Amid his quest to expose the probable power abuse behind employees of the Twitter social network, filmmaker and conservative advocate James O’Keefe published furtive footage on Monday (Jan. 15) where engineers of the platform claim hundreds of employees read every single post a user shares, including direct messages.
Twitter immediately debunked the claims saying the statements made by O’Keefe and his media company Project Veritas are certain in falsehood and severely fallacious.
Twitter engineer Clay Haynes is shown saying to a Project Veritas personality that there are hundreds of Twitter employees that have unrestricted access to users’ private data, in the footage. “There’s teams dedicated to it… at least, three or four hundred people,” said Haynes. “They’re paid to look at dick pics.”
Paid to look at…what? According to BuzzFeed, Twitter debunked the DM claim saying, “We do not proactively review DMs. Period,” a Twitter spokesman disputed. “A limited number of employees have access to such information, for legitimate work purposes, and we enforce strict access protocols for those employees.”
Despite the fact Twitter never revealed the number of the exact amount of employees who have access for users’ private data, a former senior employee told BuzzFeed that while O’Keefe’s claim was “technically accurate to a degree, but exaggerated for effect by drunk idiots.” In other words, the amount of employees who have access to the private data of users does not hit the hundreds. The former employee clarified only a small group of engineers have access and are only allowed to access the data when they receive reports in the nature of dangers such as harassment.
“We deplore the deceptive and underhanded tactics by which this footage was obtained and selectively edited to fit a pre-determined narrative,” Twitter announced last week. “Twitter is committed to enforcing our rules without bias and empowering every voice on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.”
O’Keefe’s video is a part of a series with his media company Project Veritas which is centered about a mission to investigate the ways and actions of Twitter. Just last week, he published footage of Twitter engineers admitting they were willing to assist with bum-rushing the account of President Trump for the sake of the Department of Justice. In response, Twitter denied the allowance by claiming it “only responds to valid legal requests, and does not share any user information with law enforcement without such a request.”
Well, it looks like Twitter has an abundance of monkeys on their back and may have to reconsider many their practices. With the aggressive use President Trump hoards on the platform, attention to the network’s algorithm and employees have skyrocketed as it has now become a legitimate place for politicians and government officials to say their “peace.”
