Journalist Bari Weiss took to Twitter on Monday, to share with netizens important details from the fifth part of Twitter Files. The fifth part of Twitter Files reveals how former US president Donald Trump was removed from the social networking platform. In a Twitter thread of 45 tweets, Bari Weiss explained each and every move of the social media company from the morning of January 8, 2022, till Trump was banned from the platform permanently.
The actions of the president on Twitter, following the announcement of the presidential election result and the January 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill, put Twitter in a tough position. The social media company was facing both internal and external pressure to ban trump from the platform.
In the early morning of January 8, Donald Trump tweeted “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape, or form!!!”. The President also announced a few minutes later that he won’t be attending the inauguration ceremony of the Biden government on January 20, 2022.
Screenshots of chat conversations among employees on Twitter and chats with officials in top management suggest that the social media company was not able to find any violations with the tweets of the former president.
People on Twitter who are responsible for checking violation of rules and policies in tweets concluded that words such as “American Patriots” or announcing he won’t attend the inauguration does not go against any policies of social media companies.
12. But the 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,” wrote one staffer.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Even after getting this conclusion, various Twitter employees were frustrated that Donald Trump was still present on the platform. One employee said that It’s “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,”. “We have to do the right thing and ban this account,” said another staffer.
10. “We have to do the right thing and ban this account,” said one staffer.
It’s “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,” said another. pic.twitter.com/9vgvSgqJBB
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
There were also news reports that nearly 300 employees of twitter send an open letter to the then CEO Jack Dorsey demanding ban on Donald Trump from the social media platform.
A few hours after Twitter employees found out that trump has not violated any rules, the “scaled enforcement team” of the social media platform came to the conclusion 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. Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust, Vijaya Gadde had earlier asked in team chat whether Trump’s tweet, in fact, was “coded incitement to further violence.”
26. 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.” pic.twitter.com/llJRMfpOPi
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
Following this conclusion, employees at Twitter began pushing harder for deplatforming Trump and a few hours later, the social media company announced that Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been permanently suspended “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
