Project Veritas and James O'Keefe will sue Twitter for defamation after being banned in the fallout of a report on CNN.

 

Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe. The Federalist. 

Project Veritas and James O'Keefe will sue Twitter for defamation after being banned from the platform during the fallout of a major report on CNN. The Federalist. Project Veritas had recently launched a multipart exposé detailing how CNN used propaganda against President Trump in an effort to interfere with the 2020 election. O'Keefe's account was banned for "using multiple accounts" which O'Keefe says is false. Twitter has not provided any evidence that O'Keefe used multiple accounts. 

Project Veritas's report on CNN can be seen below. 

My Comment:

I pretty much ignored the Project Veritas report before this. O'Keefe tends to overhype his reporting and in this case it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Of course CNN is biased and of course they tried to prevent President Trump winning his 2nd term. This isn't something that anyone with even the smallest amount of media experience didn't already know. The story was useful enough for people not really keyed into the controversy with CNN but it wasn't anything groundbreaking as far as I was concerned. 

But this story? This story is huge. Because it looks to all the world that CNN pressured Twitter to censor one of their main critics. Despite being an obvious story that everyone knew CNN did not want evidence of their maleficence out in the world, so I am guessing they asked Twitter to censor O'Keefe and they did. 

For their part Twitter may have been looking for a reason to get rid of O'Keefe anyways. His stories tend to trend and they always go against the prevailing media narrative. They might have banned him anyways but the timing of this makes me suspect CNN was involved. My guess is that Twitter would have been smart enough to ban him during a time period where he wasn't trending. 

So did O'Keefe make fake accounts? Right now it's a he said/she said situation with no evidence either way. The fact that he is suing for defamation makes me lean towards no. We have seen people get banned from Twitter for making fake accounts before and they certainly didn't sue because they were actually guilty of the charges against them. My guess is that O'Keefe didn't make any fake accounts and that Twitter is just lying. 

But if he did make the accounts? Then yeah, that's a violation of the terms of service and ban worthy. I don't like it but making fake accounts is against the rules and there is a reason to not allow it on Twitter. I don't think this is the case but if it is then the ban is more justified. 

Regardless, the tide of social media censorship is totally out of control. It's insane that every conservative voice is being silenced and that big tech has so blatantly taken sides. There is so much that you just aren't allowed to say anymore. It's not a sustainable state of affairs...