales exec: "jack says: 'we will permanently suspend [Trump] if our policies are violated after a 12 hour account lock'… what policies is jack talking about?"

Roth: "*ANY* policy violation" Image
What happens next is essential to understanding how Twitter justified banning Trump.

Sales exec: "are we dropping the public interest [policy] now..."

Roth, six hours later: "In this specific case, we're changing our public interest approach for his account..." Image
The ad exec is referring to Twitter’s policy of “Public-interest exceptions," which allows the content of elected officials, even if it violates Twitter rules, “if it directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern”

help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-p… Image
Roth pushes for a permanent suspension of Rep. Matt Gaetz even though it “doesn’t quite fit anywhere (duh)”

It's a kind of test case for the rationale for banning Trump.

“I’m trying to talk [Twitter’s] safety [team] into... removal as a conspiracy that incites violence.” Image
Around 2:30, comms execs DM Roth to say they don't want to make a big deal of the QAnon ban to the media because they fear "if we push this it looks we’re trying to offer up something in place of the thing everyone wants," meaning a Trump ban. Image
That evening, a Twitter engineer DMs to Roth to say, "I feel a lot of debates around exceptions stem from the fact that Trump’s account is not technically different from anybody else’ and yet treated differently due to his personal status, without corresponding _Twitter rules_.." Image
Roth's response hints at how Twitter would justify deviating from its longstanding policy. "To put a different spin on it: policy is one part of the system of how Twitter works... we ran into the world changing faster than we were able to either adapt the product or the policy." Image
The evening of January 7, the same junior employee who expressed an "unpopular opinion" about "ad hoc decisions... that don’t appear rooted in policy," speaks up one last time before the end of the day.

Earlier that day, the employee wrote, "My concern is specifically surrounding the unarticulated logic of the decision by FB. That space fills with the idea (conspiracy theory?) that all... internet moguls... sit around like kings casually deciding what people can and cannot see." Image
The employee notes, later in the day, "And Will Oremus noticed the inconsistency too...," linking to an article for OneZero at Medium called, "Facebook Chucked Its Own Rulebook to Ban Trump."

onezero.medium.com/facebook-chuck…
"The underlying problem," writes @WillOremus , is that “the dominant platforms have always been loath to own up to their subjectivity, because it highlights the extraordinary, unfettered power they wield over the global public square...
"... and places the responsibility for that power on their own shoulders… So they hide behind an ever-changing rulebook, alternately pointing to it when it’s convenient and shoving it under the nearest rug when it isn’t.”

onezero.medium.com/facebook-chuck…
“Facebook’s suspension of Trump now puts Twitter in an awkward position. If Trump does indeed return to Twitter, the pressure on Twitter will ramp up to find a pretext on which to ban him as well.”

Indeed. And as @bariweiss will show tomorrow, that’s exactly what happened.

/END

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More from @shellenberger

Jul 24
It's better to let mentally ill people buy and use meth and fentanyl on sidewalks, believes Gavin Newsom, than arrest their drug dealers, and them, and mandate rehab.

But enabling Mexican-Chinese drug mafias to murder mentally ill Americans with fentanyl, as they do everyday and did again a few hours ago in San Francisco, as the video below by @war24182236 shows, is barbaric and pathological.

I thus applaud Trump's announcement that he will crack down on open air drug use and the government policies that encourage addiction.

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Seventy percent of Californians last November voted to crack down on fentanyl. Newsom opposed that measure (Prop 36) and is starving its implementation of resources, for the simple reason that he needs Soros money for his presidential run.

Californians should support the federal government in, finally, doing the right thing on addiction and the drug death crisis.
From the US to Europe to Asia, there is one and only one humane way to deal with "homelessness" and it's this, below. It's wonderful to see it in this new Executive Order by @realDonaldTrump :

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Congratulations to everyone who has worked hard to expose the drug death and addiction crisis and demand rational action. Be sure to follow @Gina_McDee @JacquiBerlinn @Twolfrecovery @EricaJSandberg @bettersoma @war24182236 to demand action at all levels of government.

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Jul 22
At first they said it was only polite to refer to someone by their preferred pronounds. Then, they demanded social media censorship. Now, governments are fining, and may soon jail, people who deny the lie that men can become women. This is as terrifying as anything in "1984." Image
European and Latin American leaders are at this moment working together to create a global Censorship Industrial Complex that will require every person online to deny biological reality and embrace pseudoscience. Image
Brazil's highest court could soon decide whether to imprison a women's rights activist for up to 25 years for a single sentence spoken in an Instagram video and the sharing of four X posts written by others, even though neither her words nor those of others violated any existing Brazilian law.

Under Article 213 of Brazil’s Penal Code, the base sentence for rape is 6 to 10 years for standard cases and 8 to 12 years if the rape involves violence or serious threat and causes serious bodily harm. As such, Cêpa could receive a prison term twice as long as what men receive for rape.

The Supreme Court decided to reopen a case against Isabela Cêpa, which may determine whether the court can criminalize speech by judicial decree, bypassing the democratic process entirely. In fact, a federal judge had already dismissed the case, agreeing with prosecutors that Cêpa’s statements did not meet the legal threshold for hate speech and that no law had been violated.

"The Supreme Court took the case and now they have only two options," Cêpa told me in our interview. "One of them is to admit that they're applying a law that does not exist and [that] they're punishing people for crimes that do not exist. And the other option would be to send me to jail. I'm pretty sure what their decision will be."

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Please subscribe to support Public's defense of free speech, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video!

x.com/shellenberger/…
Read 4 tweets
Jul 11
Whether @AGPamBondi , @FBIDirectorKash , and/or @FBIDDBongino stay or go, one thing is clear: the Trump admin. must release the Epstein Files. It's our God-given right to know. The issue has transcended partisanship, and neither the Right nor Left are moving on. Image
"This is the worst coverup of my lifetime... If you can get away with this, you really can get away with anything.

"If the government can tell people to not believe what they just said a few months ago and have everyone be fine with that.

"That's a level of gaslighting that I refuse to be a part of.

"Never forget, they just promised us names in the release of the Epstein files." @coffeebreak_YT

This is essential viewing:

"The Worst Coverup Of My Lifetime."
"The Story Keeps Changing"

This is also essential watching. Just see for yourself the statements people have been making, and how their stories changed dramatically.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 10
Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz just now: " I know for a fact [Epstein] documents are being suppressed and they're being suppressed to protect individuals. I know the names of the individuals, I know why they're being suppressed. I know who's suppressing them, but I'm bound by confidentiality from a judge and cases, and I can't disclose what I know. But, hand to God, I know the names of people whose files are being suppressed in order to protect them, and that's wrong."

@SeanSpicer : “Just out of curiosity, without names, are these politicians, business leaders…”

Dershowtiz: “Both. Everything.”
The lip synching is messed up but it's real and not AI. Here's the original:

Correction: The video is from 3 months ago. @seanspicer posted it just now.
Read 4 tweets
Jul 7
Within minutes of Texas floods killing dozens of girls, the media said it was because of Trump budget cuts and climate change. In truth, the deaths occurred in “one of the highest flood-prone regions in the entire state,” warnings were issued, and the underlying cause was the failure to install flood warning sirens. Climate journalists are cultists.Image
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These people are shameless Image
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Read 5 tweets
Jul 6
Trump cuts to the National Weather Service, and climate change, are to blame for the Texas flood deaths, said the media yesterday. Today, most admit NWS did its job. The real problem was the lack of a flood warning system. Those who blame the climate are trapped in a weird cult.
Per capita flooding deaths in Texas declined dramatically:

"As the population of Texas increased from ~9.2 million in 1958 to ~28.6 million in 2018, overall flood deaths remained fairly constant, meaning that the fatality rate dropped by about two-thirds." @RogerPielkeJr Image
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"Consider the figure above, from a classic 1940 historical text on U.S. floods, which shows that the same region of Texas that experienced this week’s floods has long been known to be a bullseye for flash flooding. In fact, almost a century before Hoyt and Langbein, Texas experienced one of the greatest losses of life in U.S. history related to extreme weather.

"In 1846, in the months after Texas became a U.S. state, massive flooding compounded the many problems facing thousands of recent immigrants from Germany who had been settled in New Braunfels, Texas, which was significantly impacted by this week’s floods.

"According to a contemporaneous 1846 account, cited in a fantastic 2006 PhD dissertation on flooding in Texas by William Keith Guthrie, at the University of Kansas, 'The Guadalupe [River] would often rise fifteen feet above its normal stand after these heavy rains, carrying with it in its swift torrent a number of large trees, uprooted farther up the hills. Smaller brooks, ordinarily not containing flowing water, became raging torrents which could be crossed only by swimming.'"Image
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