Twitter suspended the account for Project Veritas and locked the account of the conservative watchdog’s founder, James O’Keefe, after he released a video with a Facebook official about the social media website’s policies.
When a user tries to access the conservative group’s page, the standard Twitter suspension message reads: “Account suspended. … Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules.” O’Keefe’s page was still accessible as of Feb. 11.
According to screenshots posted by Project Veritas on Telegram, Twitter said that the group had violated its rules “against posting private information.”
The suspension came after Project Veritas published a video on YouTube on Feb. 10—which is still available—that shows reporter Christian Hartsock confronting Facebook executive Guy Rosen apparently outside his home.
Project Veritas also captured Rosen apparently saying during an internal Facebook call meeting: “We have a system that is able to freeze commenting on threads in cases where our systems are detecting that there may be a thread that has hate speech or violence. … These are all things we’ve built over the past three, four years as part of our investments into the integrity space, our efforts to protect the election.”
About a month ago, Project Veritas released a clip that appears to show Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey—in a leaked video call—talking about deleting more accounts after former President Donald Trump was banned.
“We know we are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, the next few weeks, going on beyond inauguration,” Dorsey says in the video. “We have to expect that. We have to be ready for that.”
Dorsey then refers to actions that were taken against QAnon-related accounts, saying it’s part of a “broader approach.”
“You know, the U.S. is extremely divided. Our platform is showing that every single day,” Dorsey continues. “And our role is to protect the integrity of that conversation and do what we can to make sure that no one is being harmed based off that. And that is our focus.”
In recent months, Twitter and Facebook have come under fire for what critics say is an attempt to censor conservatives or viewpoints the companies deem outside the mainstream. As a result, alternative social media platforms—such as Telegram, Gab, and MeWe—have seen spikes in users in recent weeks.
Telegram became the No. 1 non-game app downloaded worldwide in January via the Apple Store.
Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
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