It's Happening !!!!!!!! What really happened with the Hunter & Senile Biden story suppression by Twitter is now published

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[berryberry]

I hope Elon has a top notch security team

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Elon Musk Vows To Reveal Government And Media Collusion Once He Figures Out Where These Red Dots Are Coming From



https://babylonbee.com/news/elon-mus...re-coming-from

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Matt Taibbi

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.”



9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:



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:

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.



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.

[berryberry]

Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let's jump forward

16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked 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:

https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-...iz-man-to-dad/

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. **** pornography.

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.”



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

21. Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy

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.”

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”:



26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err.

27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”


28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”

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:

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.

31. 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:



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”

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More to come

[jmichael]

Who is Matt Taibbi? I though Elon was going to release the messages

[Jacuzzme]

That might be a meme, but if Musk didn’t have so much light on him he’d be dead as the dodo.

[berryberry]

Originally Posted by jmichael

Who is Matt Taibbi? I though Elon was going to release the messages

Matt Taibbi is a well respected and principled independent journalist who publishes on Substack. As an aside, he highly dislikes President Trump but he still calls the media out on their lies about him.

In typical Matt Taibbi fashion, he feels the need to preface whatever he is saying by pointing out that he isn't a friend of the right. If anyone has read his work for the last few years that's commonplace.

Elon gave all the information to Matt so he could provide an unbiased independent review and release the story

[berryberry]

Originally Posted by Jacuzzme

That might be a meme, but if Musk didn’t have so much light on him he’d be dead as the dodo.

Exactly. He is one of the few who could pull this off. I hope everybody understands the historical gravity of what Musk did tonight.

Elon Musk has all the money one could ever want and instead of going away quietly, he choose to enter the toughest arena in the world to expose the censorship regime that rigged the 2020 election.

The frauds at Twitter in charge of "trust and safety" were involved in a conspiracy to rig a presidential election.

Transparency in social media companies is rare, but is essential. That is why this is historic and really great to see. Transparency helps keep people honest and minimize undue influence.

It took the richest man in the world buying Twitter for us to learn the truth about an election-altering act of censorship. Imagine what else they’re hiding.

[berryberry]

Finally here is the money quote

Matt Taibbi

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"



The arrogance & disrespect organized between twitter & government employees deciding for themselves to suppress & manipulate the American people into not making an informed decision when they cast their vote, is sickening & should really make all sides angry. So corrupt.

[berryberry]

So what have we learned so far - main points:

1. The people at Twitter blocked any mention of a real news story in order to rig an election for their preferred candidate

2. The Senile Biden campaign frequently asked Twitter to censor posts and suspend individuals and Twitter complied

3. Libtards overall do not believe in free speech and wanted even more censorship (that they could control)

4. To his credit, only one Democrat Ro Khanna, contacted Twitter and told them what they were doing was an affront to the first amendment

Add tonight’s TWITTER FILES drop to the long list of so called “conspiracy theories” proven to be true. Twitter meddled with the 2020 election news cycle that had a significant impact on voters

but wait - there is MORE TO COME

Elon Musk:

Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is

Tune in for Episode 2 of The Twitter Files tomorrow!

[The_Waco_Kid]

[going4itnow]

Edit: Not worth it. Done with this section. Pointless prattle.

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Jonathon Turley - Censorship by surrogate: Why Musk’s document dump could be a game changer

“Handled.” That one word, responding to a 2020 demand to censor a list of Twitter users, speaks volumes about the thousands of documents released by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, on Friday night. As many of us have long suspected, there were back channels between Twitter and the Biden 2020 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to ban critics or remove negative stories. Those seeking to discuss the scandal were simply “handled,” and nothing else had to be said.

Ultimately, the New York Post was suspended from Twitter for reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Twitter even blocked users from sharing the Post’s story by using a tool designed for child pornography. Even Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was suspended for linking to the scandal.

Twitter’s ex-safety chief, Yoel Roth, later said the decision was a “mistake” but the story “set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack and leak campaign alarm bells.” The reference to the APT28 Russian disinformation operation dovetailed with false claims of former U.S. intelligence officers that the laptop was “classic disinformation.”

The Russian disinformation claim was never particularly credible. The Biden campaign never denied the laptop was Hunter Biden’s; it left that to its media allies. Moreover, recipients of key emails could confirm those communications, and U.S. intelligence quickly rejected the Russian disinformation claim.

The point is, there was no direct evidence of a hack or a Russian conspiracy. Even Roth subsequently admitted he and others did not believe a clear basis existed to block the story, but they did so anyway.

Musk’s dumped Twitter documents not only confirm the worst expectations of some of us but feature many of the usual suspects for Twitter critics. The documents do not show a clear role or knowledge by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Instead, the censor in chief appears to be Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer who has been criticized as a leading anti-free speech figure in social media.

There also is James Baker, the controversial former FBI general counsel involved in the bureau’s Russia collusion investigation. He left the FBI and became Twitter’s deputy general counsel.

Some Twitter executives expressed unease with censoring the story, including former global communications VP Brandon Borrman, who asked, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” Baker jumped in to support censorship and said, “It’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been [hacked] and that caution is warranted.” Baker thus comes across as someone who sees a Russian in every Rorschach inkblot. There was no evidence the Post’s Hunter Biden material was hacked — none. Yet Baker found a basis for a “reasonable” assumption that Russians or hackers were behind it.

Many people recognized the decision for what it was. A former Twitter employee reportedly told journalist Matt Taibbi, “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold.”

Obviously, bias in the media is nothing new to Washington; newspapers and networks have long run interference for favored politicians or parties. However, this was not a case of a media company spiking its own story to protect a pal. It was a social media company that supplies a platform for people to communicate with each other on political, social and personal views. Social media is now more popular as a form of communications than the telephone.

Censoring communications on Twitter is more akin to the telephone company agreeing to cut the connection of any caller using disfavored terms. And at the apparent request of the 2020 Biden campaign and the DNC, Twitter seems to have routinely stopped others from discussing or hearing opposing views.

The internal company documents released by Musk reinforce what we have seen previously in other instances of Twitter censorship. A recent federal filing revealed a 2021 email between Twitter executives and Carol Crawford, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s digital media chief. Crawford’s back-channel communication sought to censor other “unapproved opinions” on social media; Twitter replied that “with our CEO testifying before Congress this week [it] is tricky.”

At the time, Twitter’s Dorsey and other tech CEOs were about to appear at a House hearing to discuss “misinformation” on social media and their “content modification” policies. I had just testified on private censorship in circumventing the First Amendment as a type of censorship by surrogate. Dorsey and the other CEOs were asked about my warning of a “‘little brother’ problem, a problem which private entities do for the government that which it cannot legally do for itself.” In response, Dorsey insisted that “we don’t have a censoring department.”

The implications of these documents becomes more serious once the Biden campaign became the Biden administration. These documents show a back channel existed with President Biden’s campaign officials, but those same back channels appear to have continued to be used by Biden administration officials. If so, that would be when Twitter may have gone from a campaign ally to a surrogate for state censorship. As I have previously written, the administration cannot censor critics and cannot use agents for that purpose under the First Amendment.

That is precisely what Musk is now alleging. As the documents were being released, he tweeted, “Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is.”

The incoming Republican House majority has pledged to investigate — and Musk has made that process far easier by making good on his pledge of full transparency.

Washington has fully mobilized in its all-out war against Musk. Yet, with a record number of users signing up with Twitter, it seems clear the public is not buying censorship. They want more, not less, free speech.

That may be why political figures such as Hillary Clinton have enlisted foreign governments to compel the censoring of fellow citizens: If Twitter can’t be counted on to censor, perhaps the European Union will be the ideal surrogate to rid social media of these meddlesome posters.

The release of these documents has produced a level of exposure rarely seen in Washington, where such matters usually are simply “handled.” The political and media establishments generally are unstoppable forces — but they may have met their first immovable object in Musk.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciar...-game-changer/