(Liberty Bell) – Over the course of the weekend, new information came to light after Michael Shellenberger posted on Twitter the fourth series of the “Twitter Files,” which revealed that former First Lady Michelle Obama applied pressure to the social media company to ban then-President Donald Trump on January 7, 2021, one day before they actually did just that. Hmm. Now that makes you wonder, doesn’t it? We all know how influential the former first lady was within mainstream culture. It would not at all be surprising to find out that she played a role in booting Trump from the platform.
Just because the Obamas left the White House, does not mean they left the world of politics. Quite the contrary. I think it is safe to say the couple have been playing a major role in the direction of the Biden administration from behind the scenes.
After the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 of the same year, the social media company finally had the excuse they were looking for to justify taking such a course of action.
“Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior—and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technologies from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection,” Obama’s statement to Twitter read.
But after the events of Jan 6, the internal and external pressure on Twitter CEO @jack grows.
Former First Lady @michelleobama , tech journalist @karaswisher , @ADL , high-tech VC @ChrisSacca , and many others, publicly call on Twitter to permanently ban Trump. pic.twitter.com/RzNj7WJReg
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 10, 2022
Joshua Young, writing for the Post Millennial, said, “In her message to Twitter, Obama falsely claimed that the BLM riots of 2020 were ‘peaceful protests.'”
“Seeing the gulf between the responses to yesterday’s riot and this summer’s peaceful protests and the larger movement for racial justice is so painful. It hurts,” the former first lady wrote.
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) January 7, 2021
The BLM riots of 2020 caused a whopping $1 billion in damages, multiple injuries and a total of 30 deaths. This hardly seems like “peaceful protests.” ” Guess Obama has a much different definition of “peaceful” than most folks do. In October of 2020, Michelle Obama stated that Trump was a racist — typical leftist strategy — for pointing out all of the violence that occurred during the BLM riots.
She went on to say, “pinning (violence) on what’s been an overwhelmingly peaceful movement for racial solidarity; it’s true, research backs it up; only a tiny fraction of demonstrations have had any violence at all. So What the president is doing is patently false, morally wrong, and yes, it is racist.”
.@MichelleObama on BLM riots: Trump is “pinning [violence] on what’s been an overwhelmingly peaceful movement for racial solidarity; it’s true, research backs it up; only a tiny fraction of demonstrations have had any violence at all … What the president is doing is … racist.” pic.twitter.com/7wBsmACiCQ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 6, 2020
A month later, she made the remark that Trump voters, in the “tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division.”
The files shared by Shellenberger revealed that Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter Trust and Safety, actually made up a “strike” system that, when applied to a user, would provide justification for a ban.
In 2017, Roth tweeted that there were “ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.”
In April 2022, Roth told a colleague that his goal “is to drive change in the world,” which is why he decided not to become an academic. pic.twitter.com/1Bi7fNHfWP
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 10, 2022
Around 11:30 am PT, Roth DMs his colleagues with news that he is excited to share.
“GUESS WHAT,” he writes. “Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.”
The new approach would create a system where five violations ("strikes") would result in permanent suspension. pic.twitter.com/F1KYqd1Xea
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 11, 2022
“Saturday’s Twitter files showed Roth proposed that it would take five strikes to warrant the ban but eventually settled on an ‘ad hoc’ reasoning for Trump’s ban. Roth previously wanted to ban Florida Representative Matt Gaetz using similar methods,” Young said in his report.
"This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope… This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world…" pic.twitter.com/4pedmgY8pa
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 11, 2022
Twitter employees recognize the difference between their own politics & Twitter's Terms of Service (TOS), but they also engage in complex interpretations of content in order to stamp out prohibited tweets, as a series of exchanges over the "#stopthesteal" hashtag reveal. pic.twitter.com/tfZesQNXx8
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 11, 2022
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