I don't think this is systemic at all. If companies found out that this was going on in their organizations, most of them would shut the practice down pretty quickly and almost certainly fire anyone involved. Otherwise, those companies could face some pretty heavy lawsuits and fines.
But semantics aside, I think this often works without violating company policies. It’s more about having a connection to get the attention of someone who has authority to override or initiate a friendly appeal of some prior judgement call.
I never said that "systemic" means "official". Those are very different things. What I'm saying is that it could be systemic if companies commonly granted certain groups of people special access that others couldn't obtain. This simply isn't the case and is widely condemned.
Why "certain groups"? It's not about groups, it's about personal relationships. If you get dog piled on Twitter and you know somebody on the security team, your problem goes away and the people annoying you get their accounts suspended or banned. If you don't, your problem will most likely remain as it does for most people.
It's not a conspiracy where all members of group x get a direct line to Jack Dorsey to take care of things, it's you knowing somebody who knows somebody and that somebody wants to help an innocent person out.
The problem is that Twitter is a private enterprise, and it's okay if they choose to run their system that way. The police aren't, and they're not supposed to favor anyone, no matter who they are. There's a saying in Germany, Dienst ist Dienst und Schnapps ist Schnapps (literally "Duty is duty and liquor is liquor") that articulates that. You might drink with somebody, but you must not let that influence your judgement while on duty. In a private company, that's somewhat different, you can't damage the company, obviously, but you're not bound by law, and company policies are -at best- rough guidelines.
