Information was disclosed by a journalist, who had access to documents from the platform
Twitter CEO Elon Musk shared on friday (2.dec.2022) post with a series of publications by journalist Matt Taibbi in which he reports on how “Hunter Biden’s Laptop Story Suppression Really Occurred”, son of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, through the social network.
During the 2020 US presidential campaign, the newspaper new york post published a report based on the contents of a computer belonging to Hunter Biden. The publication said that the son of the then Democratic candidate had practiced corruption in business abroad. At the time, the text was censored by Twitter for, among other issues, “spread of fake news” and violation of policy regarding content of hackers🇧🇷 Posts that talked about the subject were deleted from the social network.
“Twitter took extraordinary measures to suppress the story, removing links and posting notices that [o conteúdo] it could be ‘unsafe’. They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool previously reserved for extreme cases, such as, for example, child pornography.”, wrote Taibbi.
The social network blocked, for example, the account of the White House spokeswoman at the time, Kayleigh McEnany –“which led to an angry letter from the campaign official [Donald] Trump, Mike Hahn, who boiled: ‘At least pretend you care about the next 20 days’🇧🇷
The information released by Taibbi on Friday (2.Dec) of the so-called “Twitter Files” is, according to him, only the 1st part. He claimed to have other documents to make public.
In this 1st part, the journalist said that, in 2020, requests to review publications were constant. According to Taibbi, celebrities and anonymous could have their posts removed or revised “at the request of a political party🇧🇷
The journalist stated that this system was not balanced. 🇧🇷It was based on contacts. Since Twitter was and is predominantly made up of people of a political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, left open (well, Democrats) than on the right“, he wrote.
One of the arguments given by Twitter to review or remove the publications was that the report used hacked material. In 2020, the possibility was raised that Russians had hacked into Hunter Biden’s computer to obtain information – something that was never proven.
According to Taibbi, a former Twitter employee said that everyone at the company knew this argument wouldn’t work for long. Social network executives, then, would have tried to think of new justifications for deleting the content.
The journalist shows an email in which Trenton Kennedy, from the communications sector, wrote that he was “struggling to understand the basis of politics” of the platform to classify publications as unsafe.
Taibbi presented more emails. In them, the executives discussed whether they were on the right path and recommended caution, but followed the same course. Among the names mentioned are: Yoel Roth, Katie Rosborough, Brandon Borrman, Vijaya Gadde and Jim Baker.
Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter, was unaware of the decisions, according to Taibbi. The journalist said that Dorsey was involved at times “to challenge suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum🇧🇷
Who had acentral role” would have been Vijaya Gadde, former head of Twitter’s legal department. It was she who responded when Democratic Congresswoman Ro Khanna questioned the blocking of the White House spokeswoman’s account.
🇧🇷Khanna was the only Democratic official I found in the archives who expressed concern.”, wrote Taibbi.
When responding to comments from Twitter users, Musk hinted that the deletion of the posts was done “under government orders🇧🇷
Read the series of publications and documents shared by Matt Taibbi on Friday:
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