Twitter power and Yoel Roth
The amount of coordination between federal agencies such as the FBI, DOJ, and DHS was vast, according to the latest analysis by Matt Taibbi, third in the series.
Here’s one small part of it:
17. During this time, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content. While we’re still at the start of reviewing the #TwitterFiles, we’re finding out more about these interactions every day.
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And there were plenty of requests for censorship coming from Democrats, but not from Republicans:
27. Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.
Twitter was especially intent on censoring Trump, and this was long before January 6th and before the election even occurred:
36. “VERY WELL DONE ON SPEED” Trump was being “visibility filtered” as late as a week before the election. Here, senior execs didn’t appear to have a particular violation, but still worked fast to make sure a fairly anodyne Trump tweet couldn’t be “replied to, shared, or liked”…
Not just Trump either, not by a longshot:
39. Here a label is applied to Georgia Republican congresswoman Jody Hice for saying, “Say NO to big tech censorship!” and, “Mailed ballots are more prone to fraud than in-person balloting… It’s just common sense.”
The difference between treatment of left and right was extreme:
41. Meanwhile, there are multiple instances of involving pro-Biden tweets warning Trump “may try to steal the election” that got surfaced, only to be approved by senior executives. This one, they decide, just “expresses concern that mailed ballots might not make it on time.”
You may find it easier to read the tweets at this thread reader site. There’s a ton more information from Taibbi there than I’m quoting here.
William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection has this observation, with which I concur:
…[T]he most interesting part…are the pre-election activities. The government in the form of the FBI and DHS were intimately involved in Twitter’s censorship regime BEFORE the 2020 election. That timing is critical. The government partnered with Twitter to censor political speech before the election — having nothing to do with post-election claims of election fraud, J6, or anything that allegedly was part of a criminal conspiracy.
At this point, none of this is surprising. Plus, they repeatedly lied about it and were also engaged in gaslighting conservatives who had already noticed the shadow-banning and all the other ways conservative voices had been diminished and/or blocked for quite some time. “Gaslighting” is a term used a lot these days (more often in connection with romantic/sexual relationships), but if you haven’t seen the movie that gave us the term, I’m going to post a little clip. In this scene, Joseph Cotton is very roughly akin to the Elon Musk figure, Charles Boyer is the “Trust and Safety” (so Orwellian!) Twitter head Yoel Roth (and the maid is perhaps the MSM), and poor beleaguered Ingrid Bergman is a shadow-banned conservative on Twitter who’s being told it’s all her fevered imagination:
One thing that impresses me about this entire story is what it says about the seductive power of power itself. Imagine, if you will, being a young person (Yoel Roth, for example, who is reportedly around 35 years old) whose main accomplishment prior to this was a fairly newly-hatched PhD in communications, then being plunked down in the middle of an operation like Twitter with a gazillion users. When Obama was president Twitter had no need to ban him; he was the right sort of highly-educated leftist, just like the folks running the establishment. But when Trump is elected, and you have your hands on the lever of power, slowly but surely you get bolder and bolder, feeling more and more virtuous and righteous as you do so and hamper the nefarious Trump. Plus, those weekly meeting with the FBI and DOJ and even sometimes DHS – just like a TV show, and a reminder that if you don’t do as they say you could face legal consequences.
What a heady heady mix. By time you get to the point of cutting off a US president’s mouthpiece, you’ve gotten there so gradually, and with so much help and positive reinforcement, that you must think you’re a hero saving the country.
Roth is no longer employed at Twitter, but here’s a recent interview he gave:
Months before the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, I wrote down a series of red lines and limits. And my goal in doing this was to avoid emotional decision-making in the moments after the acquisition. Some of the limits that I wrote down were pretty obvious in retrospect. They were things like, I won’t break the law or I won’t lie publicly on anybody’s behalf. But one of the ones that ended up being the most important to me was that I’ll stay so long as decisions at Twitter are made in a procedurally just way.
Wow, wow, and wow. When you put that together with the Twitter files Musk has released, it’s staggering.
Here’s a longer version of Roth’s interview, and another quote that gives you more of the flavor [emphasis mine]:
One of the defining traits of Twitter was a culture of care and of empathy. And many of the people I spoke with were personally and professionally heartbroken about the fact that that culture might be going away. Above all else, I think the people who choose to work at Twitter generally didn’t choose to work at the company because it was the easiest job or the best-paid job. They chose to work there because they believed in the impact that Twitter could have in the world. Twitter is one of the most consequential communication platforms in existence. And what happens on Twitter can move markets, can change elections, and it can impact the safety of millions of people around the world. And more than anything else, people are worried about what will happen, given Twitter’s importance in the world, if there isn’t a team left to do that type of work.
He had a mission, a calling, all done with “care and empathy.” What might happen now if there’s no team to do “that kind of work”? Why, people might actually have access to the truth, and as a result a few more Republicans might get elected.
NOTE: Here’s Roth’s PhD dissertation, which he apparently got in 2016. It’s quite a woke piece of work. Perhaps it’s rather typical of the level of scholarship that goes on at the august University of Pennsylvania these days.
And from Roth’s LinkedIn profile [emphasis mine]:
Yoel [was] the Global Head of Trust & Safety at Twitter. He [led] Twitter’s policy and threat investigation teams responsible for a wide range of security, authenticity, and content issues, including platform manipulation, misinformation, election security, data privacy, and user identity. Before joining Twitter, Yoel received his PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His research and teaching focused on understanding how policy, governance, and code influence the types of communities that are able to safely and securely form online — and how the choices of developers, designers, and policymakers can systematically push certain types of identities and communities to the digital margins.
That was what he did at Twitter, apparently: systematically push certain types of identities and communities to the digital margins. That identity and that community was the right.
Yoel Roth is the perfect embodiment of the corruption of Big Tech, of the thoroughly venal collusion between Silicon Valley and the Democrats in power, and of the utter worthlessness of most of today’s so-called “academic degrees”. Roth was awarded a PhD from Penn for a “dissertation” on Grindr, the gay app. How utterly are the Ivies fallen, how completely is corporate America compromised, and how ruthless are leftists in pursuit of power and control and domination over their ideological foes!
In that interview Roth also makes some comments about the banning of the Babylon Bee that are even too much for Kara Swisher the left wing nutter interviewing him.
Employees obviously constantly searching for “right wing” contributors. Any indication employees were watching any leftists for violations?
The power and reach of Twitter is vast. How did this happen? I’ve never been on Twitter, nor any other social media except Linked IN. Went there at the request of a nephew. I’ve been very inactive – I’m not looking for a job.
Facebook sounded like a good idea, but at the beginning everyone wondered how they were going to make any money. Well, it turned out that the customers were their product. They sell your information. Now, I guess they have ads too.
It amazes me that these platforms have become so huge. But then I go out in public and see people with their faces glued to their phones and I get it. There is something addictive about what is found there. And I am guessing much of the mass psychosis that I observe (Woke ideas that seem preposterous.) is being spread through these platforms.
Censorships is an old idea. It’s been around for a long time. The founders wanted to put a stop to it. Thus, the First Amendment. The urge to power by suppressing other people’s ideas was a big part of the Twentieth Century totalitarianisms – Naziism, Fascism, Communism. So here we are again.
Suppressing “misinformation” sounds noble, until you realize they mean they don’t like your ideas or opinions and don’t want to let others hear or read them. Then it’s plain that it’s censorship – straight up. Just like in the 20th Century.
Yoel Roth may not have realized it, but he was a successor to Joseph Goebbels.
Well, the cat’s out of the bag. What happens now is the question. I think Twitter maybe less of a propaganda arm going forward, but I doubt anyone’s going to jail. The FBI/DOJ/DHS have all arranged for plausible deniability. Guilty as h*ll, free as birds.
Fullmoon,
This tweet by Eric Holder was looked at but Roth decided it was A-OK. I’m sure he would have ruled the same for someone on the right.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601375904651182080
Funny, everyone from middle-school street bullies up to Josef Stalin feel that they’re in a moral position superior to their victims, who did (or even looked) Wrong, and Had It Coming.
Musk’s purchase and purging of Twitter is a very rare example of members of the public being allowed backstage to see what’s been going on. Lesser organs of the Left, such as the Seattle Times, are desperately trying to suppress these disclosures, and still on December 10th have printed zero on the subject.
Color me cynical. Just like Russiagate. Hunter’s laptop, and all the other POS that has come down in the last 7 years, absolutely nothing will happen to the players, the system, or anything else. The system is totally broken and beyond repair.
They all walk, we continue to be screwed.
One of the more terrifying notions I have is that these narcissists drunk on years of power and righteousness will propel themselves forward professionally and leave more destruction in their wake. Meta, Google are too big for Elon-sequence folks to buy.
Part 4 the removal of Trump is underway.
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1601720455005511680
Roth’s dissertation topic and various Twitter comments over the years may have something to do with why pedophilia and child pornography were apparently allowed free rein on Twitter. They would remove only the most egregious cases to stay on the right side of the law, according to what I read. If nothing else, Musk’s cleaning up of this segment of the platform is a social good.
I don’t know what can be done about the obvious violations of first amendment rights by government agencies which have been revealed.
Tonight’s episode seems to be a lot of Roth and his fellow censors trying to find rationale for censoring all kinds of things that they don’t like or agree with.
Jack Dorsey has come across as incredibly weak and out of the loop at his own company throughout all of these releases and instead we get this weird little tyrant Roth seeming to make it up as he goes.
Trying to figure out what post Roth will be getting in the Biden administration…
Or maybe they will just settle for awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
I think we will see evidence that Twitter suppressed a far larger swath of the population including people of the left that were out of phase with the current narrative and many of influence on the non left
So if I recall correctly the sequence goes something like:
Push
Shove
Punch
Hack
Slash
Stab
Shoot
Good job there, Yoel. Thanks to your efforts we’re well along the way.
I am willing to bet nothing will happen to any of the players in Twittergate ( he he)
And not a doubt in my mind a “Roth” like character works at Facebook, YouTube and every other social media corporation.
Roth and all the other power mad neo-fascists are on their way to becoming Ringwraiths.
This is all very interesting, and somewhat satisfying to see what conservatives alleged proved true, but physicsguy and Skip have it right: nothing, as in consequences, will be done to the perpetrators of the censorship, shadow banning, and election interference. If anything, people like Roth will likely get attaboys from the Left.
steve walsh:
I don’t think most people here think there will be any negative consequences for the people responsible. Nor will they stop doing it at other venues.
Neo, I really think that becoming a Ringwraith is a negative consequence.
Big Brother is here. Democrats and their voters celebrate the censorship, celebrate the FBI abuses and the gulag, celebrate cancel culture and indoctrination of children. They celebrate the all-encompassing illegal spying, the lies, the election fraud, the rampant corruption and the unrelenting slander of those who disagree. They celebrate the storm trooper abuses, the riots, the covid fascists, the sex traffickers and the drug cartels.
These are nasty, vile people. There isn’t any possible way to be a morally decent, patriotic American and vote for a Democrat. And that’s not hyperbolic. Facts demand a verdict. We have mountains of evidence. They all point to the same conclusion. Evil exists. Evil dominates the Left and the Democrat party.
And that’s why none of us expect justice. Evil laughs at justice.
Who the hell was in charge at DOJ/DHS/FBI while these weekly meetings were taking place with the Tech companies (Twitter et al.) in the run-up to the 2020 election? Weren’t they Trump appointees?
Bill Serra:
We know that Chris Wray was FBI head and we know how against Trump he is, and how corrupt. The DOJ was headed by Bill Barr, who was a mixed bag. As for DHS – an agency that was less involved with Twitter than the others, as far as I can tell – there was a lot of turnover under Trump and I think that in the leadup to the 2020 election it was Chad Wolf, who was considered illegitimately appointed. I haven’t seen anything that indicates whether the Twitter meetings with these agencies were supervised by the people heading these agencies or whether the heads were aware of what was going on. Also, there was a supposedly valid reason for briefings: discouraging or recognizing supposed foreign influence on elections through Twitter. Perhaps if the heads knew about the meetings, they thought the subject matter was the preventing of such interference. Or maybe they knew exactly what was going on, including the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop. It’s certainly something I’d like to know more about, and it certainly seems likely they were involved in that supression, especially Wray.
You can see what Kash Patel had to say about all of this here:
“Twitter power…”?
Hmmm.
“…and [the Grapes of…] Roth”…
Compare and Contrast (a twitter medley…):
‘President Trump called out Yoel Roth back in 2020.’—
https://twitter.com/AKA_RealDirty/status/1601595917551140865?cxt=HHwWgoDQtYvAgbosAAAA
‘According to documents released by this website, [David Axelrod’s] cohort is at center of biggest election scandal in US history. ‘
https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1601716121845235712?cxt=HHwWgIDQmfOUuLosAAAA
‘ “The number of illegal votes cast in Arizona’s general election on November 8, 2022 far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin…
‘ “Witnesses who were present…show hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election in Maricopa County.” ‘
https://twitter.com/realLizUSA/status/1601386586964643842?cxt=HHwWhMDSgbmnorksAAAA
…And PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER:
‘ Key to understanding censorship re covid — vaccines, masks, origins, etc — is that issue wasn’t public health, but rather national security. Thus same agencies interfering in US elections also helped cover up biggest national security failure in world history. ‘—
https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1601642675857285121?cxt=HHwWgoCj-ePhlrosAAAA
H/T Lee Smith twitter feed (for all links)
@ Neo > “subpoenas need to go out because nothing is ever deleted at the FBI.”
It will be now.
“communities” “safely” “on line”
“SAFELY”?
Slather that word on with a putty knife and none can speak against you.
I hear it in real life. Were I not such a polite, gracious guy, I’d be sneering, “You feel UNSAFE looking at a tweet. What a wimp!” Plus, I need to deal with actual humans in some aspects of my life, so I only mutter it to myself.
Problem is, my reticence–and that of so many others–gives it heft. It can be a serious restriction.
There is rural county in Michigan–Antrim–whose election system flipped 40% of the votes to Biden until they got caught and it turned out to be a “human error”. I have several relations up that way who act as if it’s a badge of honor and virtue to claim to be afraid to drive through Antrim County.
Somehow, the impact of “safe” has too be opposed.
A kind of sewage dam has burst, and sludge most foul shall inundate for a time:
Twitter exec Yoel Roth had ‘secret dirty account’
How bad is the depravity among these woke monsters? Very bad indeed! Lots of sunlight and fresh air will do well here.