ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods 54. PII has multiple meanings, one being “Public Interest Interstitial,” i.e. a covering label applied for “public interest” reasons. The post below also references “proactive V,” i.e. proactive visibility filtering.

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods 55. This is all necessary background to J6. Before the riots, the company was engaged in an inherently insane/impossible project, trying to create an ever-expanding, ostensibly rational set of rules to regulate every conceivable speech situation that might arise between humans.

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods This project was preposterous yet its leaders were unable to see this, having become infected with groupthing, coming to believe – sincerely – that it was Twitter's responsibility to control, as much as possible, what people could talk about, how often, and with whom.

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods 56. When panic first breaks out on J6 there’s a fair share of WTF-type posts, mixed in with frantic calls for Twitter to start deploying its full arsenal of moderation tools. “What is the right remediation? Do we interstitial the video?” asks one employee, in despair:

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods 57. This “Freedom or Death” tweet from #StopTheSteal gadfly Mike Coudrey elicits heated reactions:

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods 58. Roth groans about Coudrey: “THIS asshole,” but still seems determined to stick at least superficially to rules, itching to act “if” this “constitutes incitement.”

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods 59. At 2:39 p.m. PST, a comms official asked Roth to confirm or deny a story that they’d restricted Trump’s ability to tweet. Roth says, “We have not.”

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods 60. Minutes later, Roth executed the historic act of “bouncing” Trump, i.e. putting him in timeout. “I hope you… are appropriately CorpSec’d,” says a colleague.

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods This theme of Policy perhaps being stressed by queries from Communications executives – who themselves have to answer the public’s questions – occasionally appears. Two days later, you see chatter about pulling Comms out of the loop:

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods 61. The first company-wide email from Gadde on January 6th announced that 3 Trump tweets had been bounced, but more importantly signaled a determination to use legit “violations” as a guide for any possible permanent suspension:

ShellenbergerMD Bari Weiss John Basham Titania McGrath James Woods 62. “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?” Safe to say Trump’s “Go home with love & in peace” tweet mid-riot didn’t go over well at Twitter HQ: