Project Veritas won’t be able to spread its deceptively edited videos on Twitter any longer.
The conservative activist group, founded by right-wing provocateur James O’Keefe, has been permanently banned from Twitter. O’Keefe’s personal account has been temporarily suspended by the company as well.
Twitter took action on Thursday after the Project Veritas account posted a video of one of its activists, Christian Hartsock, accosting Facebook VP Guy Rosen outside his home.
Rosen’s home address is visible in the video.
Interestingly, Project Veritas posted the same video on its Facebook account. The video is still live on the platform as of publishing.
Hartstock was attempting to get Rosen to speak about Facebook’s policy to disable comments on posts within Groups that have “a high rate of hate speech or content that incites violence.”
According to a Twitter spokesperson, the Project Veritas account was “permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy.” This policy prohibits users from posting information about another individual, such as personal phone numbers and addresses, without their permission.
O’Keefe’s personal account will be reinstated once he deletes his own tweet with the Rosen video, which is currently not visible on his profile because of his suspended status. However, in a phone interview with TheWrap, O’Keefe has signaled that he may not remove the tweet.
Project Veritas has a long history of distorting video and presenting its version of events under the guise of journalism.
Project Veritas’ biggest claim to fame was a 2009 “sting” on the advocacy group ACORN, which helped register people in low-income communities to vote. The manipulated videos prompted legislators to cut ACORN’s government funding, leading the 40-year-old group to shut its doors. O’Keefe later paid $100,000 to an employee in the ACORN video following a legal settlement and an investigation conducted by the California Attorney General’s office found that ACORN had not done anything wrong.
O’Keefe and his group have attempted similar smear campaigns since, such as a botched sting on the Washington Post in 2017.
Project Veritas will continue to produce misleading content, they just won’t be able to post it on Twitter. And, it’s totally up to O’Keefe if he wants to reactivate his personal account. He just has to delete the tweet in question.