New Delhi: Twitter CEO Elon Musk released part 3 of ‘Twitter Files’ titled ‘Deplatforming the President’, that provides a detailed account of the events that led to the ouster of former US president Donald Trump from the platform.
The third part of the series highlights the interactions between the former executives of the microblogging platform and the federal agencies that led to the removal of Trump from Twitter in the wake of an attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The details have been shared by independent journalist Matt Taibbi.
“Whatever your opinion of the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th - January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech,” Matt Taibbi wrote in an extended Twitter thread on Friday.
According to Taibbi, the first segment focussed on “erosion of standards within the company” in the months leading up to the Capitol riot. During this time, the Twitter executives were prepared to ban future US presidents, including even Joe Biden.
Taibbi further claims that the Twitter executives had close relationships with federal agencies, and they were actively moderating content at the request of their representatives.
Taibbi further said that Twitter's moderation process was largely based on "guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President," and he called the group of Twitter executives a "high-speed Supreme Court of moderation."
Earlier, Musk released part two of the 'Twitter Files' titled 'Twitter's Secret Blacklists". The details were released in a Twitter thread by journalist Bari Weiss.
The thread claims that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavoured tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.
"Twitter once had a mission “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected," Weiss mentioned.