James O'Keefe has been banned on
Twitter, it is now permanent.
And his ban comes just a few months
after his group Project Veritas was
thrown off Twitter for, quote,
repeated violations of Twitter's
private information policy.
At the time, O'Keefe's account
was also temporarily locked for
violating the company's policy.
But this time it is confirmed via
Twitter spokesperson that it has
been permanently suspended for
violating the Twitter Rules on
platform manipulation and spam.
The social media platform
specifically outlined how
Twitter policy dictates that users
can't mislead others on Twitter by
operating fake accounts and
that can't artificially amplify or
disrupt conversations through
the use of multiple accounts.
Now that's, I think, the most
interesting one because many
platforms have something like this.
They almost never actually
employ them, in particular,
against the right.
There have been Judd Legum who has
been on the show multiple times.
He has demonstrated how,
especially on Facebook,
they use these sort of bot networks
of automated reposting pages to
artificially amplify the reach of
right wing articles, blog posts,
content, stuff like that.
That is explicitly against
Facebook's guidelines, and
it has been years that they've been
doing it and they have never
actually suffered any consequences.
I don't know that this represents
a systemic shift in that for
Twitter, but at the very least,
James O'Keefe and Project Veritas
apparently have run afoul of it and
James O'Keefe is now permanently
banned, Brett.
>> Yes, and
it seems not to be a band because
people don't like his politics.
It seems to be a ban because he's
breaking the rules of the social
media network.
And they're within their rights.
That's a capitalist argument.
That is a gay cake argument.
That is a, hey, we have a policy
that we follow here and it is our
First Amendment right as owners of
a business to do whatever we want,
because we're not the government
and you can't keep us here.
And then also just from the legal
standpoint, I'm sure Twitter's
terms of service is crafted to
protect them from lawsuits.
But it seems like James O'Keefe
isn't going to let that stop him.
He and whoever's backing him
are going to fight this in a hope
to get some obviously monetary and
PR base loot from it essentially.
>> Yeah. Yeah they were actually
suing for defamation over its claim
that he operated fake accounts.
His whole thing is fake accounts.
And by the way, some people might
say, well, he's a journalist,
doesn't he have to do that?
No, breaks stories every week.
He doesn't have any fake accounts.
He gets people to give him
information, he publicizes it.
You could do that in theory,
especially if the organizations
you're targeting are things like
CNN where they have literally
thousands of employees.
In any event,
they get to have standards.
And if they're public, which they
are, if you've been warned for
past violations, which he has, you
don't get to be super shocked when
finally they do what they've been
saying they would do for some time.
>> Yeah.
And it's crazy how quickly these
things.
It seems to me that part of the
reason that his things about him
trends as so much bigger than other
bits of news is kind of wrapped
into the reason he's been banned.
They do this, and
if you see those Judd Legum things,
they're amazing.
And Ben Shapiro's network
does the same thing with here
are a bunch of tweets.
Here's the policy that says you
can't just have a bunch of networks
that you control, retweet the same
damn thing over and
over again to game our system.
And then Judd is just like here's
a bunch of screencaps of the same
title, the same description.
These are originating posts.
It's crazy.
And people do it all the time.
They pay off bot networks and
this is part of it.
If they want to say that the best
ideas win out, which is the central
argument of people on the right,
the ones they make all the time,
why do they need robots to game
that system?
Shouldn't your ideas be fine on
their own?
And I don't know specifically about
James O'Keefe's bot network or
alleged bot network, but
in general,
that dynamic prevails all the time.
>> Yeah, you see it constantly.
The Judd Legum shows on Facebook,
these supposedly independent right
wing sites, he'll
show when the article is posted on,
I don't know, I'll say Dan Bongino,
I have no idea if it's Dan Bongino,
but and it's seconds later it's
instantly also pushed out on all
these other things with the exact
same messages and all that.
And all of it is artificial.
It's not another one of his sites
spreading.
I think that you're totally allowed
to do that in theory.
It's the idea that
this is a network and it's not.
It's all the same people.
Anyway, we'll see.
I'm sure he's going to raise
even more money off of
having been canceled.
>> I will say this.
Can we just have one second to talk
about Project Veritas videos and
how, if I'm to give my media
satirical media criticism, it's
like watching Ghost Adventures?
It is. If anyone watches
Ghost Adventures they're like, god,
we're here, and
my wife's going to come in because
she loves Ghost Adventures,
like Zak Bagans is a journalist.
But basically they go with their
readings and they're like, gosh,
there's ghosts here.
And they're like, god,
there's baby parts here.
We have a real editorial
champion from CNN here.
It's the TD.
That is a stressful job to have as
a technical director.
It is a very difficult job, and
I'm not just saying
that because Brandon can cut
away from me at any moment.
But they're not choosing the story.
[LAUGH] >> Get TD owned, Brett.
[LAUGH] >> The reason I didn't
tweet about this is it's true.
The TD has 1,000 million buttons in
front of them.
And without knowing how to do that,
the entire thing caves in
on itself.
In a giant newsroom,
there's 10 to 15 people in a room
doing all this crazy stuff.
That's that guy's very
important job.
Is he choosing the stories?
No.
Is he trying to get some from
the person on his Tinder
date to seem important?
Yes.
And that's it.
And that's the equivalent of
Zach Baggins going like did you
hear that?
It's a ghost.
Did you hear that?
>> I'm really worried about what
happens when your wife responds.
Anyway, and by the way, here,
at least could be like that.
Brandon could suggest
stories anytime he wants.
We have a Slack channel.
We did a story yesterday because
Bart posted a bunch of links
about it.
I don't think it's CNN that's
probably happening.
I don't think the host choose
the stories.
I think it's probably like the EP
just gives them their script.
Sean Hannity is probably not like,
god, I gotta get this rundown down
to a tight 60, yeah, anyway.
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