Twitter has temporarily suspended Project Veritas, a nonprofit organization that uses undercover journalism to expose corruption and unethical behavior in both public and private institutions.
Project Veritas received the following reasoning for their 12 hour suspension."You may not publish or post other people's private information without their express authorization and permission."
"Twitter has decided that investigative journalism is in violation of their terms of service," founder and president of Project Veritas, James O'Keefe, tweeted out this morning.
"Twitter has decided that investigative journalism is in violation of their terms of service." - James O'Keefe
The 'private information' Project Veritas posted on Twitter was a product of their investigation into Pinterest. It consisted of a series of internal communications between members of the social media platform's staff. Project Veritas gained access to the Pinterest's communications via a whistleblower.
In the company's communications, Pinterest falsely labelled the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, a "white supremacist".
The communications in question took place on a Slack channel, a messaging and file-sharing platform. O'Keefe presented the idea that the policy maker may have simply been voicing their opinion. The employee who came out against Pinterest explained "this was actually in a war room where policy makers were making decisions about content."
The tech giants appear to operate on a blatant double-standard. Twitter is temporarily deplatforming Project Veritas for investigative journalism, claiming they cannot post 'private information' without permission. All the while Facebook leaked a private citizen's information to the Daily Beast to aid them in exposing a Trump supporter for mocking Nancy Pelosi.
Pinterest did not stop at falsely labelling conservatives as white supremacists. They also censored "Bible" related search terms and banned the pro-life group Live Action, labelling them as porn. Right before the part one of Project Veritas' video series exposing Pinterest was released, the social media site unbanned the pro-life group.
The next morning, O'Keefe explained, Pinterest "reversed themselves a hundred and eighty degrees and blocked the site again. Their course of action is confusing at best."
Project Veritas later revealed that the whistleblower who spoke to O'Keefe about the tech giant's wrongdoings has been fired.
