Elon Musk teased the release earlier this week by tweeting, "The public deserves to know what really happened …"
The disappointing “Twitter Files” about “free expression restriction” by the social media network were published by Elon Musk on Friday night. He teased the release on Monday by writing, “The public deserves to know what really happened …”.
The public’s knowledge and Twitter officials’ own accounts of the past two years’ discussions concerning the company’s deliberations around the New York Post’s publishing of Hunter Biden’s files just before the 2020 election followed.
We’re double-checking some facts, so probably start live tweeting in about 40 mins
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022
“What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter,” Dark intones were heard Friday night from Substack writer and former Rolling Stone contributor. Contrary to the melodramatic billing, the documents mainly confirm what has already been reported: that Twitter took down links to the Washington Post’s story and files from Hunter Biden’s laptop and was unsure of how to respond to the shocking news that a presidential candidate’s son had leaked documents.
When asked about Twitter’s handling of the Post story by lawmakers during a 2021 hearing, former CEO Jack Dorsey said the company made “a total mistake.”
The social media site originally prevented the story from showing up in its recommendation algorithms, but later outright forbade connections to the item in accordance with its policy on disseminating hacked materials.
Here we go!! 🍿🍿 https://t.co/eILK9f3bAm
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022
During the 2021 hearing, Dorsey said, “It wasn’t about the content; it was about the hacked materials policy. “We interpreted things incorrectly. We don’t formulate policies based on our preferences in terms of politics. We document it if we come across any of it.
In an interview this month, Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter who left this month, also referred to Twitter’s handling of the Post story as a mistake.
Major Twitter system improvements were implemented this week to drop hammer hard on spam/scam accounts.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022
Taking just past 24 hours, does it seem like there are far fewer?
This month, after leaving the firm, Roth told tech journalist Kara Swisher, “We didn’t know what to believe, we didn’t know what was true, there was smoke.” The 2016 presidential election was the target of a hack and leak by Russian intelligence, and “everything about it looked like a hack and leak.”
Former executives have claimed that Taibbi and Musk’s “Twitter Files” didn’t add much to their muddled and bungled response.
Twitter prevented the Post piece from being shared in posts and direct messages as well, using what Taibbi called “a technique heretofore reserved for grave circumstances, e.g. child pornography,” according to Taibbi. The tool has also been used to block access to other prohibited context, such as the URL for Distributed Denial of Secrets, which provides journalists with access to stolen documents, and the Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens, a front for the Russian Internet Research Agency, which interfered in the 2020 presidential election.
Elon Musk explains why Twitter hid the Hunter Biden story in 2020
Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, escalated his criticism of the organization’s previous management on Friday by pointing to what he called evidence of their “Hunter Biden story suppression.”
Through Substack reporter Matt Taibbi, Musk made the revelations regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop available on Twitter.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” pic.twitter.com/mnv0YZI4af
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
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
In the last weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, made shocking admissions about what prompted the digital firm to bury the Hunter Biden story.
After much time passed, Musk turned his research over to Matt Taibbi of Substack, who wrote a lengthy thread detailing what had happened at Twitter behind the scenes.
“The first instruments for regulating speech were created to fight against things like spam and financial fraud. Staff members and executives at Twitter gradually started to use these technologies for more and more things over time. Outsiders started requesting the firm to alter speech as well: initially sparingly, then more frequently, and finally incessantly,” stated Taibbi. “By 2020, demands to remove tweets from related actors were commonplace.
You know Twitter is being fair when extremists on far right and far left are simultaneously upset!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022
Twitter aims to serve center 80% of people, who wish to learn, laugh & engage in reasoned debate. ❤️
“The first instruments for regulating speech were created to fight against things like spam and financial fraud. Staff members and executives at Twitter gradually started to use these technologies for more and more things over time. Outsiders started requesting the firm to alter speech as well: initially sparingly, then more frequently, and finally incessantly,” stated Taibbi. “By 2020, demands to remove tweets from related actors were commonplace.
“More to review from the Biden team,” one executive would jot down in a letter to another. The response would be “Handled,”
A screenshot of that exchange from October 2020 that included links to tweets that Biden’s team allegedly wanted removed was posted by Taibbi. Several of them, according to Washington Free Beacon investigative reporter Andrew Kerr, were to tweets that contained pornographic images of Hunter Biden that were discovered on his laptop.
“These resources were available to both sides. For instance, in 2020, requests from the Biden campaign and the Trump White House were both honoured. However… This system lacked equilibrium “Taibbi penned. “Based on contacts, it was. Twitter was and still is largely made up of people with a single political ideology, so the left (well, Democrats) had more channels and avenues open to them than the right.”
When the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed, he quickly switched to the “Twitter Files.”
There isn’t any proof, at least not that I’ve seen, according to Taibbi, who also claimed that “the decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy, and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role,” regarding whether the federal government was involved in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
“One former employee regarded the choice as “simply freelanced.” Hacking was used as an alibi, but after a few hours, almost everyone recognised it wouldn’t hold up. However, no one had the guts to undo it “Taibbi penned.
Can we genuinely say that this is covered by the policy? According to another screenshot posted by Taibbi, Brandon Borrman, a former vice president of global communications at Twitter, asked a similar question at the time.
In response, Jim Baker, a former deputy general counsel for Twitter, said: “I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked,” but added: “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”
Gadde “dived into the weeds” of Twitter’s policy in response to the California lawmaker, but Khanna cautioned Gadde that “this seems [to be] a violation of the 1st Amendment principles.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat, contacted Gadde about the “backlash re speech,” according to Taibbi, who added that Khanna “was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.”
“I say this as a fervent supporter of Biden who is certain that he did nothing wrong. However, the focus of the story has shifted to censorship rather than a few harmless emails, and it is now more significant than it otherwise would be “Khanna penned.
27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” pic.twitter.com/Rh5HL8prOZ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Taibbi’s popular thread shed light on a Twitter report from the research company NetChoice that claimed to have polled at least “12 members of Congress- 9 Republicans and 3 Democrats” regarding the criticism the tech giant was then facing on Capitol Hill. Twitter was forewarned by NetChoice that they would face a “blood bath” in Washington, D.C., and that a legislator likened its actions to “tech’s Access Hollywood moment.”
Taibbi emphasised how Dorsey appeared to be ignorant of numerous decisions made by Twitter that were made without his awareness, citing an email he sent to Gadde of a piece he had written that was critical of Twitter’s actions.
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
Several instances of Dorsey interceding to contest suspensions and other moderation measures for accounts across the political spectrum are documented in the files, Taibbi tweeted.
Taibbi quoted “many people” who said that the so-called “hack materials” policy Twitter frequently invoked at the time required an official or law enforcement conclusion of a hack. However, despite what one executive refers to as a “whirlwind” 24-hour disaster at the business level, such a discovery never materialises.
The Democratic National Committee had asked for one of actor James Woods’ tweets from October 2020 to be deleted, according to Taibbi’s Twitter thread, which included Woods. Woods promised Tucker Carlson of Fox News that he would sue the DNC for trying to intimidate him.
A “whirlwind 96 hours for me,” Taibbi concluded the thread, but he teased that there was still “much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more.”
Musk himself hinted that “Episode 2 of The Twitter Files” and a “live Q&A” would occur on Saturday.
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