A former Twitter Inc. employee said he pleaded with management to consider a “stricter” moderation policy in the months leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, but the company “chose not to act.”
During riveting taped testimony at the latest hearing from the House Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday, the former Twitter TWTR, +4.32% employee said he repeatedly raised concerns after then-President Donald Trump said the extremist organization Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by” at his Sept. 29, 2020, presidential debate with Joe Biden. Despite internal distress, however, no action was taken to change policy because Twitter “relished in the knowledge that they were also the favorite and most used service” by Trump, the former employee said.
“I had been begging… and attempting to raise the reality that… if we made no intervention into what I saw occurring, people were going to die,” testified the ex-employee, whose face and voice was obscured during Tuesday’s hearing.
He added that Trump’s early-morning tweet on Dec. 19, 2020, calling for a rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, to dispute results of the 2020 presidential election produced threatening responses that “felt as if a mob was being organized.”
Following Trump’s tweet, far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and others urged Trump supporters to show up on Jan. 6, while others posted on message boards advocating violence against police guarding the Capitol.
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