Elon Musk’s Twitter released internal discussions about censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story Friday night via journalist Matt Taibbi.
The documents reveal widespread internal and external concern at the suppression of the story, a decision made without CEO Jack Dorsey’s knowledge and spearheaded by Vijaya Gadde, then the head of Trust & Safety — Twitter’s top censor. The thread is ongoing at the time of this writing and can be found here:
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
The documents, mostly internal communications from Twitter and emails with external parties, showed widespread unease with the decision and concerns about how it could be explained to lawmakers and the public.
Several key points from the thread so far:
- The decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story was made without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey
An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
- Trust & Safety chief Vijaya Gadde, long believed to be the driving force of censorship at the company, spearheaded the decision.
- Numerous top Twitter employees, especially from the communications and policy teams — whose job is to maintain relations with lawmakers and the press — expressed concern at the decision.
- Immediate warnings from Twitter’s Washington D.C. contacts followed, including an email from Democrat representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) who warned the decision had generated “huge backlash” on capitol hill, and expressed concerns about Twitter undermining the freedom to publish.
Aside from Rep. Khanna’s communications, which imagined a future in which newspapers would be unable to publish hacked evidence of war crimes, other Democrats reportedly complained that Twitter had not gone far enough in its censorship of the press.
Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights: pic.twitter.com/U4FRLYYPaY
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
“Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern,” said Taibbi.
An email from Carl Szabo, one of the tech industry’s top lobbyists in D.C., told Twitter that Democrat lawmakers he spoke to in the aftermath of the decision all believed “social media needs to moderate more,” and complained that the Hunter Biden story had been allowed to travel as far as it did.
Continue reading: Breitbart.com
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