Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey finally issued a public comment on his platform’s decision to censor what is arguably the top story in America today, the New York Post’s publication of a cache of emails revealing hitherto unknown alleged links between Vice President Joe Biden and Burisma, a Ukrainian gas giant for which his son worked.
“Our communication around our actions on the [New York Post] article was not great,” admitted Dorsey. “And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”
It’s possible that Twitter’s purge of the New York Post story, which exceeded even Facebook’s censorship (Facebook “reduced the distribution” of the Post’s story, instead of locking accounts and banning links), was not driven by Dorsey himself.
Sources at Twitter have suggested individuals directly below the CEO, in particular Trust & Safety Vice President Del Harvey and Vijaya Gadde, also a member of the Trust & Safety team, as the main agitators pushing for draconian censorship at the Silicon Valley giant.
Dorsey’s tweet, which quotes the @TwitterSafety account, appears to be a direct criticism of the way the Trust & Safety department handled the issue.
In a series of Tweets, @TwitterSafety attempted to explain the company’s behavior.
“We want to provide much needed clarity around the actions we’ve taken with respect to two NY Post articles that were first Tweeted this morning.”
“The images contained in the articles include personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers — which violate our rules.”
“As noted this morning, we also currently view materials included in the articles as violations of our Hacked Materials Policy.”
“Commentary on or discussion about hacked materials, such as articles that cover them but do not include or link to the materials themselves, aren’t a violation of this policy. Our policy only covers links to or images of hacked material themselves.”
“We know we have more work to do to provide clarity in our product when we enforce our rules in this manner. We should provide additional clarity and context when preventing the Tweeting or DMing of URLs that violate our policies.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. His new book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election, which contains exclusive interviews with sources inside Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, is currently available for purchase.
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