'Whole Lot of Nothing': Wired Defends Twitter Following Project Veritas Exposé

Mainstream technology news outlet Wired has defended Twitter following Project Veritas’ exposé on the company, which revealed how the platform censors users and sells their information.

In their article, Wired called Project Veritas’ investigation, which confirmed years of Breitbart Tech reporting, a “whole lot of nothing,” and claimed the undercover videos didn’t show anything “revelatory.”

“The Project Veritas videos, filmed without apparent awareness or consent, show a range of selectively edited insights from inside Twitter,” claimed Wired. “Many of the employees filmed used sensational language, but they also thought they were talking candidly to strangers at a bar. It’s not exactly unusual to embellish your job — and to elide its nuances — to a potential new friend or romantic interest.” Apparently, Wired has chosen calling Twitter employees lonely nerds as the best defense available for the social media platform.

“And in any case, none of these gotcha moments amount to anything revelatory,” they continued. “These videos don’t prove that Twitter has a partisan bias against its far-right conservative users. (Indeed, they’re some of its most prolific users.) They do show, though, that the right-wing backlash against tech giants has reached a new height. With every new policy intended to curb abuse, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms invite rancor. The new rules have been necessary to fight an increasingly toxic atmosphere online. But Project Veritas sees those steps, and the ban of high-profile far-right users—over clear, apolitical terms of service violations—as an attempt not to improve discourse online, but to quash the free exchange of ideas.”

Wired then criticized Breitbart News and Sean Hannity for covering the story, and Twitter for going on the defense, “despite uncovering a whole lot of nothing.” Wired seems more interested in attacking conservative media than it is in investigating the claims of Twitter’s own employees that the company ignores user privacy in a desperate attempt to bolster advertising revenue.

Since the release of Project Veritas’ undercover videos, Breitbart Tech has called out mainstream technology news outlets twice for ignoring the story.

Project Veritas secretly recorded several former and current Twitter employees while they discussed the company and its tactics.

A direct messaging engineer at the company boasted to undercover reporters that “everything you send is stored on my server,” including private “sex messages,” and he also admitted to mass-banning accounts that express interest in “God, guns, and America.”

One former engineer claimed “there is no way” to protect private user information should it fall into the “wrong hands,” while a senior engineer called the company “creepy Big Brother” and said it “disturbs” him.

Others detailed the platform’s shadow banning system, which is used to censor and sanction conservatives, while a senior network engineer claimed the company would be willing to give President Trump’s private messages to the Department of Justice.

Twitter responded to the investigation by attack Project Veritas for obtaining the footage, and denied shadow banning accounts, despite employees admitting to using the process.