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Twitter Censorship The Media

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."
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What Happened After Matt Taibbi Revealed Twitter's Deliberations on Hunter Biden Tweets?

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  • Nothing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday December 03, 2022 @02:59PM (#63099628)
    because nobody cares. If people really cared then Trump would've been impeached for literally putting his kids in positions of power (to the point where one of them had their security clearance revoked and Trump overroad it).

    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.
    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      It kind of is not nothing. Taking a device to be repaired Carrieâ(TM)s some expectation of privacy. Most here do not give the repair center the right to publish all content on your computer. Most here would not say that the repair guy has the right to all your sex videos.
  • by thrillseeker ( 518224 ) on Saturday December 03, 2022 @03:03PM (#63099638)
    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.
    • by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Saturday December 03, 2022 @03:23PM (#63099710)

      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.

      • by sinij ( 911942 )

        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?

    • by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Saturday December 03, 2022 @03:32PM (#63099740)
      I can remember all the way back to 15-20 years ago when companies were mostly run by conservatives and often did and said things that I and many other liberals were vehemently against. Conservatives back then were quick to remind us that in the U.S., private entities have the freedom to do or say whatever they wanted so long as they don't violate any laws and that if we didn't like what those companies were doing or saying, we were free to create own companies or move to a fascist country that exerted its will over private entities. I can't say that I'm surprised to see the script flip now that there are many powerful companies controlled by liberals, I'm just amazed at how quickly it all happened.
    • by HalcyonBlue ( 596712 ) on Saturday December 03, 2022 @03:41PM (#63099756)

      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.

      • by trawg ( 308495 )

        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

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )

      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.]

  • 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?

    • 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 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

  • 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? Because some of you spent so much energy investigating Trump-Russia story, that turned out to be manufactured by Clinton campaign, that it would be undeniably hypocritical if you ignored this story. So lets appoint special counsel, just like we did with Russiagate, to determine exactly who 'motivated' Vijaya Gadde to do a run-around Jack Dorsey just to kill the Hunte
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      Sorry, I live in the real world, not your insane right-wing fantasy land.

    • by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Saturday December 03, 2022 @06:31PM (#63100188) Journal

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by fafalone ( 633739 )
        With the caveat that they both knew about it and welcomed it, and that people associated with the campaign had direct contacts with the Russian government. It's not a smoking gun but it's also complete delusion to suggest Mueller exonerated Trump like the insane extreme right winger you're replying to thinks.
      • by VicVegas ( 990077 ) on Sunday December 04, 2022 @01:54AM (#63100846) Homepage

        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.

  • That's the wrong focus.
    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
  • The real story is that Hunter was selling access to his father. This is corruption at the highest level and Hunter was merely a mule.
  • All we hear are crickets and frogs from most of the media. Corruption and kickbacks is so normal in Washington that it is not newsworthy at all.
  • Hunter sure gets right wingers hard.

  • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday December 03, 2022 @06:39PM (#63100208)

    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???

  • See here an example of the media spin machine in action:

    “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
  • by linuxguy ( 98493 ) on Saturday December 03, 2022 @07:46PM (#63100346) Homepage
    Honest question. If a liberal rich guy somehow bought Fox. And started telling the world that he found that Fox buried an undesirable story, would the conservative world be just as upset?

    Or do most here believe that Fox, the "fair and balanced" network, doesn't do this sort of thing?

The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8. -- R.B. Greenberg [referring to PDPs?]

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