Recently, the conservative media outlet called Project Veritas revealed - through interviews with several Twitter employees - that some of the social media company"s employees have unrestricted access to "everything you post online". The video fed into the already rife notion that Twitter continues to silence those with conservative viewpoints.
Twitter has officially responded to BuzzFeed News regarding these allegations, calling the investigation conducted by James O"Keefe"s news organization "misleading and factually incorrect". The Project Veritas video showed engineer Clay Haynes telling investigators - who were there under false pretenses - that there are several teams of up to four hundred people being paid to "look at d*ck pics". Although this is not surprising, since there could be some cases where employees of the company need to review reports of harassment - which could include unsolicited nude photographs - Twitter vehemently disputed these claims.
According to the company"s spokesperson, they "do not proactively review DMs. Period,":
"A limited number of employees have access to such information, for legitimate work purposes, and we enforce strict access protocols for those employees.
We deplore the deceptive and underhanded tactics by which this footage was obtained and selectively edited to fit a pre-determined narrative, Twitter is committed to enforcing our rules without bias and empowering every voice on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.”
According to Buzzfeed News, a former Twitter employee mirrored these sentiments, however, he did point out that the claims made by Project Veritas were "technically accurate to a degree, but exaggerated for effect by drunk idiots". It was also confirmed that some engineers are required to view sensitive data in a response to a report by a user. Two unnamed senior employees of the company also noted that most of the moderation work done by the company, are executed through its algorithms.
Twitter recently implemented new rules for the platform relating to hate speech and harassment, which resulted in several accounts being banned. However, some have called on the company to ban the account of President Donald Trump, with little success. Another Project Veritas video reportedly showed employees of the micro-blogging site boasting that they would be "more than happy to help the Department of Justice in their little investigation". This would apparently be done by illegally handing over private messages sent through the platform by the current President of the United States. Twitter denied these claims as well, noting that it only responds to valid legal requests by such entities.
According to reports, Twitter has - since the November incident where President Donald Trump"s account was disabled - worked on securing employee permissions further.
Source: Buzzfeed News