Emails Prove Twitter Censored Biden Laptop Story
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Emails Prove Twitter Censored Biden Laptop Story
Executives at Twitter sat on the Hunter Biden laptop story for purely political reasons, by all appearances, and it’s clear that this sort of chicanery has got to stop if our nation is to survive.
From The Daily Signal. After Twitter CEOĀ Elon MuskĀ teased a massive reveal Friday afternoon, journalist Matt Taibbi released a Twitter thread revealing the confusion at the social media company after it censored the New York Postās Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.
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Taibbiās Twitter thread, which Musk retweeted, revealed that Twitterās top executives didnāt have a good explanation for censoring the story, but stuck with the decision, anyway. It also showed that Republican and Democratic congressional staff weighed in against the move.
Taibbi recounted thatĀ Twitter tookĀ āextraordinary stepsā to suppress the PostāsĀ Oct. 14, 2020, storyĀ reporting on emails from Hunter Bidenās laptop implicating Joe Biden in his sonās foreign business dealings. The social media company even went so far as āremoving links and posting warnings that it may be āunsafe.ā They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.ā
Twitter locked then-White House press secretary Kaleigh McEnany out of her account for tweeting about the story. Taibbi shared an email from then-President Donald Trumpās reelection campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who noted that all McEnany did was ācite the story and firsthand reporting that has been reported by other outlets and not disputed by the Biden campaign.ā
āI need an answer immediately on when/how she will be unlocked,ā Hahn added. āAt least pretend to care for the next 20 days,ā he added, referencing the election.
Taibbi next shared a message from public policy executive Caroline Strom, who asked her coworkers, āAre you able to take a closer look here?ā
An analyst responded that āthe user was bounced by Site Integrity for violating our Hacked Materials Policy.ā
Yet it remains unclear what sparked the initial decision to censor the story, according to Taibbi.
āAlthough several sources recalled hearing about a āgeneralā warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, thereās no evidenceāthat Iāve seenāof any government involvement in the laptop story,ā he wrote. āThe 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.ā
Taibbi quoted one former employee, who said of the decision, āThey just freelanced it.ā
āHacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasnāt going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it,ā the employee reportedly added.
Taibbi shared a few messages illustrating the confusion. Communications staffer Trenton Kennedy wrote: āIām struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe, and I think the best explainability argument for this externally would be that weāre waiting to understand if this story is the result of hacked materials. Weāll face hard questions on this if we donāt have some kind of solid reasoning for marking the link unsafe.ā . . .
Yoel Roth, Twitterās then-safety chief, cited āhacked materialsā as the policy rationale, but noted that āthis is an emerging situation where the facts remain unclear. Given the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016, weāre erring on the side of including a warning and preventing this content from being amplified.ā
Brandon Borrman, then Twitterās vice president of global communications, asked, ācan we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?ā
Jim Baker, then-deputy counsel, wrote that ācaution is warranted.ā He suggested Twitter āassumeā that the materials āmay have beenā hacked, even as he noted that āsome factsā indicated āthat the computer was either abandoned and/or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes.ā
Taibbi noted that some Twitter staffers seemed not to understand the basic tenets of the First Amendment and Supreme Court jurisprudence on it.
He cited an exchange between Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who alerted Twitter to the āhuge backlashā this move had been generating among members of Congress on the issue of āspeech,ā as in free speech.
Gadde replied, noting that McEnanyās account āwas not permanently suspendedāwe requested that she delete the tweet containing material that is in violation of our rules and her account is restricted until she complies.ā
Gadde noted that Twitter āput out a clarifying threat of Tweets earlier this evening to explain our policy around the posting of private information and linking directly to hacked materials,ā as if this policy would resolve any free speech concerns.
Khanna replied, āBut this seems a violation of the 1st Amendment principles. If there is a hack of classified information or other information that could expose a serious war crime and the NYT [The New York Times] was to publish it, I think the NYT should have that right.ā
āA journalist should not be held accountable for the illegal actions of the source unless they actively aided the hack,ā the congressman added. āSo to restrict the distribution of that material, especially regarding a Presidential [sic] candidate, seems not in the keeping of the principles of [the 1964 Supreme Court case] NYT v. Sullivan.ā
Khanna continued, āI say this as a total Biden partisan and convinced he didnāt do anything wrong. But the story now has become more about censorship than relatively innocuous emails and itās become a bigger deal than it would have been.ā
Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice sent Twitter staffer Lauren Culbertson an email with the results of a quick poll involving congressional staffers. The survey suggested that a āblood bathā would await the company in congressional hearings, and that nine Republican staffers said, āthis is a tipping point. Itās just too much.ā
One staffer said the scandal represented ātechās āAccess Hollywoodā moment and it has no Hillary to hide behind.ā Another said, ātech is screwed and rightfully so.ā
Meanwhile, Democratic staffers suggested the censorship hadnāt gone far enough.
āIn their mind, social media ā¦ doesnāt moderate enough harmful content so when it does, like it did yesterday, it becomes a story. If the companies moderate more, conservatives wouldnāt even think to use social media for disinformation, misinformation, or otherwise.ā
Szabo added, āWhen pushed on how the government might insist on [more tech moderation], consistent with the First Amendment, [the Democratic staffers] demurred: āthe First Amendment isnāt absolute.ā
Taibbi noted that Twitterās Hunter Biden move followed an increasing censorship trend. While āsome of the first tools for designing speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters,ā outsiders started āpetitioning the company to manipulate speech.ā
He cited an exchange between Twitter executives, where one sent a list of items āto review from the Biden team,ā and the other would reply, āhandled these.ā (Micah Lee, a blogger at The Intercept, noted that the tweets in the particular list Taibbi includedĀ contained revenge porn.)
Although Twitter received and honored requests from both team Trump and team Biden, āthe system wasnāt balancedā but rather ābased on contacts,ā and Twitterās staff leaned heavily Democratic. Indeed, Twitter staff long have leaned left, withĀ 99% of their donationsĀ going to Democrats in the 2022 midterms, as they did in previous years.
āTodayās revelations demonstrate once again thatĀ Big Tech is an ideological monopolyĀ policing Americansā speech,ā Kara Frederick, director of The Heritage Foundationās Tech Policy Center, said in a prepared statement about Taibbiās reporting. āBig Techās control of information and access to the digital space undermines free speech, interferes in our elections, and jeopardizes U.S. national security.ā (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundationās news outlet.)
āMusk has done what lawmakers should have already accomplished: exposing Big Tech companies as foot soldiers of the progressive Left,ā Frederick added. āWhen AmericansĀ believeĀ the 2020 presidential election outcome would have changed given information deliberately hidden by the Left with theĀ help of Big Tech, apologies from former Silicon Valley executives will not cut it.ā
Although it is impossible to know what would have happened had Twitter not suppressed the Postās reporting on the contents of Hunter Bidenās laptop, aĀ Media Research Center pollĀ conducted in the days after the 2020 election found that 36% of self-described Biden voters said they were not aware of the evidence behind claims that Joe Biden was personally involved in his son Hunterās business deals with China, a claim bolstered by emails found on Hunterās laptop. Thirteen percent of those voters (4.6% of all Biden voters in the sample) said that if they had known the facts, they would not have voted for Biden.
Such a shift away from Biden would have given Trump the election, according to the Media Research Centerās analysis of the election results. Had the Biden-China story seen the light of day, Trump would have won the election with 289 electoral votes, the analysis claimed.
Twitter alsoĀ banned conservatives, including a Heritage Foundation expert, shortly before the 2022 midterms.
Frederick added that āAmericans should not have to rely on billionaires to deliver this necessary transparency,ā and that elected officials should āconstrain Big Techās pernicious practices. It is past time for aggressive reforms and proper oversight to ensure that Big Tech is held accountable.ā
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(Used with permission. The Daily Signal.Ā Photo credit: Getty Images. )
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Father God expose all the evilness in this world thank you Father God for giving us spiritual eyes to see and spiritual ears to hear thank you for giving us awareness of what is going on Father God you are taking every Empire of the devil in destroying it piece by piece thank you Lord thank you for all you do thank you for hearing our prayers your people want to come out of the wilderness rise up and let this evilness know we are no longer going to take this you know the lies and deceits they are right in front of you may you correct your children in such a way that they tremble to the core their soul lord you are Almighty all powerful and may they realize that quickly in Jesus name I pray
Lord, let the Satonic liars be exposed.