Project Veritas Video Claims Twitter Can See Your Nude DMs
Project Veritas, the media outlet run by James O’Keefe, has released a third video relating to its undercover Twitter video project. The first dealt with access to President Donald Trump’s direct and deleted messages, the second is about shadow banning conservatives and today’s focuses on the access the social media company has to those sensitive messages you send.
According to a video published today, in a conversation with Twitter employees, the outlet alleges that private sensual messages and nude photos you slide into DMs can be viewed at a by people at Twitter.
"So all your sex messages and your, like, dick pics are on my server now," Twitter engineer Pranay Singh allegedly said in the undercover video. "All you illegitimate wives, and like, all the girls you've been [messing] around with, they're on my server now.”
An unnamed Project Veritas employee asks the engineer if she sends a message he’s going to read it and Singh says “the machines are.”
Clay Haynes, another Twitter engineer, said "I've seen way more penises than I've ever wanted to see in my life… They are paid to look at dic pics,” he says of employees at Twitter. The video starts with that quote but Haynes later says he has to look at all the reported tweets, which would obviously include nude pictures sent. Machine learning, he says, also helps flag inappropriate messages sent on the platform.
Singh says the data of your tweets and direct messages are analyzed and the data is sold. “A machine is going to look at it. An algorithm will look at it.”
Mihai Florea, another Twitter engineer, said in the Project Veritas video that your data is money for the company. "You're paying for the right to use our website with your data basically."
After the first video, which Project Veritas claims an engineer said he can view and share Trump’s deleted messages, Twitter told International Business Times that the video is not what it seems.
“The individual depicted in this video was speaking in a personal capacity and does not represent or speak for Twitter. Twitter only responds to valid legal requests, and does not share any user information with law enforcement without such a request.”
“We deplore the deceptive and underhanded tactics by which this footage was obtained and selectively edited to fit a pre-determined narrative,” Twitter’s spokesperson said. “Twitter is committed to enforcing our rules without bias and empowering every voice on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.”
The fact the company has access to all the messages you send and delete shouldn’t be a surprise. Twitter’s privacy policy states the company can access that information with a subpoena to share with government officials. Project Veritas, however, took that language and turned it into that the company could just share Trump’s messages willingly and just because.
Moral of the story, nothing is private on the internet… even if you think it's a direct or private message. While Project Veritas doesn’t present evidence that Twitter is actively sharing your dick pics with its employees, the best course of action is to probably not use Twitter, or any form of social media, to send things you don't want other people to read.
Any video or article posted by Project Veritas should be viewed with much scrutiny and skepticism as the outlet has a history of deliberately creating fake stories. For example, the outlet tried to dupe the Washington Post during the Alabama special election with a fake Roy Moore accuser.
"In a series of interviews over two weeks, the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15. During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public," the outlet wrote.
"Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas," the story said. "The organization sets up undercover 'stings' that involve using false cover stories and covert video recordings meant to expose what the group says is media bias."
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