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Twitter Permanently Bans James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas

   DailyWire.com
Conservative political activist James O'Keefe speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 1, 2019.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Twitter permanently banned the account of the James O’Keefe-founded undercover journalist group Project Veritas on Thursday for allegedly sharing “private information” without consent.

James O’Keefe later said in a video that Twitter highlighted the apparently rule-violating post from Project Veritas as a video showing the Facebook Vice President of Integrity Guy Rosen being questioned outside his home.

“The tweet in question arose when asking for comment from Facebook’s VP of Integrity about censorship,” the group said from their Telegram channel. “Project Veritas is appealing this decision, as no privacy was violated.”

“Twitter also confirmed that O’Keefe’s personal account had been locked temporarily for violating the same policy, and that O’Keefe would be required to remove the violative content before regaining permission to tweet,” CNN Business reported Thursday. “In an emailed statement to CNN Business, O’Keefe again said it was ‘false’ that the video contained private information and claimed Twitter told the group it could have its account reinstated if it deleted the tweet containing the video.”

CNN Business followed-up with Twitter about O’Keefe’s claim that he was told the account could potentially be reinstated. The Big Tech platform said they had “mistakenly communicated to Project Veritas that there would be a way to restore its account and confirmed that the group’s suspension was permanent and final.”

In a video posted from Project Veritas Action, O’Keefe argued that the group’s post is in-line with mainstream journalistic standards, noting that he has appealed the ban and has not deleted the tweet in question.

In the video released by Project Veritas and flagged by Twitter, Rosen said the social media platform “‘freezes’ comment sections on posts where they suspect, but have not necessarily have confirmed, that ‘hate speech’ is taking place,” The Post Millennial reported.

“We have a system that is able to freeze commenting on threads in cases where our systems are detecting that there may be a thread that has hate speech or violence,” Rosen said. “These are all things we’ve built over the past three-four years as part of our investments into the integrity space, our efforts to protect the election.”

Twitter crackdowns on the Right appear to have become increasingly common since the banning of President Donald Trump on Jan. 8.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter announced at the time, The Daily Wire reported. “In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.”

“However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things,” the statement from Twitter added. “We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.”

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