In the fifth installment of Twitter emails and internal communications, which are being referred to as the “Twitter files,” journalist Bari Weiss describes debate among unnamed employees that occurred before Trump was banned January 8, 2021.
“Maybe because I am from China,” one Twitter employee, concerned about a ban, writes, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conservation.”
“I understand this fear,” a co-worker replies, “but I also think it’s important to understand that censorship by a government is very different than censorship of the government.”
That observation is an interesting one considering the public has learned Twitter’s executives collaborated with the federal government to bury Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal.
Mark Meckler, who recently served as an interim CEO at Parler, tells AFN the newest “Twitter files” story makes it clear Twitter broke its own rules when it banned Trump.
“There was an employee uprising,” Meckler points out, “and they essentially forced the banning of Trump’s account.”
Sure enough, the internal messages cited by Weiss describe a corporate workplace that organized to demand their employer chase Trump from the social media site. Those employees went to The Washington Post with an open letter to pressure then-CEO Jack Dorsey to take action even though several Twitter executives were admitting at the time that Trump had not violated any specific policy.
Reacting to the now-uncovered communications, Musk summarized them in a Twitter post that said a "sitting U.S. president" was deplatformed by people who knew he had not violated Twitter's rules.
In her Twitter thread about Twitter vs. Trump, Weiss pivots to point out the social media site that banned a U.S. president took no action in 2018 after Iran’s tyrannical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Israel a “malignant cancerous tumor” that must be “removed and eradicated.”
In another incident, Twitter deleted the tweet from Malaysia’s former prime minister who said Muslims have a “right” to kill “millions of French people.” He was allowed to keep his account, however.
She also cited tweets by other prominent foreign leaders who called for violence but who went unpunished despite such inflammatory talk.
All of those Twitter posts, Meckler points out, violate Twitter’s code of conduct.
“I think it has an outsize influence in politics both in America around the world,” Meckler concludes. “So I think Twitter becoming a much more neutral platform definitely is a big deal.”
Now that Musk owns and is overseeing Twitter, conservative activist Gary Bauer tells AFN the billionaire spent $44 billion on a risky social media site because he supports the fundamental right of free speech.
"It is still possible Twitter will go bankrupt before this is over," Bauer says. "But he's risked that money and he's fighting as hard as he can."
Editor's Note: This story has been updated with comments from Gary Bauer.
