Former Donald Trump aide Steve Bannon and the news organization he used to head, Breitbart, supposedly combined for an all-out attempt to take down one of the world's most popular means for communication: Twitter.
According to Newsweek, both Bannon and Breitbart made it their mission to sabotage Twitter because "they believed the company was silencing conservatives on its platform."
An investigation into what some have called an "alt-right" publication has yielded evidence that there was a campaign against Twitter being brought about by the two parties before Bannon even left Breitbart, a move that was made so he could focus on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Said campaign supposedly involved sharing "negative news coverage of Twitter, plans to destabilize Twitter’s volatile stock and exploring the option of legal action against the social network."
In fact, emails that have since been made public show that Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos, then the news outlet's tech editor, discussing how the company could potentially sue Twitter. Yiannopoulos has felt the wrath of Twitter's powers that be before, getting himself banned in 2016 follwing his abusive targeting of Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones. He responded by calling Twitter a tool of "the totalitarian regressive left” and "an enemy of free speech."
Twitter has responded to the reports detailing Bannon and Breitbart's scheme, stating that they were "unaware" of any take-down attempts. A former executive from the social media company said that, “The company viewed Breitbart sort of like, ‘Get in line with the other craziness on the platform.’”