Twitter Files 5.0: Staffers said Trump did not violate 'incitement' policy

Twitter staffers believed that tweets by former US President Donald Trump in the run-up to January 6 Capital riots did not violate the company's policies, revealed the fifth instalment of Elon Musk's 'Twitter Files'. The microblogging platform, then led by Jack Dorsey,had famously said that Trump had violated Twitter's policies by using the platform to 'incite violence'.

"For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate," Bari Weiss of The Free Press wrote toward while unveiling the fifth instalment of 'Twitter Files'.

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"But after January 6, as @mtaibbi and @shellenbergermd have documented, pressure grew, both inside and outside of Twitter, to ban Trump."

'Employee advocacy' led to Trump's Twitter ban

Bari Weiss published the screenshots of the internal Slack conversations of Twitter employees. The screenshots showed that after January 6 Capital riots, Twitter employees organised to demand Trump's ban from the platform.‘There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,’ one Twitter employee can be read as saying.

However, there were dissenters who didn't agree with the wider opinion that Trump should be banned from the platform. "Maybe because I am from China, I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation," one employee is seen having said in the screenshot shared by Bari Weiss.

After "over 300 Twitter employees" signed an open letter to ban Donald Trump from the platform, Twitter staff was assigned to evaluate the former US president's tweets that supposedly violated the platform'spolicy.

Weiss said,"Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies."

"I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement," a staffer said, according to Weiss. "It's pretty clear he's saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday."

"Don’t see the incitement angle here," another staffer agreed, per Weiss.

Donald Trump's last tweet did not violate Twitter policies too

Trump's last tweet before being banned from the platform stated that he will not attend then-president-elect Joe Biden's inauguration ceremony. According to Twitter Files 5.0, the platform's safety team concluded at the time: "It's a clear no vio(lation). It's just to say he's not attending the inauguration."

"Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be ‘coded incitement to further violence,’" Weiss reported in Twitter Files 5.0.

"A few minutes later, Twitter employees on the ‘scaled enforcement team’ suggest that Trump’s tweet may have violated Twitter’s Glorification of Violence policy—if you interpreted the phrase ‘American Patriots’ to refer to the rioters."

"Things escalate from there," Weiss continued. "Members of that team came to ‘view him as the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.’

Weiss then wrote aboutthe 30-minute all-staff meeting led by Dorsey and Gadde, who were confronted by staffers about why Trump had not been banned.

"One hour later, Twitter announces Trump’s permanent suspension ‘due to the risk of further incitement of violence.’ Many at Twitter were ecstatic," Weiss wrote, sharing communications from staffers celebrating the Trump ban.

The Trump ban then inspired a crackdown by the platform on "medical misinformation," with Weiss reporting that the next day a renewed push by the tech giant, according to internal communications.

She quoted one staffer who said, "For the longest time, Twitter’s stance was that we aren’t the arbiter of truth, which I respected but never gave me a warm fuzzy feeling."

"But Twitter’s COO Parag Agrawal—who would later succeed Dorsey as CEO—told Head of Security Mudge Zatko: ‘I think a few of us should brainstorm the ripple effects’ of Trump's ban.' Agrawal added: ‘centralized content moderation IMO has reached a breaking point now,’" Weiss reported.

Weiss concluded her thread, "Ultimately, the concerns about Twitter’s efforts to censor news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, blacklist disfavored views, and ban a president aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company. They’re about the power of a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy."

The Twitter Files was first unveiled on December2 when journalist Matt Taibbi revealed theinternal efforts to suppress the New York Post's Hunter Biden story in 2020.

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