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Twitter Ban Of Trump Came After Pressure From Michelle Obama And Others

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


A tweet from former first lady Michelle Obama apparently played a major role in having former President Donald Trump removed from Twitter, the new installment of the “Twitter Files” has shown.

Elon Musk and journalist Michael Shellenberger unveiled the fourth set of “Twitter Files” on Saturday and they showed communications by the company’s executives between Jan. 6-8, 2021.

“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,” Shellenberger said.

On January 7 the former first lady issued a long statement regarding her thoughts on what Silicon Valley should do.

“Now is the time for those who voted for this president to see the reality of who they’ve supported – and publicly and forcefully rebuke him and the actions of that mob,” she said. “Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior – and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technology from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection.”

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The former first lady said that Trump was “obviously willing to burn our democracy down for his own ego” and called for “swift and serious consequences for the failure of leadership that led to yesterday’s shame.”

“Like all of you, I watched as a gang – organized, violent, and mad they’d lost an election – laid seize to the United States Capitol,” she said. “They set up gallows. They waved traitorous flag of the Confederacy through the halls. They desecrated the center of American government. And once authorities finally gained control of the situation, these rioters and gang members were led out of the building not in handcuffs, but free to carry on with their days.

“The day was a fulfillment of the wishes of an infantile and unpatriotic president who can’t handle the truth of his own failures,” she said. “And the wreckage lays at the feet of a party and media apparatus that gleefully cheered him on, knowing full well the possibility of consequences like these.”

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey warned his staff “to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension,” on January 7.

But Dorsey was on vacation and had delegated responsibility to Yoel Roth, the Head of Trust and Safety and former Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust Vijaya Gadde, both of who, Shellenberger said, were extremely progressive in their politics.

“In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff’s political donations went to Democrats,” the reporter said.

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

“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,” he said.

“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,’” the reporter said.

“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…,’” he said.

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“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,’” the reporter said. promising more information would come on Sunday regarding the former president’s ban.

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