Twitter Files Part 1: Full thread of Matt Taibbi's tweets on the censorship of Hunter Biden's story
It has been an eventful day since Twitter CEO Elon Musk delivered on his promise of notifying the public on what he dubbed the 'Twitter Files'. The first lot included internal Twitter emails detailing how staffers allegedly censored tweets at the behest of the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign including that on Hunter Biden's laptop. He gave journalist Matt Taibbi access to the explosive documents, which the author began publishing excerpts on Twitter on December 1.
Musk added a new feature on Twitter called 'live tweeting' on December 1 and it was first used by Taibbi to announce with a cryptic tweet "Thread: THE TWITTER FILES". What followed next on the bird app was hours and hours of speculation, shock and anger at the revelations and general disbelief. If you have not got a chance to view all the explosive details Taibbi made public on the social media platform, we have it ready for you.
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Taibbi started off the reveal with "Thread: THE TWITTER FILES". With that, he had all of our attention. Followed an introduction into what people could expect saying: "2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter." and a third tweet "3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
The fourth, fifth and sixth tweets went into describing the purpose of the social media platform and how it changed since its inception. He writes, "4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time."
In the fifth tweet in the thread he wrote about Twitter's mission statement: "5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” While the sixth one warned: "6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters."
Requests 'handled' for Biden's team
By the seventh tweet, he had readers intrigued by the tools for 'controlling speech. He explains how Twitter allegedly strayed from its course. "7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly," he wrote, adding in the next thread: "8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”
Taibbi further mentioned how in 2020, Twitter allegedly received requests from Joe Biden's team to delete certain tweets to which the reply would come back: “Handled.” He provided a screenshot to support his claim. Musk, couldn't stay away from the action as he responded to the revelations in a tweet saying, “handled”, in just the way the delete request messages from Biden's team were responded to.
Why were James Woods' tweets removed ?
The ninth tweet in the thread slowly eased into drama and from here on big names entered the picture. He wrote: "9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party." He also supplied a screenshot of the exchange between Twitter employees as an example. In it is listed a link to a tweet shared by user @stephen_liuhuan and a link to a tweet posted by actor James Woods' official account. Another Twitter employee's reply is also seen dated Oct. 25, 2020, "I grabbed the first one under SI…defer to Safety on the high profile second one."
Both the tweets are now deleted but Washington Free Beacon investigative reporter Andrew Kerr replied to Taibbi's tweet, writing, "The Stephen_liuhuan tweet was a link to Hunter Biden weighing and using drugs, and another link to a Hunter Biden sex tape. The James Wood tweet is Hunter Biden smoking crack and getting a foot job."
Woods is not a happy man. He phoned into 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' show and said that following his censorship on the subject of Hunter Biden's laptop his career has been affected and so he plans to file a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee. "I can guarantee you one thing more than anything else you'll ever hear in your life: I will be getting a lawyer. I will be suing the Democratic National Committee no matter what," he said.
Twitter honored requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaigns in 2020
The author of 'Griftopia' then went on to say in the 10, 11th tweets how the requests were not from one party alone stating: "10. Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:" He went on to say "11. This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. https://opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/summary?id=D000067113 "
"12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives," he added explaining the changes in content. "There was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let's jump forward." Tweets 13-15 are not visible in the thread.
Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story
In the sixteenth thread of the live tweet he wrote, “The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story." From here began a detailed look into how executives at Twitter tried to suppress the NY POST's expose on the Hunter Biden laptop story. "17. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop:" he wrote in the seventeenth tweet alongside a link to the NYP story in question. He further stated how "18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography."
How? He gives an example in tweets 19 and 20: "19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.” McEnany's account being locked brought out some noticeable furor as he says: "20. This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams." Here's what Twitter answered, claims Taibbi: "21.Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy: https://web.archive.org/web/20190717143909/https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hacked-materials."
The development is then followed by a series of emails within twitter staff to decide if restricting tweets in connection with the Hunter Biden story under the “hacked materials” policy would work.
Former CEO Jack Dorsey unaware, Vijaya Gadde was key player
The thread then went on to explain how everything was done without then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s knowledge and then legal head Vijaya Gadde ‘playing a key role’. Tweets 22-24 details Gadde's prominent role in what transpired. "22. 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. In fact, that might have been the problem...
"23. The 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.
24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
'Hacked Materials' confusion
It is clear from the screenshots Taibbi provided that there was confusion among top heads over maintaining the ‘hacked materials’ ground but decided to hold on to it. Communications official Trenton Kennedy, Taibbi mentioned, had a lengthy exchange with Gadde and others regarding the story. "I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe. I think the best explainability argument for this externally would be that we’re waiting to understand of this story is the result of hacked materials." Taibbi writes: "25.You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe." Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, had recently claimed that the Twitter made a mistake when it decided to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. Roth, who quit earlier in November after Musk's $44 billion buyout, stated that the legitimacy of the NYP laptop report was impossible for the social media firm to verify and it was swiftly censored in October 2020.
Taibbi then tweeted, "26.By this point “everyone knew this was f****d,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err." In the follow-up tweet, he mentioned, "27 Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” "To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted."
Ro Khanna and Vijaya Gadde's exchange
He then writes: "29. A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:" Then he further put the screengrabs of the mail exchanges between Democratic leader Ro Khanna who, Taibbi claimed was the only one he could find, expressed concern over the issue. Khanna mailed Gadde to discuss this on phone.
Tweets 30-32 detail the back and forth between Khanna and Gadde. "30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.
"Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights.
"32. Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files."
In fact, Gadde, along with Khanna, have now become the center of US President Joe Biden's son Hunter's laptop story. Gadde, if one will remember was the Twitter employee who also played a key role in suspending Donald Trump's Twitter account. Her role in the company required her to deal with tweets concerning harassment, misinformation, and harmful speech. Gadde also made news when Musk had sacked a few of Twitter's top executives when he took over. She was one of them who was shown the door. However, now a digital mob of mostly right-wingers want her to be punished, if not jailed following disclosure of internal emails that suggested Gadde was instrumental in canning the so-called Hunter Biden laptop expose. She is now the center of the story for suppressing the Biden laptop story and shadow-banning Republican accounts sharing links to the controversial article, which could have had negative implications on the Democratic presidential run if it was made public.
NetChoice lets Twitter know a 'blood bath' awaits
Taibbi then moved to a letter from Carl Szabo of the NetChoice firm. "33. Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.”
34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it's a "tipping point," complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.”
"35. Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”. The Twitter files exposed messages relayed to Szabo expressing the attitude of Democratic lawmakers, who claim "the First Amendment isn't absolute."
In spite of their differing views of how the Bill of Rights should work, both parties agreed that Twitter and other tech companies "are inept." According to Democrats, Twitter's suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story made the Biden administration look guilty, despite having nothing to do with it.
'The First Amendment isn't absolute'
"36.Twitter files continued: "THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE” Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it's "not absolute."
Taibbi's tweets indicate that Twitter may have allegedly helped Biden's 2020 election without the knowledge of former CEO Dorsey, according to the Twitter files. "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."
Taibbi wrote: "There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum." The thread neared its end with Taibbi claiming that multiple sources said the problem with the "hacked materials" ruling is that law enforcement never found evidence of a breach in Hunter's laptop. "The problem with the "hacked materials" ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a "whirlwind" 24-hour, company-wide mess."
He then ended the over 30-long Twitter thread with a note thanking those who picked up his calls and mentioned how he had been working over 96 hours to get these alleged issues to the world. Taibbi wrote: "It's been a whirlwind 96 hours for me, too. There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right.
"Good night, everyone. Thanks to all those who picked up the phone in the last few days."
Musk teased a part two of the "Twitter files," expected sometime Saturday, December 3.
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