So far, not surprisingly, the mainstream media isn’t covering the story encompassed by Musk’s internal records about how Twitter helped bury the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election. It is continuing to concentrate on Kanye West’s Nazi affection and his banning by Musk as its Twitter story of the day. This reflects poorly on Trump, you see. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!
Today Musk sent the relevant Twitter records to ex-Rolling Stone substack journalist Matt Taibbi, who tweeted lengthy Twitter-burst about what they show. I hate reading those 10 part Tweet-streams, so here is what they say put together:
“Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly. 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.'”
As in this attachment, from Musk’s documentation:
Taibbi continued,
“Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However… 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. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives…there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen” that the federal government had a role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop …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 [That’s her above] playing a key role. …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. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.” This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams: Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy.
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.”
Thus…
Taibbi’s summary continues,
By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted.” Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”
That Jim Baker is fired FBI Counsel James Baker who was a primary player in launching the Russian collusion investigation. What a coincidence!
An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.
So we now know, those of us (not me!) who weren’t convinced already, that the decision on Jack Dorsey’s social media platform to hide the Hunter Biden laptop story as long as it might adversely affect the Democrats’ chances of defeating Trump was not made in good faith, was politically motivated, and was engineered by partisans in the Twitter management.
I don’t want to read any more about how Donald Trump’s belief that the Presidency was stolen from him is “baseless,” as the official talking point goes, and that his saying so is a “Big Lie.” No one knows or can know if the laptop revelations would have changed enough votes to elect Trump had they been fairly reported; personally, I doubt it. Nonetheless, relevant and potentially influential information was deliberately withheld from voters by the social media companies, Big Tech and the news media with the clear intent of assisting Joe Biden’s campaign. This was a far more consequential interference with our elections than anything Russia did in 2016. If the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, it unquestionably was corrupted.
Ethics Alarms 
No wonder Musk is firing seventy-five percent of the Twitter staff! All these senior management people sitting around emailing each other? No one’s responsible.
They fact that social media systemically silenced anti-Democrat talking points, particularly during the 2020 campaign, is already a known fact. Time magazine gleefully published shortly after the election how the main actors organized the deception. The pivotal point is whether the released documentation demonstrates unequivocal involvement by government agencies (DNC and the Biden campaign) in the deception. That would be a true First Amendment violation. It is too early to tell on that count.
However, I feel confident that if such information is exposed, the response will be similar the IRS scandal, “Nothing to see here. Just a few rogue actors who are not representative of the agencies’ policies. We’ll correct that. It won’t happen again. I promise. We need to focus on issues real Americans want us to focus on. I don’t need to remind you that freedom-loving people are dying in Ukraine and of the existential threat of Climate Change.”
Bill, I think the reaction is already beyond what you’re suggesting. It’s, “So what? We defeated Trump, didn’t we? Whatever it takes, right? Of course, we control the media! We have to make sure the truth gets out and Republican lies are suppressed. We’re always right. We know better and what’s best for the country, Republicans are idiots.”
Depressing, but I fear, accurate.
I mean, if you don’t count those “intelligence officials” who came out to declare it Russian disinformation, of course.
Two points: The first is that I can appreciate why you think the Hunter laptop revelation along with his fathers involvement wouldn’t have been enough to change the election results, because to think otherwise would mean we have an illegitimate president, which would be truly frightening. Remember those nearly 1,000 sworn affidavits alluding to fraudulent election activities what were summarily ignored. The left’s claim was that they were dismissed as baseless, when in fact they were indeed totally ignored.
The second point is that while it’s impossible to know all of what everyone was doing, there is no way Dorsey didn’t know at a high level what was going on, and likely endorsed it. To try to lay the blame entirely on twitter’s highly partisan employee base while absolving Dorsey as non partisan and blameless is absurd.
Well, there’s no paper trail implicating Dorsey. I would assume that you are right, but that’s not the same as evidence. It is like Obama’s accountability for the IRS scandal—he didn’t have to say “screw the Tea Party groups”; his lackeys knew that’s what he wanted.
I also think it’s a bridge too far to say that because a President was elected with voters being unaware of damning information, that President is illegitimate. 75% of the electorate isn’t paying attention anyway. Richard Nixon committed the equivalent of treason deliberately sabotaging Vietnam War peace talks. Was he illegitimately elected because we didn’t find out for thirty years? Look at what voters were accepting by continuing to support the Democrats as they engaged in totalitarian tactics openly, all while accusing Republicans of threatening Democracy. Look at the #MeToo hypocrites who voted for Biden after a staffer accused him of sexual assault while he was Senator, and that’s direct evidence of unfitness to serve—but then, so is his obvious progressive dementia, which the media can’t hide.
The whole, unethical, Big Lie-strewn, biased and warped coverage of Trump’s four years in office are what “stole” the election. I have no doubt at all about THAT.
I agree with what you said. The unethical behavior is undeniable, but did Twitter (and Google/You Tube and Facebook/Instagram) do anything illegal? My most likely ignorant position is NO. They did not break any laws by censoring the private content of their users. What do we care which Twitter employees were involved? The corporations’ monopolistic position protects them from facing the consequences of their actions. Meanwhile, the DNC and the Biden Administration get away with their action (if substantiated). In the meantime, we cannot ignore MSM’s role in this. Twitter, et.al., could not have succeeded their mass censorship campaign without the help of the MSM (and, vise verse). That problem is an existential threat to the republic, and I have no solution, since currently, their actions are not illegal.
Allow me the honor to perform a classic OB maneuver … responding to my own comment.
In this case, the impact of continued censorship of political options. https://youtu.be/YZuMe5RvxPQ
Unethical, not illegal. But if government entities used them as agents, and they did, what those entities did was unconstitutional.
How? A private company followed the “suggestions” of their constitutional elected government. Unless the companies felt coerced in some fashion (slightly sarcastic) no illegality. If coercion was involved, the unconstitutional action is on the government not the company. This is an assumption based on my legal ignorance.
“the unconstitutional action is on the government not the company.” That’s right. But I would have no trouble making the case that government “suggestions” to private entities of who to censor violates the spirit of the terms of the First, even though it only says “Congress.”
James Woods, the actor, is suing because he was one of those censored at the Democrats’ request.
I would take this a step farther. The 1st amendment of the constitution supposedly guarantees free speech. Many on the left agree but say it only prevents government suppressing or punishing such speech, not private entities such as social media (twitter) or employers, or people that simply don’t like the message who are free to inflict as much harm as they deem necessary.
This is wrong and government must protect an individual from those that would inflict harm on people whose speech offends or angers others in some manner. Otherwise, all government needs to do to bypass the 1st amendment is employ others to do what they’re constitutionally prevented from doing themselves. This may already be happening, it certainly seems so.
Change the actors a bit to see if the analysis still passes muster.
A democratically elected sheriff visits a group of landlords and offers the suggestion that they all make a visit to their tenants homes while the residences are vacant and rifle around belongings to see if any contraband is present. After all asset forfeiture could certainly apply if the sheriff’s office finds the stuff independently!
Is or is not violation of the Fourth Amendment?
Still, it was a couple hundred thousand votes in I think three states would’ve changed the election, and the votes that move the “independent middle” are what turn an election.
The “reliable” votes of party bases are the cherry on top, which is why campaigns try to get all of them to the polls.
If that story is allowed to build steam, I think the middle breaks for Trump or doesn’t vote at all, and the Republican base turns out.
So many in both camps were appalled by Trump at the end (and let’s face it, we’d all be wound tight after what he endured – but, his bad behavior had a head start…). I consciously ignored what he said last 2 years of his term, and could not bring myself to watch the debate (the few seconds I saw were just awful).
But the whole Hunter/Big Guy thing was orders of magnitude worse than any of that.
Those paying attention already knew the tilt anyway, but that was going to spread like wildfire among the hazy masses on social media. It was TMZ red meat on politics, nothing is juicier.
I don’t know how it doesn’t turn the election.
This is more than depressing; it is terrifying. Manipulating elections by any means is worth a whole lot more than a single “Whoops!” Where are the prosecutions of these people? I am certainly not a Trump fan, but lately Biden has revealed himself to be the puppet of horrible people and totalitarian ideas.
It is clear that the Biden staffs took that one small strep from”Unethical” to”Illegal” and had a huge bunch of rationalizations to help them do it. To say we are in trouble as a nation is the understatement.
We should probably take bets on how soon we will have just a single candidate for President.