As more installments of the “Twitter Files” have been published by independent journalists reviewing voluminous internal company documents provided by new owner Elon Musk, further attention is being focused on some critical and apparently false sworn testimony provided by founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.
The corporate media has gone to some lengths to ignore Dorsey’s testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2018. However, the Twitter Files disclosure from this weekend has some commenters bringing the matter back into public focus.
The purpose of the Congressional hearing was to discuss the social media company’s “Transparency and Accountability” to the American people.
The material questions to Dorsey were unambiguous.
Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) said to Dorsey, “I want to read a few quotes about Twitter’s practices and I just want you to tell me if they’re true or not. Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives.”
Doyle then asked Dorsey point-blank, “Is that true of Twitter?”
Dorsey answered, “No.”
Doyle pressed further, asking if the company was censoring anyone or shadow-banning “prominent Republicans.”
Again Dorsey answered, “No.”
When Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) was asking questions, Dorsey unequivocally said that Twitter’s algorithm was not designed to facilitate the shadow-banning of any Republican lawmakers.
Last week’s revelations now show beyond doubt that Twitter has been doing all the things Dorsey denied for years.
In “part two” of the report, journalist Bari Weiss laid out the evidence that Twitter had a team of top executives named its “Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET.” That group handled up to 200 “cases” daily, resulting in the censorship or shadow-banning of conservative posts.
15. This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. “Think high follower account, controversial,” another Twitter employee told us. For these “there would be no ticket or anything.”
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022
Weiss also reported that another secret group of executives, called “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support, known as SIP-PES” included Dorsey along with Legal, Policy, and Trust chief Vijaya Gadde and Global Head of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth. She found that SIP-PES is where the “biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made.”
Controversial decisions were often made without getting Jack’s approval and he was unaware of systemic bias. The inmates were running the asylum.
Jack has a pure heart imo.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
Musk has defended Dorsey somewhat, tweeting that some of the platform’s controversial decisions “were often made without getting Jack’s approval and he was unaware of systemic bias.”
“The inmates were running the asylum,” Musk added.
