Law enforcement officials in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) met regularly with top content moderators at Twitter during the 2020 presidential election, independent journalist Matt Taibbi revealed in the latest dispatches from the Twitter Files.
Taibbi describes an "erosion of standards within the company" that took place between October 2020 and January 6th, 2021, as Twitter's Trust & Safety team, headed by Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde, took a more active—and, according to Taibbi, arbitrary—role in moderating election-related content. Taibbi contrasts their moderation decisions with calls made by "Safety Operations," a broader team "whose staffers used a more rules-based process for addressing issues like porn, scams, and threats."
