Speaking in front of the House Oversight Committee, Yoel Roth, the former Twitter Global Head of Trust and Safety, has openly admitted that he made use of disappearing message apps to speaking a large number of government officials.
Roth appeared in front of the committee, which was holding a meeting to look into the role of Twitter in putting a block on access to a New York Post story that was centered on the laptop of Hunter Biden. The story was put out just before the election in 2020. The committee spoke with Roth along with former Twitter Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former Deputy General Counsel James Baker, and Twitter whistleblower Anika Collier Navaroli.
When questioned about if the group made use of disappearing message apps such as Signal, Snapchat, or Wicker to carry out conversations with officials in the U.S. government, Baker dodged the question, “I don’t recall,” Gadde stated, “Not to my recollection.”
Roth, however, quickly answered, “Yes.”
At one point earlier this week, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) put out a public press release in which he explained, “In the runup to the 2020 presidential election, Big Tech and the Swamp colluded to censor reporting about the Biden family’s shady business schemes. The U.S. intelligence community and the FBI frequently communicated with Big Tech and advised Twitter executives to question the validity of any Hunter Biden story—before the New York Post ever reported on it.”
“We also know members of Twitter’s top censorship team debated how they could justify limiting the spread of the story,” stated Comer. “They landed on a policy that even some among them doubted. Americans deserve answers about this attack on the First Amendment and why Big Tech and the Swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit. Accountability is coming.”
The group of three former executives for the social media titan insisted this past Wednesday that the government had not at all been a factor when it came to their choice to halt the sharing of the story from the New York Post.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) was quick to put Roth in the hot seat about Twitter’s choice to heavily suppress the post. “So the FBI didn’t tell you it was fake, didn’t tell you it was hacked, and Mr. Roth, did the story violate your policy?” he stated to Roth.
“In my judgment at the time, no, it did not,” Roth shot back.
“You said it isn’t clearly a violation of our hacked materials policy, nor is it clearly a violation of anything else. So I think what a lot of people are wondering is, if it didn’t violate your policies and they didn’t tell you it was fake, they didn’t tell you it was hacked, why’d you take it down?” posited Jordan.
“The company made the decision that found that it did violate the policy; it wasn’t my personal judgment at the time that it did, but the decision was communicated to me by my direct supervisor, and ultimately I didn’t disagree with it enough to object,” answered Roth.
“You know what I think happened, Mr. Roth? I think you guys got played,” stated Jordan. “I think you guys wanted to take it deep down; you saw what the chairman put up where you said everyone in the White House is a fascist. I think you guys wanted it to be taken down. I think you meet with these guys every week; we know that’s been established in the Twitter files. … I think you guys wanted to take it down; I think you guys got played by the FBI.”
