O'Keefe: Big Tech whistleblowers having 'crisis of conscience'
Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe discusses uncovering liberal bias at social media giants.
Twitter says it has permanently suspended the account of the right-wing guerilla news outlet Project Veritas and locked its founder James O'Keefe out of his account.
A spokesperson for Twitter confirmed to Fox News that @Project_Veritas was "permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy." Additionally, the account, @JamesOKeefeIII, was "temporarily locked for violating our private information policy" and that O'Keefe is "required to delete the violative Tweet to regain access to their account."
Fox News has learned that the suspension came just 20 minutes after Project Veritas attempted to appeal Twitter's decision to lock both accounts after they shared a video showing Project Veritas journalist Christian Hartsock approaching Facebook executive Guy Rosen outside of his home. The confrontation was over remarks he made during an internal video conference that was previously leaked to Project Veritas.
In the leaked video that Project Veritas released last week, Rosen, who is Facebook's vice president of "integrity," is heard saying on the Jan. 7 conference that the tech giant has a "system" of being able to "freeze commenting" on threads that are flagged as containing "hate speech or violence."
A source tells Fox News that Project Veritas never received a formal response to its appeal regarding the tweets in question but only received an email notifying about the suspension of @Project_Veritas.
"Note that if you attempt to evade a permanent suspension by creating new accounts, we will suspend your new accounts," Twitter warned Project Veritas in the email obtained by Fox News.
In a statement to Fox News, O'Keefe said Twitter's claim that his tweets "published private information" was "false" and that Twitter "invited" Project Veritas to appeal the decision.
"In an apparent act of retaliation for daring to question their authority, Twitter responded to our appeal by suspending our account, continuing to tell us that Project Veritas could delete the tweet and have our account reinstated," O'Keefe stated. "This is nothing new from Twitter – just last fall Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted in Congress his company’s decision to block the New York Post was erroneous while still demanding the Post kneel before them by deleting the tweet. Here we go again – Twitter opting to delete news and demand fealty when their decision is dared to be questioned."
"I will not kneel," O'Keefe declared. "Twitter is wrong. Let them kneel."
O'Keefe later announced his return to Twitter after revealing in a video that he removed the tweet that allegedly violated the platform's policies in order to reinstate his account.
Project Veritas has been making headlines in recent weeks after various "whistleblowers" from Big Tech have been leaking internal conference calls to the outlet. Last month, Twitter itself was the subject of such leaks, which showed its CEO Jack Dorsey suggesting that Twitter's actions will be "much bigger" than the permanent suspension of then-President Donald Trump.
"We know we are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration," Dorsey said. "So, the focus is certainly on this account and how it ties to real-world violence. But also, we need to think much longer-term around how these dynamics play out over time. I don't believe this is going away anytime soon."
Dorsey then referenced actions taken against QAnon conspiracy theorists as part of a recent purge of Twitter accounts, telling staff it's part of a "much broader approach that we should be looking at and going deeper on."
"You know, the U.S. is extremely divided. Our platform is showing that every single day," Dorsey later said. "And our role is to protect the integrity of that conversation and do what we can to make sure that no one is being harmed based off that. And that is our focus."
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A Twitter spokesperson told Fox News, "The remarks shown in the video were delivered to our more than 5,400 employees and are nearly the same words Jack shared in a recent Tweet Thread offering context around and reflections on our work to protect the conversation in recent weeks."
Last week, Project Veritas released footage featuring Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives admitting they have "too much power" while expressing eagerness to work with the Biden administration.
Facebook did not respond to Fox News' request for comment at the time.