Silicon Valley, beware: Project Veritas has infiltrated the top echelons of Big Tech.
The guerilla investigative outfit released Thursday a stunning undercover video of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey talking about how the platform plans to concentrate on more than President Trump’s account, which was shuttered on Jan. 8, two days after the U.S. Capitol riots.
“We are focused on one account [@realDonaldTrump] 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, and the next few weeks, and it’s going to go on beyond the inauguration,” Mr. Dorsey said. “And we have to expect that and we have to be ready for that.”
In the last week, Twitter has permanently suspended Mr. Trump’s account; shut down more than 70,000 accounts identified as spreading QAnon conspiracy theories, and raised the specter of politically motivated censorship as prominent Republicans and conservatives report dramatic decreases in their followers.
#ExposeTwitter pic.twitter.com/QhyyUTpKUB
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 14, 2021
At one point, Mr. Dorsey refers on the video to the “moves that we’re making today around QAnon.” The QAnon accounts were deleted Tuesday, indicating that the footage is recent.
“So, the focus is certainly on this account [@realDonaldTrump] and how it ties to real-world violence,” Mr. Dorsey said in the hidden-camera video. “But also, we need to think much longer-term around how these dynamics play out over time. I don’t believe this is going away anytime soon.”
Twitter spokesperson Brandon Borrman downplayed the significance of the revelations, tweeting, “Does it really count if your CEO tweets it out to the world the day before?”
What Mr. Dorsey said was in many respects less astonishing than the fact that Project Veritas was able to get so close to perhaps the world’s most powerful and reclusive tech titan.
Project Veritas president James O’Keefe did some crowing about the “Twitter insider” who passed along the video.
“There you have it, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, recorded by one of his own employees, an insider whistleblower at Twitter, recorded saying this is going to be much bigger than just one account,” said Mr. O’Keefe in a video post.
He said more than a dozen people had reached out to Project Veritas this week with “video evidence insider Twitter,” and advised viewers to “stay tuned.”
“They may be private companies, but they have more power than all three branches of government,” Mr. O’Keefe said.
Mr. Dorsey issued a defense Wednesday of the decision to ban Mr. Trump from his favorite platform, tweeting, “I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here.”
“After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?” Mr. Dorsey said on his @jack account. “I believe this was the right decision for Twitter.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.