In January 2021, after former US President Donald Trump tweeted in support of an uprising at the Capitol, his account was frozen and he was locked out. But leaders around the world have tweeted in support of genocide and imminent violence, but none have been banned from the platform. Less than six months later, in June 2021, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari posted a tweet threatening violence against the separatist groups in Biafra in the southwest of the country. Buhari’s tweet was deleted, but his account remained live.
Almost two years after Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, Elon Musk released a series of documents called the Twitter Files claiming the site was wrong. The leaked documents show how the platform made decisions before Musk took over, targeting the former president and other controversial moderation decisions.
In the most recent file dump published by Bari Weiss, the founder and editor of media organization The Free Press, Musk released several documents revealing how Twitter’s policy and trust and security teams came to the decision to ban Trump in the aftermath of the uprising on January 6, 2021.
In an argument outlined via Twitter, Weiss claims the decision to ban Trump was unprecedented and a departure from the site’s responses to other heads of state whose tweets also incited or supported violence. Weiss cited examples of leaders in Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Iran who she said showed restraint in deciding whether or not to keep prominent political figures on the platform, even after violations. Twitter has not released the documents detailing the decision to keep other public figures on the site.
While Weiss interpreted the reluctance to use such measures against other world leaders as evidence that Trump was being treated particularly unfairly, the documents may also reveal the opposite: that the company consistently underestimated the danger its platform posed in contexts outside the US, and only vigorously occurred. against threats to American democracy. If Twitter had implemented its rules uniformly around the world, Trump’s ban would have extended to other leaders as well.
“Vulnerable communities in distant lands are less important than relationships with leaders [India’s Narendra] Modi or others,” said an employee of an organization that was part of Twitter’s trust and security council, which was disbanded earlier this month. The employee asked for anonymity because he feared his organization could be the target of harassment and threats, such as those faced by former Twitter employees.
Part of this discrepancy may be related to how different governments respond to social platform moderation. After Twitter removed Buhari’s threatening tweet against the Biafran separatists, the company was banned. But instead of banning Buhari in turn, the company later negotiated with the government to be reinstated by, among other things, agreeing to open a local office, pay local taxes and register as a broadcaster. Nigeria is now considering legislation to regulate platforms.
“I think it takes a lot of calculations to weigh up whether to take enforcement action, and of course access to markets is one of them,” said Kian Vesteinsson, senior research analyst for technology and democracy at Freedom House, a non-profit research and advocacy group. profit motive focused on democracy and political freedoms.
