What Happened After Matt Taibbi Revealed Twitter's Deliberations on Hunter Biden Tweets? (wired.com) 377
"Twitter CEO Elon Musk turned to journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday to reveal the decision-making behind the platform's suppression of a 2020 article from the New York Post regarding Hunter Biden's laptop," reports Newsweek.
"Taibbi later deleted a tweet showing [former Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey's email address," adds the Verge, covering reactions to Taibbi's thread — and the controversial events that the tweets described: At the time, it was not clear if the materials were genuine, and Twitter decided to ban links to or images of the Post's story, citing its policy on the distribution of hacked materials. The move was controversial even then, primarily among Republicans but also with speech advocates worried about Twitter's decision to block a news outlet. While Musk might be hoping we see documents showing Twitter's (largely former) staffers nefariously deciding to act in a way that helped now-President Joe Biden, the communications mostly show a team debating how to finalize and communicate a difficult moderation decision.
Taibbi himself tweeted that "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."
More from the Verge: Meanwhile, Taibbi's handling of the emails — which seem to have been handed to him at Musk's direction, though he only refers to "sources at Twitter" — appears to have exposed personal email addresses for two high-profile leaders: Dorsey and Representative Ro Khanna. An email address that belongs to someone Taibbi identifies as Dorsey is included in one message, in which Dorsey forwards an article Taibbi wrote criticizing Twitter's handling of the Post story. Meanwhile, Khanna confirmed to The Verge that his personal Gmail address is included in another email, in which Khanna reaches out to criticize Twitter's decision to restrict the Post's story as well.
"As the congressman who represents Silicon Valley, I felt Twitter's actions were a violation of First Amendment principles so I raised those concerns," Khanna said in a statement to The Verge. "Our democracy can only thrive if we are open to a marketplace of ideas and engaging with people with whom we disagree."
The story also revealed the names of multiple Twitter employees who were in communications about the moderation decision. While it's not out of line for journalists to report on the involvement of public-facing individuals or major decision makers, that doesn't describe all of the people named in the leaked communications.... "I don't get why naming names is necessary. Seems dangerous," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote Friday in apparent reference to the leaks.... The Verge reached out to Taibbi for comment but didn't immediately hear back.
Twitter, which had its communications team dismantled during layoffs last month, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Wired adds: What did the world learn about Twitter's handling of the incident from the so-called Twitter Files? Not much. After all, Twitter reversed its decision two days later, and then-CEO Jack Dorsey said the moderation decision was "wrong."
In other news, "Twitter will start showing view count for all tweets," Elon Musk announced Friday, "just as view count is shown for all videos." And he shared other insights into his plans for Twitter's future.
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity."
"Taibbi later deleted a tweet showing [former Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey's email address," adds the Verge, covering reactions to Taibbi's thread — and the controversial events that the tweets described: At the time, it was not clear if the materials were genuine, and Twitter decided to ban links to or images of the Post's story, citing its policy on the distribution of hacked materials. The move was controversial even then, primarily among Republicans but also with speech advocates worried about Twitter's decision to block a news outlet. While Musk might be hoping we see documents showing Twitter's (largely former) staffers nefariously deciding to act in a way that helped now-President Joe Biden, the communications mostly show a team debating how to finalize and communicate a difficult moderation decision.
Taibbi himself tweeted that "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."
More from the Verge: Meanwhile, Taibbi's handling of the emails — which seem to have been handed to him at Musk's direction, though he only refers to "sources at Twitter" — appears to have exposed personal email addresses for two high-profile leaders: Dorsey and Representative Ro Khanna. An email address that belongs to someone Taibbi identifies as Dorsey is included in one message, in which Dorsey forwards an article Taibbi wrote criticizing Twitter's handling of the Post story. Meanwhile, Khanna confirmed to The Verge that his personal Gmail address is included in another email, in which Khanna reaches out to criticize Twitter's decision to restrict the Post's story as well.
"As the congressman who represents Silicon Valley, I felt Twitter's actions were a violation of First Amendment principles so I raised those concerns," Khanna said in a statement to The Verge. "Our democracy can only thrive if we are open to a marketplace of ideas and engaging with people with whom we disagree."
The story also revealed the names of multiple Twitter employees who were in communications about the moderation decision. While it's not out of line for journalists to report on the involvement of public-facing individuals or major decision makers, that doesn't describe all of the people named in the leaked communications.... "I don't get why naming names is necessary. Seems dangerous," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote Friday in apparent reference to the leaks.... The Verge reached out to Taibbi for comment but didn't immediately hear back.
Twitter, which had its communications team dismantled during layoffs last month, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Wired adds: What did the world learn about Twitter's handling of the incident from the so-called Twitter Files? Not much. After all, Twitter reversed its decision two days later, and then-CEO Jack Dorsey said the moderation decision was "wrong."
In other news, "Twitter will start showing view count for all tweets," Elon Musk announced Friday, "just as view count is shown for all videos." And he shared other insights into his plans for Twitter's future.
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity."
Nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an old trick. Go look up Hilary & Benghazi. The goal here is for GOP operatives to create a vague feeling of unease around Joe Biden they can leverage to suppress votes in 2024. If we had a functioning media this wouldn't work. Hell if we had a functioning education system this wouldn't work because you'd have learned about this trick in high school gov't class.
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Is there any evidence he even dropped that laptop off for repairs -- or ever owned that laptop in the first place?
Nothing about this story makes even a little bit of sense.
Re: Nothing (Score:2)
The repair store owner has a work order with Hunter Biden's signature.
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Uh, huh. And I have an autographed copy of the Bible.
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Since the rise of "Sinclair Must Run" news media you have to go off the beaten path. A handful of billionaires owns every major news outlet. Are you a billionaire? Do you think billionaires care one whit about you? If not, why are you letting them shape your world view uncritically?
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By way of a contrast, here is my daily media: HuffPo, Daily Wire, Drudge (for the headlines), Slashdot, MSNBC, First Things, Babylon Bee (good satire), a mix of voices on Twitter.
When you regularly read left and right together - and especially when they cover the same news differently- you discover
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LOL! You think those or "left" ROFL! You think those are "very hard left". Get a fucking clue. Those are almost all center-right, pro-corporate, media outlets.
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You're mistaking trying to find the center for trying to find truth and r
Re: Nothing (Score:2)
Oh, shut the fuck up, you anonymous troll.
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Informative)
I get that it is far, far easier just to say "well you're just dumb!" when someone says something that shakes those cult-like beliefs of yours, but once you reach double digits in age it gets a little inappropriate.
I, for one, would love to go back to the days when I could vote for a respectable candidate run by the pre-cult GOP, but given the current lineup of Trump and DeSantis it looks like that isn't happening any time soon. There are many, many glaring problems with the Biden administration. The dumb things his son does might even be among them, but the poo-flinging chimps currently running the MAGA party don't do a whole lot for their own credibility when they can't even come up with a better cover story than "he just abandoned some laptops at this guy's shop, because he was *totally* drunk" when they want to trot out some trove of data. KGB stories were more convincing than that. With an approach like that, you're not winning over anyone that didn't already desperately want to believe you.
Hey, that's you!
Too bad Congressman Khanna (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too bad Congressman Khanna (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if you bothered to read the document the Congressmen actually wrote, which you're misrepresenting: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/st... [twitter.com]
Rep Khanna wasn't saying what Twitter did was a violation of the first amendment, he were speaking of "1st amendment principals". There is a difference. Free speech isn't something simply in the constitution and nowhere else, it's a cultural concept as well.
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I wonder if you bothered to read the document...
Of course not. Don't underestimate motivated ignorance. After all, OP lived reality is orange man bad, and who are we to question his truthines?
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That is an excellent point.
Housing or healthcare being human rights are of the positive sort, things others must do/pay for and the beneficiaries receive.
Free speech being a human right is of the negative sort, what others agree not to do... like arrest, shut down, fire, harass, etc.
Re:Too bad Congressman Khanna (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Too bad Congressman Khanna (Score:5, Interesting)
doesn't bother to understand to whom the First Amendment does and just as importantly doesn't limit restricting speech. You wonder if he bothered to read the document he swore an oath to defend and yet he has no problem using the heavy hand of his office to interfere with the decisions of a non-government organization.
Congressman Khanna's argument is that the United States government may have broken the law by working with a third party to accomplish what it does not have the power to do itself.
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Congressman Khanna's argument is that the United States government may have broken the law by working with a third party to accomplish what it does not have the power to do itself.
What does "working with a third party" mean though? I haven't read this story closely because it seems unutterably boring and inconsequential to me, so maybe I've missed something - but from what little I've read it sounds like someone in the Biden team emailed Twitter to ask them to remove personal explicit photos from a member of the Biden family, and Twitter voluntarily complied?
If this is what happened (and again, I'll cheerfully admit I don't know) then this has pretty much nothing to do with free spee
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doesn't bother to understand to whom the First Amendment does and just as importantly doesn't limit restricting speech. You wonder if he bothered to read the document he swore an oath to defend and yet he has no problem using the heavy hand of his office to interfere with the decisions of a non-government organization.
Clearly, Trump didn't read it, and doesn't understand it, so why should he? :-)
(I'd wager heavily that also applies to most of the MAGA politicians and base, judging from their comments.]
Perhaps a better question is (Score:2)
What else is found on the treasure trove Twitter and all other social media have become since they gave people freedom (*cough*) to share news, articles and thoughts as it pleases them?
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Twitter went beyond banning the url from posts and comments, they used its child porn filters to exclude the new yorks times news article in private direct messages.
Elon Musk has become Darth Vader (Score:2, Interesting)
Elon Musk keeps telling us he is moderate, when instead he is 100% pandering to the far right. Nearly all his tweets are opposing moderates and leftist, whereas he does very very little (mostly lip service) to piss off the right. Notice everyone of the far right is endorsing him.
Musk endorsed DeSantis .. that should tell you everything. There is nothing moderate about DeSantis. We know DeSantis is against many things that traditional republicans wouldn't have opposed -- therefore he is not a moderate and an
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For example, Obama during his first term campaign was not in support of gay marriage. Apply today's standards to Clinton, Obama and so on and you can equally make "pandering to the far right".
Problem with that comparison is that the entire US culuture has shifted with that opinion. Go back just 15 years and it was 61% opposed and 38% strongly opposed. Now we are at record high 70% approval for it and opposition has been relegated to the furthest reaches of conservatives. 12 Republican Senators and 47 Congresspeople just ovted inf avor of a bill supporting it. Unthinkable even during the Bush or early Obama years.
The country has in fact moved left culturally, as it always will. It has also mo
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Oh, please. You have no idea where the left actually is. Fuck off with that bullshit.
You couldn't find 10 actual leftists in Congress. Get a fucking clue.
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I didn't ask you for your "lived experiences". WTF are you babbling about?
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Democrats moved so far to the left
No, they did not. They did not go anywhere. They are still doing what their corporate masters tell them.
No anti-conservative bias folks, move along (Score:2, Interesting)
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Sorry, I live in the real world, not your insane right-wing fantasy land.
Re:No anti-conservative bias folks, move along (Score:5, Informative)
I hope we can once and for all acknowledge that it was California's technocrats and not Russia that meddled in elections and got away with it?
Russia did meddle, extensively. This was thoroughly proven by Mueller's team, who indicted a dozen or so Russians who played key roles in it, and has even been publicly admitted by Russia. Mueller didn't find sufficient evidence to prove that Trump's team conspired with Russia in the meddling.
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Re:No anti-conservative bias folks, move along (Score:4, Informative)
Funny how nobody has ever been able to link to this alleged evidence in the Mueller Report, which came out like a wet fart. There is evidence of a Russian troll farm operating like any other troll farm: Posting memes in an attempt to gain followers to their accounts. Most of the memes they posted had nothing to do with the 2016 election. I downloaded all of the memes from an archive made available from a congressional .gov website, and I can verify that most of the content was generic stuff, designed to attract a wide audience, to whom they could later serve up content from paying customers. This troll farm spent less than $100k on fb ads, half of which were run AFTER the 2016 election. This is the "smoking gun" that the "I'm with Her" crowd is so desperately clinging to.
As for the stolen emails? Other than assertions from officials and anonymous sources, there hasn't been a shred of evidence that points to the Russian Hacking story. Sure, there have been tons of headlines announcing it as real, but it seems most people who support the Russian Hacking conspiracy theory don't read any further than the headline, anyway.
Re:No anti-conservative bias folks, move along (Score:4, Informative)
Funny how nobody has ever been able to link to this alleged evidence in the Mueller Report
Huh? See section II (titled "Russian 'Active Measures' Social Media Campaign") and section III (titled "Russian Hacking and Dumping Operations") in the report [justice.gov]. The Senate Intelligence Committee's report [senate.gov] goes into even more detail.
Musk's reducing reach of negativity is wrong (Score:2)
Specific things, like racism, demonstrable lies, hate, should be downgraded in Twitter reach.
Not negativity in general, if that's what he meant.
There are a lot of shitty things going on in the world, such as
illegal wars of aggression, starvation, large-scale deforestation, global warming and ocean acidification.
So if I tweet accurately about any of those, and say the situation and consequences, and some of the behavours involved, are bad, my tweet will get downgraded for negative sent
10 percent for the big guy (Score:2)
Re:10 percent for the big guy (Score:5, Informative)
what now? [publicintegrity.org]
Surely you want to see Trump's sons investigated with as much fervency as you want to see Hunter Biden investigated, yes?
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Given the zeal with which government and media sought to destroy him, it's difficult to believe there is undiscovered corruption.
It's not undiscovered. It's just unprosecuted. We know there was more corruption than he and the people around him have been charged with.
Crickets and Frogs (Score:2)
It might not be anything but... (Score:2)
Hunter sure gets right wingers hard.
Terrible Leadership (Score:5, Insightful)
So the new owner of company doesn't like how the company handled a controversy in the past.
So he leaks internal emails that personally identify past (and current?) employees to a journalist?!?!
Yes, I understand that the past decision offended Musk's beliefs. But one of the main jobs of a manager or CEO is to protect the people under them, that's how you build loyalty and get people who will do ridiculous things like sleep in the office [cnbc.com].
You don't stab them in the back by leaking emails to the press.
WTF would anyone want to work for Musk at this point???
The media spin machine when into action (Score:2)
“While Musk might be hoping we see documents showing Twitter's (largely former) staffers nefariously deciding to act in a way that helped now- President Joe Biden, the communications mostly show a team debating how to finalize and communicate a difficult moderation decision”
Miranda Devine [youtu.be]: “I've seen a sworn affidavit from Joel Roth the former head of Twitter's trust and safety. He was meeting every week before the election with
If Fox buried an undesirable story.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or do most here believe that Fox, the "fair and balanced" network, doesn't do this sort of thing?
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Twitter blocked the NY Post story and I believe suspended their account for some amount of time? Other outlets reporting on the Post story were allowed. I was on Twitter that day, it was discussed all week, the story and the story about the story.
This also wasn't the only time Twitter did this to a story but overall the policy at Twitter was poorly hanlded and really hurt discourse more than it helped, the actual Biden story so far is more mundane than the legend it has become.
Re:Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of it this way: What's your opinion on Citizens United? Do you think corporations or unions should be able to support political candidates or causes?
That's what some say happened here, though not with $ or commercials, but Twitter deciding to attempt to suppress the distribution of news which it claimed it was uncertain of the validity at the time, news which had relevance to the election.
Two years later, the laptop & it's contents have been more widely reported as authentic.
Had more known about the laptop and it's contents in prior to the 2020 election, could/would it have changed the results? Many on the left say no, many on the right yes, and it's impossible to say today either way.
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Two years later, the laptop & it's contents have been more widely reported as authentic.
I don't think the story has been for awhile that the laptop wasn't real. Hunter Biden himself I believe said it belonged to him. Some materials on the drive have been verified to be his but not all of the contents can be accounted for as real, nor can it be determined that things were not placed there after the fact.
Really the authenticity hasn't been the main factor, it's more that authentic or not there no real evidence of wrongdoing so far. The myth has become far greater than the truth of what has be
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Not for a while, no, but then, it was called "Russian disinformation". The tweet storm in discussion here is talking about then, not now.
Given how the laptop and news of it was treated prior to the election, is it any wonder that some might say "what were they hiding?" and help create a 'myth'?
Re:Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:4, Informative)
Not for a while, no, but then, it was called "Russian disinformation". The tweet storm in discussion here is talking about then, not now.
Sure, but not for a long awhile and not by any of the reputable news outlets. This story is years old now.
Given how the laptop and news of it was treated prior to the election, is it any wonder that some might say "what were they hiding?" and help create a 'myth'?
Did I say any different? I agree, was kinda my point. But end of the day, myths are myths, ie, "not real".
Possibly, there is still the matter of the then Vice President confirming, on video, that he strong armed the Ukrainian government to fire a specific prosecutor. So weird, he bragged about doing the sort of thing Trump was impeached for as I recall.
This is the most, most, most frustrating talking point. Biden was making that statement as a representative of US executive and State department policy. He was not "going rogue" and making that statement himself, that was position of President Obama, the State Department and really much of Congress as well. Many EU nations as wella s Ukrainians also agreed with that position, but Biden did not make that statement "on his own". Maybe could have been worded better but there is a miles long gap between what he did and and what Trump did.
Weren't some of the emails confirmed separately by one of the recipients? There was a lot there, but prosecutorial discretion exists, after all, Hunter still hasn't been charged for committing perjury when buying a gun.
Some, not all. Also there have been two federal investigations of this, one by a special counsel that Trump admin put in place and Joe Biden didn't even stop it when he got into office. No charges. The fact that the most legal problem in there is lying on a form to buy a gun says it all really.
Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:3)
"10 percent for the big guy" afaik is legit. I'm not sure it's even been denied specifically. (https://nypost.com/2021/11/29/joe-biden-expected-10-percent-cut-in-deal-with-a-chinese-giant/ )
I don't know that it's outright illegal, but it's shady AF and given the razor thin results on the election, broader coverage of this in the 3 weeks before the election likely would have flipped it. (yes it's supposition, but any appreciable deflation of Dem enthusiasm or motivation of Trump leaning non voters to get to
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Uhh, have you been alive the past 6 years? The President of the United States won an election with Twitter as a major tool of the victory and then used it as pretty much the official communication office of the global hegemonic nation. Sometimes internation diplomacy was being done there. Is that a good thing? No, but it happened.
We can all meme about how stupid it is (and is much of the time) but Twitter and social media are still just people and sometimes very important people. "Twitter isn't real life"
Re:Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:5, Informative)
Twitter blocked the NY Post's original tweet about the story, demanding that the NY Post delete the tweet and admit they did something wrong. Twitter would also not let anyone tweet a link to the story in either public or private messages.
That "nobody can post the link" blocking was the only thing Twitter reversed two days later -- they continued to block the New York Post for more than two weeks [thehill.com].
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Why "No comment history available"? I think it sort of might deserve to be modded down, but all I can see is "Score:1" and no explanation is available.
My reaction to the story is that sometimes even such a skilled and principled journalist as Matt Taibbi can be manipulated and used like the most idiotic of useful idiots. I actually see it as a variation of Popper's Paradox of Tolerance, where the tools of good journalism can be twisted and redirected to attack good journalism.
oh, please...where have you been? (Score:2, Insightful)
At a critical time in a US presidential election, Twitter allowed one political party [the democrats] and it's party's nominee [the Biden campaign] to tell it which communications of its political opponent to squelch. The Biden team sent messages pointing out tweets they did not like, and people at Twitter shut those tweets down and prevented their propagation. Democrats in the FBI, who had been sitting on Hunter Biden's laptop for over a year and knew damned-well what was in it [and that the contents were
Re: oh, please...where have you been? (Score:2)
Are there legitimate news sources that directly corroborate your first paragraph? That the FBI and Biden political campaign both explicitly knew what was on this laptop, and both worked with intent to keep news of it from spreading on twitter?
Re:oh, please...where have you been? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you SERIOUSLY saying that you cannot see anything wrong with communications outlets pretending to the public that they are accurately providing free-flowing information, while they're actually in-bed with one political party and suppressing the communications of the other party during an election cycle???
I can certainly see what you consider wrong with that. However, what's wrong with that is not the same as what's illegal with that. And what Twitter did was not illegal.
Are you SERIOUSLY saying that a content delivery service which determines themselves every single bit of content their customers see every single moment is liable for determining themselves what every single bit of content their customers are allowed see every single moment?
Your outrage that Twitter did not adhere to the standard you defined for them is precisely that... yours, as in your personal preference. And it is your personal preference because there's no violation of a normative (i.e., constitutional) rule.
Is it important? Sure. Does it reveal important issues for consideration concerning how to govern and manage ourselves? Most certainly. Is it required to submit itself to the wrath of your outrage? Not one bit.
You left out something (Score:2, Insightful)
If somebody illegally released sensitive information about you from your laptop over on Twitter I wonder how much free speech you'd be in favor of.
Re:You left out something (Score:5, Insightful)
"because it violated Twitter TOS regarding the release of personal information".
If somebody illegally released sensitive information about you from your laptop over on Twitter I wonder how much free speech you'd be in favor of.
As we now know as the result of Musk disclosing relevant emails, it was first decided they are going to suppress the story and then they went looking for a pretext to do so. More so, there Twitter policy team objected, correctly pointing out that at the time it was suppressed there were no official claims it was hacked.
Re:You left out something (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the information Musk published shows that they decided it was covered by their existing policy against using Twitter to disseminate information obtained through hacking.
Of course that policy is flawed and questionably enforced, e.g. they did not stop information leaked by Edward Snowden being on Twitter. But the decision was to simply enforced the established rules, until they decided a couple of days later that it didn't apply when journalists were publishing the information after presumably verifying it and deciding it was in the public instead.
If course that policy is flawed too, but there is no conspiracy here. Just a company fumbling and bumbling along, the same way Musk is now.
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We also know they COLLABORATED WITH BIDEN...
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064
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On the contrary: the laptop was abandoned property. The owner of the repair shop was free to do with it as he pleased.
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On the contrary: the laptop was abandoned property. The owner of the repair shop was free to do with it as he pleased.
Thanks for telling us that you didn't look up the laws for abandoned property where the business was located. Now we know you don't know shit.
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https://getjerry.com/home-insu... [getjerry.com]
Three to five years, though it has a provision for contacting the State Escheator to discuss disposal of the property. The owner himself has reportedly dealt with a lot of abandoned property over the years and is well-aware of how to handle things under Delaware state law. His policy is to begin contacting the owner after 90 days of the property being unclaimed.
If the shop owner violated state law, Hunter Biden could have reclaimed the laptop and sued the shit out of every
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Are there abandoned property laws on intellectual property though? It seems to me that there's a bit of a double standard about that going on here. I can perfectly understand if the physical hardware becomes the property of the holder if it is abandoned for a certain period of time, but the data? So if I write a novel and have a copy on a flash drive and a copy on my laptop HD and I leave the laptop at a repair shop for years, the repair shop gets to go send a cease and desist to my publisher demanding all
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What corruption?
Oh, that's right, there wasn't any.
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What corruption?
Who do you think "The Big Guy" Hunter Biden refereed to? Santa Claus?
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Call me when you have actual evidence. Until then, I'm not interested in whatever nonsense you want to spread.
Re:You left out something (Score:5, Informative)
What corruption?
Who do you think "The Big Guy" Hunter Biden refereed to? Santa Claus?
If you believe "The Big Guy" was Joe Biden (which I agree with) then you need to follow up with the big guy's response to the whole deal, and that was an "
emphatic no [wikipedia.org]".
Basically, Hunter Biden came up with some sort of sketchy business deal. When it came time to actually get his Dad involved his Dad wanted nothing to do with it.
I'm not clear how that reflects poorly on Joe Biden in any way*.
* Except possibly his parenting, though I'm reluctant to hold parents too responsible for the actions of their children.
Re:You left out something (Score:5, Informative)
the big guy's response to the whole deal, and that was an "emphatic no [wikipedia.org]"
Do you have an alternative source? Wikipedia is not credible on political topics.
Whether or not you think Wikipedia has a bias I link it because unlike news articles, it offers a good summarization of the entire topic (rather than just that specific event), it doesn't have paywalls or annoying ads, and people understand how to deal with it as a source.
For instance, if you're dubious of the spin then click one of the many citations on those statements and you can get the original article!
My understanding is that meetings took place, emails and The Big Guy identity were confirmed by Tony Bobulinski, and that Hunter Biden was paid (presumably including the Big Guy share).
The "meetings" consisted of Joe Biden walking by Hunter's table at dinner to do a meet & greet. It was basically a group of dumbasses (including the former VP's son) who were trying to build a business based entirely on the former VP's name. The problem is they never got the former VP on board, and when they finally asked him he told them to take a hike!
More so, "I think your're clear" [dailymail.co.uk] voice mail can be understood as Joe Biden approving the deal.
You think "wikipedia" isn't a credible source so you cite The Daily Mail [youtube.com] ?!?!
If you read a credible source [abcnews4.com]* that includes the full quote at the start (rather than buried deep in the article where the reader may not even reach) you'll notice it's nothing to do with "approving a deal":
Hey pal, it’s dad. It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance, just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you. I thought the article released online — it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times — was good. I think you’re clear,
Basically Joe Biden had just read the online NYT article about Hunter's business deal [nytimes.com]. What does that mean? Pretty much nothing.
Hunter knew the article would be coming out (nothing fishy since he's a prime subject), was worried it would be much more hostile and politically damaging... and it wasn't.
* I actually had trouble finding credible papers talking about it, not because they were trying to cover it up, but rather I suspect they just realized it was a complete non-story. Newsflash! Major paper publishes article on son and father calls son to reassure him!!
Re:You left out something (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your interpretation of admittedly ambiguous evidence goes beyond charitable and into improbable stretch territory. Is it impossible that you are correct with your interpretation? No, it is not.
You literally just looked at a phone message that said:
Hey pal, it’s dad. It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance, just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you. I thought the article released online — it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times — was good. I think you’re clear,
And claimed it "can be understood as Joe Biden approving the deal".
I literally don't understand how it can be understood that way.
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Yes, I care a great deal when government officials abuse their power to enrich themselves and/or commit crimes.
Re:You left out something (Score:5, Funny)
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And the claim Joe Biden is implicated is a fever dream based on drawing conclusions unsupported by the actual documents, and when blind partisan actors entirely lacking in principle like you ignore what Ivanka and Kushner were doing,
Re: You left out something (Score:5, Interesting)
-Hunter Biden has publicly acknowledged that it "probably" is his laptop, but that he was smoking crack at the time and didn't actually remember taking it in for repair.
-One of the files supposedly recovered from the laptop was a voicemail from Joe Biden saying he loved him, and urging him to get help.
-It's not really a stretch to imagine a wealthy child trading on his daddy's name to get business deals.
Given all of the above... there is still no evidence that Joe Biden was involved in any of his son's deals. There are only statements from people who knew Hunter Biden to the effect of: "Hunter said his dad would help him out..." and "Hunter said he would talk to him next time he is in town...".
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Re: You left out something (Score:2, Informative)
Re: You left out something (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a lawyer, but Mac Repair Guy had him sign his standard form when he dropped off the laptop even though he said he was obviously intoxicated. Can you agree to a contract while you're drunk or high? Nevertheless Hunter hasn't brought a case against him for that.
I struggled not to roll my eyes when in stumbled a man clutching three MacBook Pros. He was about my height, six feet tall, but a little heavier. He wore casual clothing — dark blue and gray. Alcohol fumes preceded him. He slid the three laptops onto the bar counter as he fumbled for a seat.
And yet the first thing he did was to act as if it was his data before the abandonment period had ended.
I pulled the blinds and locked the door to avoid any more interruptions, then grabbed an Amstel Light from the fridge and planted myself in front of the recovery Mac.
I noticed pornography appearing in the right column.
This is a vocational hazard
No, it's a privacy hazard. which is why you should never trust people like this with a hard drive. If you didn't care enough to back it up, let it go.
. He was wrapped in a red scarf and wearing what looked like a jock strap. I couldn’t help but chuckle.
If I ran across porn like that I'd stop looking, but this guy didn't.
continued copying files until I got to one titled “income.pdf.”.... It was begging to be clicked open. So I did.
https://nypost.com/2022/05/06/... [nypost.com]
Bear in mind that the contract Hunter signed when he was allegedly intoxicated gave him 30 or 90 days or something before it was considered abandoned , but Mac Guy immediately started snooping on the data.
I don't disagree with a repair shop taking your laptop if they fix it and you never show up and pay for the repair but we need laws to protect whatever data we "abandoned".
Auto mechanics can put a lien on your car if you don't pay for repairs - at least in some states. Why shouldn't a computer repair shop, but now that cars have data stored in them should there be some protections?
Also, I don't care about Hunter Biden. The guy clearly has some personal problems but he isn't pat of Joe Biden's administration.
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As we know it - in hindsight.
Answer me this, why are people applying information after the fact on decisions made before that information was actually available? The sheer illogicality of it is mindboggling.
And that makes me ask how the fuck did your post become rated insightful???
Re:Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:5, Insightful)
A huge story that would have been detrimental to the democratic party...
Well... it's a story about the Democratic presidential candidate's son, that the Republicans were, and still are, hoping to turn into a detrimental story about their rival, Joe Biden, Benghazi "investigation" style -- meaning it will contain no actual, provable substance related to the candidate, and will inevitably be dropped the moment Biden either drops out of the race or is reelected (and can't run again) -- simply to whip up partisanship and discredit the Democratic candidate, all because Republicans don't have any agenda to run on that actually benefits the general population.
Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:2)
Neither party's agenda is for the benefit of the people. That's why there are parties. They run interference to make sure that anyone who get into office fulfils the agebda of the party, ensuring there is no "government of The People, by The People."
The agenda is set by the wealthy and powerful, the legislation and regulations are written by their attorneys, and the parties sell the agreed upon agenda to the people through false adversarial propaganda.
You're a fool if you think this is not happening, and
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No, they are not at all alike. One is an investigation into what extent a foreign power might have interfered with the federal election. The other is an investigation into into what extent the Vice President might have used his influence to protect his son from scandal. The former is obviously more important to many more Americans than the latter.
Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:2)
Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:2)
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Trouble is, the right assumes the left is doing the same thing they are.
Well... the right wants people to believe that anyway; I'm sure those on the right pushing that narrative know it's not true. /cynical-but-probable
Re:Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:5, Informative)
So, kinda like the Democrat investigation into Russian meddling in elections?
You mean the story Russia admitted to [reuters.com]?
You should be modded -1 because you keep repeating the lie. The election interference [fbi.gov] has been documented [cbsnews.com] and now admitted to.
Further, it's interesting to note the amount of effort put in by the con artist to prevent any investigation. If he were innocent he would have welcomed the investigation and fully cooperated by turning over whatever was requested. Just like Hillary Clinton did. Hillary also sat for multiple committee meetings and answered every question. Unlike the con artist who continues to throw temper tantrums at the mere suggestion he should testify.
Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:2)
"I'm a fucking idiot, go ahead and say it"
Yes, I'm gonna say it. Thinking the Mueller investigation didn't show misbehaviors, you're blind or a FOX operative.
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It's pretty simple actually. A huge story that would have been detrimental to the democratic party was not allowed to be shared on any social platforms.
It's simpler than that. In 2016 the social media companies got played like fiddles amplifying Russian election interference. In 2020 they tried to avoid the same and instead overreacted to what amounted to a standard political hit job.
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It's not a huge story, it's something so farcical that reporters at the NY Post, not the most prestigious publication in any case, were fighting to not be associated with it. The supposed co-author didn't find out until after it was published that she had co-authored it.
You know a story is pretty dire when tabloid reporters are running away from it...
Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:4, Insightful)
It turns out that the posts the Biden people wanted deleted were pictures of Hunter's dick. One wonders why there are people who were so eager to see those pictures.
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Every time Libtards are caught committing crimes, the exact same pattern of excuses occurs:
1. It never happened
2. Fine it did happen but it wasn't a big deal ------- you are here
3. That was a long time ago, who cares now
1. The documents were mine.
2. The FBI planted those documents and I want them back.
3. They took them out of cartons and threw them on the floor to make me look bad.
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The copies in the wild didn't match each other. This is actually corroborated by the man who made the original copies, Mac Isaacs:
I do know that there have been multiple attempts over the past year-and-a-half to insert questionable material into the laptop as in, not physically, but passing off this misinformation or disinformation as coming from the laptop. And that is a major concern of mine because I have fought tooth and nail to protect the integrity of this drive and to jeopardize that is going to mean that everything that I sacrificed will be for nothing.
Source: Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
There were only 2 authentic copies of the drive, the one Mac Isaacs held onto until very recently and the copy FBI had. The copy Rudy had (and the subsequent copies of it) couldn't be verified as authentic since multiple persons has accessed it and even made changes to it, this determination doesn't affect the fact that s
Re: Someone explain in English WTF was "blocked"? (Score:4, Informative)
So "logically" it couldn't have happen? This is a failure to engage in the details and evaluate the evidence.
>* Kept all sorts of totally for real incriminating data on his laptop,
He was addicted to crack at the time. Likely not making the best decisions. Also he was apparently proud of his prowess with the ladies. That he also kept all his emails and texts on it is also unremarkable--most people do that.
>* And then flew across the country with his incriminating laptop,
What's so illogical about that? He was going to visit family in Delaware and took his laptop with him.
>* To leave it at some indie guy's repair shop in Jersay,
>* Not a brand-name shop like a millionaire would go to without a 2nd thought,
Delaware, not New Jersey. He likely chose a repair shop close to the Biden home.
Hunter Biden brought his laptop to the repair shop because Hallie had thrown it in a swimming pool.
See the signed work order here:
https://docs.house.gov/meeting... [house.gov]
* Abandoned it there instead of coming back for it, even though it's full of criminal conspiracy stuff,
Hunter was addicted to crack at the time. That caused him to forget about it.
>* And that upon discovering the Vast Trove Of Biden Conspiracies upon the Infamous Laptop, instead of immediately contacting law enforcement, he... continued accessing the disks and sent a copy to a reich wing agitprop mill
Wrong again. He contacted the FBI and gave them the original. He also made several clones.
He only contacted the media when the FBI did nothing with it.
Now a question for you: why would the FBI do nothing with it?
If you think the hard drive is "manufactured," you have to answer how these hypothetical forgers:
1. Put crack and meth pipes in Hunter's mouth
2. Produced a video of his niece massaging his genitals with her feet.
3. Added many forensically verified emails; see:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
We also have testimony from two counterparty to those emails that they were real and Joe Biden was involved in the deals.
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In the story though there is no real evidence of that, really more of an intuitive likelhood because as the tweets describe "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."
Which certainly isn't
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Re:The real story is Twitter's bias (Score:5, Insightful)
No conspiracy? The ex-FBI then-Twit lawyer telling other Twits that they need to CYA and keep the story blocked, after everyone realized it was not actually against the rules, doesn't show a conspiracy?
To the contrary, coordination to cover up a significant mistake is a classic form of conspiracy.
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You originally alleged is a coordinated conspiracy between a political campaign and the "elites" of Twitter.
What you have now described is internal coroporate decision making and public relations management.
There is a gulf between these that has yet to be demonstrated.
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Conspiracy [cornell.edu] is an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal. Most U.S. jurisdictions also require an overt act toward furthering the agreement. An overt act is a statutory requirement, not a constitutional one.
Illegal in-kind contribution [fec.gov] by Twitter to the Biden campaign. Intent to achieve the agreement: As evidenced by email exchanges like "Handled." Overt act: Blocking the NY Post story.
It was a conspiracy.
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You think whatever you want about me but that's still just a lot of words and no evidence.