Elon Musk’s Twitter released another batch of internal discussions on Monday, which revealed that an employee from China tried to warn fellow Twitter employees that censorship is wrong. The employee was then shut down by a coworker who bizarrely retorted: “censorship by a government is very different than censorship of the government.”
“Maybe because I am from China, I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation,” a Chinese Twitter employee said to colleagues during an internal discussion about whether or not to ban then-President Donald Trump’s account.
7. There were dissenters inside Twitter.
“Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.” pic.twitter.com/LtonK0gfS3
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022
A fellow Twitter employee responded to their Chinese coworker saying, “I understand this fear, but I also think it’s important to understand that censorship by a government is very different than censorship of the government.”
“The first amendment in the U.S. — and similar legislation in other countries with similar concepts — exist specifically to prevent the government from silencing the people,” the coworker added.
At that point, another Twitter employee chimed in and insisted that Trump had “clearly attempted to overthrow our Democratic system of government” and therefore needed to be banned from the social media platform.
“We started labeling/restricting his tweets when they became a threat to Democracy, and seemed like that was our redline; yesterday, he clearly attempted to overthrow our Democratic system of government and showed no signs of remorse…” the Twitter employee lamented.
“If this is not a clear reason to suspend him (again, as an unhinged ruler attempting to subvert the most powerful Democracy in the world), I’m not sure what would be,” the employee added.
These revelations come from another lengthy Twitter thread — now known as the “Twitter Files” — posted to the platform by former New York Times reporter Bari Weiss on Monday.
Musk reacted to the Twitter Files dump by summing it up as: “Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting US President, even though they themselves acknowledge that he didn’t violate the rules.”
Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting US President, even though they themselves acknowledge that he didn’t violate the rules: https://t.co/60PplztV4k
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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