This Is How Steve Bannon And Breitbart Tried To Sabotage Twitter

[highplainsdem]

Source: BuzzFeed

Steve Bannon and his associates at Breitbart News planned a broad financial, legal, and editorial campaign to damage Twitter, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The campaign, waged in the months before Bannon left his job as chair of Breitbart and took control of Donald J. Trump’s presidential run in August 2016, sought to devalue and weaken the social network that had banned his employees and, he believed, silenced conservative voices.

-snip-

These messages, and other documents shared with BuzzFeed News, reveal a strategy to conduct a sustained, three-pronged war against Twitter. It included a deluge of negative coverage about Twitter on Breitbart, explorations of potential litigation against the San Francisco company, and nascent plans to sabotage Twitter’s volatile stock with financial institutions and traders.

While social media companies have become regular targets of the pro-Trump right, Bannon’s focus on Twitter — which has struggled to define and enforce its policies on harassment, abuse, and free speech — underscores how vital a battleground the platform is in the current culture war. And it illustrates how these companies, desperate to be seen as neutral actors, have been dragged out of that position by dogged political forces.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/inside-steve-bannons-war-against-twitter

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"It included a deluge of negative coverage about Twitter on Breitbart, explorations of potential litigation against the San Francisco company, and nascent plans to sabotage Twitter’s volatile stock with financial institutions and traders."


As I've said elsewhere, Bannon is an authoritarian. He does not believe in free speech or freedom of the press. His interest in media is using media, including social media, as a conduit for propaganda to advance his alt-right agenda and apocalyptic, insane worldvew, and the people he views as political tools who can be useful to him.

[highplainsdem]

1. Thanks for the recs! I hope everyone reads the full article

to see just how far Bannon was willing to go.

[Rene]

2. Can't he be arrested for this? (hope)

[Initech]

3. That guy is fucking nuts. At some point I hope he gets his just desserts.

Preferably in the form of a perp walk to a cell in Supermax.

[muntrv]

4. Steve Bannon wants to be Julius Streicher.

[highplainsdem]

5. And Leni Riefenstahl. Bannon loved Andrew Breitbart comparing him to Riefenstahl.

[not fooled]

10. Riefenstahl had talent

Used to bad ends, but talent nonetheless.

bannon just wants to blow shit up.

[AllaN01Bear]

6. rec. bannon is just as bad as herr gobels was. u scream i am a patraiot,

then act like one you dumb cluck. if not go home to russia without love .

[marble falls]

7. "a deluge of negative coverage about Twitter on Breitbart", eh? In another words nobody saw it....

Bannons going to get a chance to take one for the team ala Col North when Mueller indicts him. I don't think Bannons got the sand to clam up and do time like Ollie did.

[bigbrother05]

12. Liddy did his time, North got his conviction overturned

North was always a punk and confessed to lying to Congress. He got out on a technicality.

Bannon will squeal if he thinks he can avoid hard time, sacrifice is for suckers.

[marble falls]

14. Olie did get 1200hrs of community service.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Sabotaging Wall Street is not much liked by the Powers That Be. Bannon's a fool, ultimately. . . nt

[defacto7]

9. What's Twitter?

[LiberalLovinLug]

11. So why don't they ban Trump, Bannon, and Breitbart from Twitter?

Do you think if there were some other smaller fringe conspirators that "sought to devalue and weaken the social network" and initiated "a strategy to conduct a sustained, three-pronged war against Twitter" would NOT be banned for life from Twitter?

I guess Twitter is afraid of the zombie deplorable army that can roused into action on a dime. I'm sure they'd get many account self-cancellations if they cancelled Trumps account. But by gawd that would send a message.

[TheBlackAdder]

13. If True, Twitter should permanently dissolve Bannon & Breitbart's Twitter Accounts. It's in their TOS

.

You do subversive shit against the firm, and your account is revoked.

.

[onecent]

15. Can't we GET RID OF BANNON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[highplainsdem]

16. I hope Muelller will put him in prison.