Elon Musk shared internal Twitter communications Friday through posts that indicate some high-level employees blocked legitimate news with flimsy excuses.
An October 2020 New York Post report containing salacious details of a laptop alleged to be Hunter Biden’s raised Democrat alarms. Operatives soon reached out to Twitter asking if they could squelch the story that may have altered the general election outcome.
“The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself,” Musk promised in a November 28 tweet. “The public deserves to know what really happened.”
Musk shared a treasure trove of internal emails with Substack writer Matt Taibbi, who has released individual emails in single Twitter posts.
It is unclear if Taibbi wants readers to reflect on each mail’s content before consuming another rather than dumping the lot in one fell swoop. It could, also, be a marketing strategy to drive engagement on the platform. If Twitter’s new owner hopes to draw advertisers back, the best way is with unique content that grows audiences.
“The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey,” Taibbi commented in a Friday tweet, “with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.”
Revelation that Twitter’s former CEO was left out of the loop on such an important decision seemed incredible. Then, Taibbi dropped more nuggets to ponder.
“They just freelanced it” is the way the decision was characterized by a former employee. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold,” Taibbi added.
“But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
The effect of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal upon the 2016 general election was referenced as plenty good reason to exercise extreme caution. The Post report was declared the result of a hack despite the lack of any evidence to support such a claim.
Former vice president of Global Communications, Brandon Borman, asked in an email shared by Taibbi, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”
Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker responded to Borman, acknowledging more facts were needed to determine if the material was the product of hackers.
“At this stage, however, it is reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and caution is warranted,” Baker explained.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) exchanged a number of emails with Twitter executives. In one, the congressman expressed concern about First Amendment violations involved with censoring tweets from established publications.
The landmark Supreme Court decision Sullivan v. The New York Times was cited by Khanna to explain his opposition to censoring news just because it may affect a presidential candidate.
“But in the heat of a presidential campaign, restricting dissemination of newspaper articles (even if NY Post is far right) seems like it will invite more backlash than it will do good,” Khanna remarked.
As eyebrow-raising as those disclosures were, the most remarkable one involved proof that Biden campaign staff regularly sent Twitter names to review. The implication seems to be that Biden staffers would pass objectionable accounts to Twitter that would then “handle” them.
“By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine,” Taibbi revealed Friday. “One executive would write to another: ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled.'”
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