The madman actually did it. With journalist Matt Taibbi as his vehicle, Elon begins a new era of transparency at Twitter by releasing internal communications relevant to the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the critical months leading up to the 2020 Presidential election.
Elon told us that Twitter meddled in the 2020 election, and boy was he not kidding…
3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
The released documents show how government actors on both sides could use backchannels to Twitter in order to have political enemies punished.
9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party: pic.twitter.com/4uzkHnQ65E
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
While such requests came from both sides, Taibbi is quick to point out that the political slant at Twitter is overwhelmingly weighted toward Dems (what a surprise!).
11. This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. https://t.co/sa1uVRNhuH pic.twitter.com/K1xmqQ0TrD
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story:
18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Twitter used its dubious “hacked materials” policy to justify censorship of the Hunter story — there was no evidence whatsoever that the story came out as a result of a hack.
22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I've seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem…
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
The decision was made at the highest levels, by recently departed commissar Vijaya Gadde running the show. The incredible thing is that the nominal CEO Jack Dorsey was not even part of the process.
24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Take a look at the following private exchange, including newly departed Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth (the same guy who wrote to the New York Times essentially urging Apple to deplatform Elon’s Twitter from the App Store):
https://t.co/j4EeXEAw6F can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”: pic.twitter.com/w1wBMlG33U
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Internal communications show Twitter employees understood there was no way to truthfully maintain that the Hunter Biden story was hacked. They knew it was a lie and stayed the course anyway.
28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”: pic.twitter.com/tg4D0gLWI6
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
The released comms from Twitter reveal former CEO Jack Dorsey to be a free speech advocate who simply lost control of his company. And we see further evidence the “hacked materials” excuse was a complete sham.
The problem with the "hacked materials" ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a "whirlwind" 24-hour, company-wide mess. pic.twitter.com/aONKCROEOd
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Click HERE to read the full and complete thread from Taibbi, as provided by Elon Musk. And stay tuned for more on this bombshell developing story.
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