A leaked recording of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey revealed that the company's clampdown on inciting violence will go beyond banning President Donald Trump.
Project Veritas, which is a right-wing news outlet, released a video on Thursday, January 14. According to reports, the recording was leaked by a Twitter whistleblower who secretly recorded the remarks by Dorsey to his employees.
After this clip was made public #ExposeTwitter started trending on social media. But Twitter did not dispute the accuracy of the recording, rather the company said that it was essentially the same content as the CEO publicly tweeted this week.
Much Bigger Than Just One Account
Trump was permanently barred from Twitter last week. At that time Twitter said: "We have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence." Meanwhile, other social media companies, such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitch, also suspended Trump's accounts.
"You should always feel free to express yourself in whatever format manifestation feels right,"
Dorsey told his employees, according to the leaked clip. "We know we are focused on one account right now"—possibly indicating the account belonging to Trump ... 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 go on beyond the inauguration," Dorsey added.
While asking the staff to "be ready" for any situation which could encourage violence, the tech CEO added that the focus is certainly on one account and how it ties to real-world violence.
"We need to think much longer-term around how these dynamics play out over time. I don't believe this is going away any time soon," he said.
The CEO also talked about the actions his company is taking against the QAnon theories on the social media platform. He said the Twitter team has a lot of work to do. "We also need to give them space and the support to focus on the much bigger picture. Because it is not going away," he added.
Many politicians, especially Republicans, have been saying that after the Capitol attack, this is the time to heal as the country is massively divided. Dorsey also told the same to his employees while adding that the division is visible on Twitter also.
"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 on that. And that is our focus," the CEO said.
However, a Twitter spokesperson, speaking about the leaked clip, told Fox News that the remarks shown in the video were delivered to more than 5,400 employees of the company. The spokesperson also clarified that these comments are "nearly the same words" what Dorsey shared in a recent Tweet Thread offering context around and reflections on the company's work to protect the conversation in recent weeks.
Dorsey defended the step to permanently suspend Trump's account from Twitter, saying that it was the "right decision". He also said that he knew it was a fine line, and he did not want to limit the "potential for clarification, redemption, and learning".
However, the founder of Project Veritas, James O'Keefe, asked people to "stay tuned" as according to him more leaks from Twitter may come. "We've had over a dozen people reach out to us this week with video evidence inside Twitter," he said. "We have all these whistleblowers coming to us, insiders helping us expose. We need more of these people," he said in an interview on "Hannity".
