First, let me say, I would like a well-written, organized, comprehensive piece of writing explaining this material. Alternatively, show me everything — all the raw material.
Instead, Elon Musk directed us to the Twitter account of Matt Taibbi, and we were expected to receive a long series of tweets and to puzzle through it. Was that to drive massive traffic to Twitter? Was it supposed to be better all fragmented like that?
It certainly wasn't a way to get quick updates to news that was suddenly breaking. It's an old story: Twitter was skewed to favor Democrats. Now, presumably, there's impressive proof. Present the proof in a clear organized fashion!
Musk enlisted Matt Taibbi, so why couldn't Matt Taibbi create a readable document and then just tweet a link to that document?
We were all supposed to cobble the story together on our own. I tried, but I couldn't even figure out how to just get a straight line of Taibbi's tweets. I couldn't move all the responses out of the way. The path was cluttered with other people's tweets — memes about waiting for the next tweet, laughs about how this is just what everybody already knew anyway. What a confusing mess!After a full night's sleep, I want to do a post, and I can't even figure out where to click to get the Taibbi tweets lined up in order! I do see a lot of blue checks homing in on Tweet #10: "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:"
"However:" sets up the next tweets, the ones that (supposedly) show the Democrats using the tools and receiving a sympathetic response from Twitter insiders. Most of this seems to be about the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
What I'd like to see this morning is a clear presentation of what was dribbled out last night. I look first to my favorite source for half a century: The New York Times.
There's nothing at the top of the home page, so I search the page for Twitter.
I get one article: "Twitter Keeps Missing Its Advertising Targets as Woes Mount." That's been a theme at the NYT: Twitter is doing badly under Musk. Woes Mount! But it doesn't say advertising is crashing or even down at all, just that there were "targets" and then those targets were missed. These were internal targets, so maybe they were very aggressive. I can't easily tell how woeful it is that these targets were missed.
I search the whole site for "taibbi" and "twitter" and easily see that the story I'm looking for is, at least at the moment, nonexistent.
I relocate to The Washington Post. Its home page is loaded with Twitter stories: "Gio Reyna has played seven minutes. This World Cup, he's the talk of Soccer Twitter," "TikTok, not Twitter, is the real menace," "From quitting to blocking: How to protect yourself on Musk’s Twitter," "Elon Musk says Kanye West suspended from Twitter after swastika tweet," "Twitter needs Apple more than Apple needs Twitter."
Five stories, but not the one I'm looking for. I do the site search for "taibbi" and "twitter." Nothing!
I try NPR, BBC, CNN. Nothing. Nothing. Aha!
CNN comes through for me: "Released Twitter emails show how employees debated how to handle 2020 New York Post Hunter Biden story" by Brian Fung:
For days, Twitter owner Elon Musk had teased a massive bombshell disclosure based on internal company documents that he claimed would reveal “what really happened” inside Twitter when it decided to temporarily suppress a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop.
But on Friday, instead of releasing a trove of documents to the public, Musk’s big reveal pointed to a series of tweets by the journalist Matt Taibbi, who had been provided with emails that largely corroborated what was already known about the incident.
That closely tracks my perception of what happened.
Attracting thousands of retweets, Taibbi’s winding tweet thread reaffirmed how, in the initial hours after the Post story went live, Twitter employees grappled with fears that it could have been the result of a Russian hacking operation.
Grappled with fears? Or did they desperately search for a justification to suppress the story and trump up the "Russian hacking" ground?
It showed employees on Twitter’s legal, policy and communications teams debating – and at times disagreeing – over whether to restrict the article under the company’s hacked materials policy, weeks before the 2020 election.... While some questioned the basis for the decision and warned that Twitter would be inviting allegations of anti-conservative bias, others within the company, including senior officials, said the circumstances surrounding the Post story were unclear and recommended caution, according to screenshots of internal communications shared by Taibbi.
(Then-CEO Jack Dorsey – whom Taibbi said was not involved in the decision – has told US lawmakers that in hindsight, suppressing the story was a mistake.)....
The Taibbi posts undercut a top claim by Musk and Republicans, who have accused the FBI of leaning on social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop stories.
Musk tweeted Friday night, amid the Taibbi posts, that Twitter had acted “under orders from the government.” Taibbi said in his series of tweets that “there is no evidence - that I’ve seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story.”
That's big! Does Musk not have legal advisers? He was trying to make a giant splash. Why didn't he do it right?
Hypothesis: He didn't really have the story he wanted, so he went all out to churn traffic on Twitter.
Maybe he intentionally gets things wrong so his antagonists will tweet to correct him. And then everyone can fight about that. What a happening place Twitter is! Let's all go tweet little bits and pieces and see who wins or who's funnier or meaner. And that's how Musk wins. It's not about getting to the truth, but getting everyone on Twitter, tweeting one thing after another.
How wearisome! I'm just hoping this CNN piece — a normal article — will be reasonably organized and professional:
Lawyers for Facebook parent company Meta have made similar comments in recent weeks, disputing claims from Republicans that the FBI coerced Facebook to suppress the laptop stories.
Taibbi said the material he reviewed referenced general FBI warnings about potential attempted Russian interference in the elections, which also dovetails with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public account of Facebook’s handling of the New York Post story and affirms how Twitter was on high alert for possible foreign meddling.
In the wake of the article’s suppression, Taibbi said one Democratic congressman, California Rep. Ro Khanna, wrote to Twitter’s chief legal officer suggesting it was a bad look and a departure from First Amendment ideals to suppress a news report containing details that affect a presidential candidate....
Twitter is a private company, but you can still argue that it ought to behave consistently with free speech ideals. This is a difficult concept for many people to understand, and I appreciate the precision of the language CNN is using here.
The tweet thread also highlighted how officials from both political parties routinely wrote to Twitter asking for specific tweets to be removed.... Taibbi said the contact from political parties happened more frequently from Democrats, but provided no internal documents to back up his assertion. He also did not say that Democrats requested that Twitter suppress the Post story, and his account did not suggest that the US government had ever pressured Twitter to suppress the story.
Thanks, CNN! That strikes me as a clear and balanced summary. If it's wrong, tell me exactly why. It's my touchstone at this point.
And, yes, I've known all along that I could find coverage in The New York Post.
The New York Post is all over it:
I had little hope this is going to be the kind of story I want. But the story in writing is not as sensationalistic as the front page graphics, and it helpfully brings out aspects that are missing from the CNN presentation. Highlights:
The chaos and confusion behind closed doors at Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the October 2020 Hunter Biden expose show that a small group of top-level execs decided to label the Post’s story as “hacked material” without any evidence — behind the back of then-CEO and founder Jack Dorsey. ...
According to Taibbi, Twitter’s former head of legal, policy, and trust Vijaya Gadde played a “key role” in the censorship decision. Damning emails and comments from former Twitter employees showed that “everyone knew” the social media giant’s suppression of The Post’s scoops about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. “was f—ed.”...
“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,” the ex-employee added. “They just freelanced it,” a former employee told Taibbi about how the decision came about.
The decision left high-level executives puzzled. “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe,” Trenton Kennedy, a communications official wrote in an apparent internal email to colleagues.
To which former Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker responded that it is “reasonable” to assume materials were hacked and that “caution is warranted.”
“Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” former Twitter Vice President of Global Communications Brandon Borrman asks in another missive.
“Everyone knew this was f–ked,” a former worker told Taibbi about Twitter’s official stance of on the Hunter story. According to Taibbi, the social media company “took extraordinary steps to suppress”...
Twitter’s censorship of the story led to then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany getting locked out of her account with just weeks to go before the 2020 election....
Taibbi also tweeted: “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.” But the former Rolling Stone writer said the “system wasn’t balanced” and “was based on contacts.”
98 Comments on Althouse: How elite media is covering Elon Musk's dumping of information about how Twitter helped the Democratic Party in the 2020 election.
on December 03,
2022 | 20:08 chickelitsaid :
"MikeR said...“there is no evidence - that I’ve seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story.” As Glenn Greenwald has already pointed out, that is a misreading of Taibbi's post.
Comment #1 
on December 03,
2022 | 20:03 chickelitsaid :
"Althouse wrote: That's big! Does Musk not have legal advisers? He was trying to make a giant splash. Why didn't he do it right?
Comment #2 
on December 03,
2022 | 19:32 MikeRsaid :
"“there is no evidence - that I’ve seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story.” As Glenn Greenwald has already pointed out, that is a misreading of Taibbi's post. That particular tweet was talking about foreign government misinformation (Russian disinfo), and was saying that no one had found any such evidence." Comment #3 
on December 03,
2022 | 18:48 Michael Ksaid :
"
Comment #4 
on December 03,
2022 | 17:29 Readeringsaid :
"Taibbi saying that might have been the problem. What? Lack of foreign government interference?" Comment #5 
on December 03,
2022 | 17:24 gilbarsaid :
"“there is no evidence - that I’ve seen - of
Comment #6 
on December 03,
2022 | 17:11 Jasonsaid :
"Surprised it didn't include Biden sending an actual White House staff member, the senior advisor to the WH Covid Response office, to Twitter to demand the permanent suspension of Alex Berenson's account.
Comment #7 
on December 03,
2022 | 16:32 Rabelsaid :
"Althouse quoted CNN:
Comment #8 
on December 03,
2022 | 15:25 Readeringsaid :
"Wendybar, I will say your take more coherent than 45's." Comment #9 
on December 03,
2022 | 15:17 Jon Buracksaid :
"Finally, toward the end of her long "rant" (yes, some of it was a rant), Ann gets to the NY Post article which she acknowledges is okay and did covere stuff CNN did not (wow, that's a surprise). I actually found Musk and Taibbi's use of twitter to be clearer in the end than this long blog posting was. I really do have to laugh about it all. What Musk did was use his new toy exactly as it is ALWAYS used - as a chaotic collection of primary source material that you, the reader, have to piece together if you can. Every time I have ever tried to look into some twitter thread, I usually give up quickly due to the chaos. This one actually seemed fairly easy to follow thanks to Taibbi's help, if you click on various items to get them up full screen. What Musk did was force the media hacks to subject themselves to the torture they inflict on all the rest of the Twitter universe all the time.
Comment #10 
on December 03,
2022 | 14:46 Bruce Haydensaid :
"“Another big takeaway-- Twitter said they throttled the story for safety and because of their hacked materials policy, but they had not one shred of evidence either thing was true. There was no danger, and it wasn't hacked.”
Comment #11 
on December 03,
2022 | 13:43 Daniel12said :
""Let's not skip over number 8. In fact, skip over everything else and focus on 8. The one about the Biden organization conspiring to interfere with the 2020 elections."
Comment #12 
on December 03,
2022 | 13:36 wendybarsaid :
" Readering said...
Comment #13 
on December 03,
2022 | 12:22 Bendersaid :
"Thread unrolled here (entire set of tweets in one place):
Comment #14 
on December 03,
2022 | 12:12 Sebastiansaid :
""Twitter employees grappled with fears that it could have been the result of a Russian hacking operation"
Comment #15 
on December 03,
2022 | 12:07 Mark Osaid :
""[S]o why couldn't Matt Taibbi create a readable document and then just tweet a link to that document?"
Comment #16 
on December 03,
2022 | 12:02 Readeringsaid :
"https://twitter.com/ByronYork
Comment #17 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:57 Joe Smithsaid :
"'IOW The Biden campaign and the government, including James Baker in the DOJ, were making damn sure the facts---which you did not know in a legal sense---were ever brought to light.'
Comment #18 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:54 tim maguiresaid :
"I care that Twitter and Facebook put their thumbs on the scales in the last presidential election, I care a great deal less that Democrats and Republicans make censorship requests (though I’d be interested in the numbers on which requests were acted on). The clearly organized and coordinated response of the left-media on twitter is amusing.
Comment #19 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:51 Bob Boydsaid :
""James Baker, the FBI's General Counsel and a confidante of former FBI director James Comey, resigned his position with the bureau on May 4, 2018.
Comment #20 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:51 Bendersaid :
"Let's not skip over number 8. In fact, skip over everything else and focus on 8. The one about the Biden organization conspiring to interfere with the 2020 elections." Comment #21 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:41 Yancey Wardsaid :
"However, here is thing to consider hypothetically- make the laptop owner Eric Trump, all of other details exactly the same. Question for all of the commenters here left or right- what do you think Twitter would have done with that story if published by the NYPost or the NYTimes? Does anyone here really believe Twitter would have suppressed that story?" Comment #22 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:33 effinayrightsaid :
"Jupiter said...
Comment #23 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:28 Daniel12said :
"As someone skeptical of Musk's interest in being fully transparent, versus releasing info aligned to his narrative of events, what about this process is supposed to make me think we're getting a "full document dump"? If it's Matt Taibbi's involvement, am I supposed to have confidence in a deal that gave him access to documents but required him to post findings on twitter? And who else gets access to these documents (and others that were not dumped), or do I just get to hear Matt Taibbi's take, followed by various involved outlets' take on his take?
Comment #24 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:27 effinayrightsaid :
"Joe Smith said...
Comment #25 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:12 Jupitersaid :
"Here is the whole tale, in two words. Vijaya Gadde. " Comment #26 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:12 Jupitersaid :
"You know, the weird thing about this, is that I knew all about Hunter Biden's laptop well before the election. I knew about it before I heard that Twitter was suppressing it by blocking the Post's twitter account. I had read multiple accounts of how it came to light and what was on it, in various places on the internet. I really don't know how people manage to remain so incredibly ignorant. I guess by reading NYT and WaPo, and watching TV. Imagine watching TV to find out what's going on! You'd have to be a complete idiot. " Comment #27 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:06 Randomizersaid :
""Musk enlisted Matt Taibbi, so why couldn't Matt Taibbi create a readable document"
Comment #28 
on December 03,
2022 | 11:03 Joe Smithsaid :
"Some dumb fucks in the media are correct on one point; the Biden campaign colluding with Twitter is infuriating but legal.
Comment #29 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:59 Joe Smithsaid :
"'Twitter was skewed to favor Democrats. Now, presumably, there's impressive proof. Present the proof in a clear organized fashion!'
Comment #30 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:57 Yancey Wardsaid :
"Unlike Althouse, I believe this is the proper way to disclose the information- a full public release of the entire data set in raw form- it forces people to actually look at the facts that would underly any narrative form of description that Althouse was looking for in vain from her favored left-wing news organizations. Indeed, she can see the problem by her admitted reluctance to go to the one news organization that did exactly what she claimed she was looking for- the NYPost. Instead of reading the NYPost story, she goes to CNN which managed to write an entire story about it without quoting, as far as I can tell, a single piece of the e-mails released on Twitter. Instead, all Fung does in that story is tell you his opinion about the facts released on-line.
Comment #31 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:48 Yancey Wardsaid :
"I read the entirety of Taibbi thread as it going down last night, and here is a likely error, though perhaps Taibbil himself clarified after I stopped reading to go to bed (I will check later when I have time:
Comment #32 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:47 Readeringsaid :
"https://www.vice.com/en/article/93w9bd/how-twitter-made-the-hunter-biden-laptop-story-even-worse
Comment #33 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:27 rcoceansaid :
"Thank God Musk took over twitter. Its amazing that when we find out, the Left/Democrats are even more corrupt, dishonest, and power-mad then we imagined. Unfortunately, the Democrat voters DO.NOT.CARE. They don't care about crime, inflation, soaring Gas Prices, etc. They will vote D, no matter what. " Comment #34 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:23 rcoceansaid :
"Musk is obviously trying to be non-partisan so he gave it to leftwing Tabbi. And Tabbi deliberately fuzzed things up by saying "Both sides got people banned". Really? How many people got banned because of the Trump campaign? One? Meanwhile, Biden got Twitter to supress the Hunter Biden Laptop story, the most important thing in the whole mess. Anyone who mentioned it got banned.
Comment #35 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:22 Michael Ksaid :
"Howard's spin.
Comment #36 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:21 Ice Ninesaid :
""Handled" is going to quickly become a popular catchphrase, and the hook of myriad memes." Comment #37 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:19 wendybarsaid :
" Comment #38 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:19 wendybarsaid :
"ASK yourself why?? THIS is what they do. They hide the truth, and since most people get their news from these liars, we are fucked. https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2022/12/03/clay-travis-others-notice-some-media-outlets-are-opting-to-ignore-the-twitterfiles-release/" Comment #39 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:11 JAOREsaid :
"Poor Musk. The woes are closing in.
Comment #40 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:09 Lem the misspellersaid :
""I relocate to The Washington Post. Its home page is loaded with Twitter stories:"
Comment #41 
on December 03,
2022 | 10:01 MayBeesaid :
"Also, how mad does it make you that all these celebrities and politicians had contacts at Twitter just waiting to remove tweets or lock accounts when a picture or tweet went out that they didn't like. Comment #42 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:59 MayBeesaid :
"Taibbi's followers numbers were going up by the tens of thousands in short periods of time last night. it was remarkable.
Comment #43 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:56 wendybarsaid :
"Poor, poor little Hunter Biden is a victim now.
Comment #44 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:53 Big Mikesaid :
"As I commented on the other thread, the most plausible explanation is that Mask — and probably Taibbi, too — realized that the Twitter servers could handle he projected traffic load while the Substack servers probably couldn’t. Time to stop kicking over rocks looking for nefarious motivations and remember that underneath Substack, Blogger, Twitter, and every other technology service there are real computers, real data storage devices, real cables, real switches and routers, and all powered by a Hell of a lot of electrical power to power the hardware and to cool the computer rooms, which requires its own infrastructure. Back in my day the rule of thumb was that 50% of your electrical input went to power the hardware, the rest to cool it below the point where the chips start to fail (84 degrees F back then). Perhaps in the seven years since I retired they’ve gotten it down to a ratio of 55%-45%, through clever computer room layouts, but that’s still a lot of hardware to power up and to keep cool enough to operate." Comment #45 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:49 Bob Boydsaid :
"And Ann wants to avoid reading things that aren't filtered for her by the mainstream media.
Comment #46 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:47 Lancesaid :
"One more question: Why did Musk and Taibbi release this information on the weekend?" Comment #47 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:40 Static Pingsaid :
"Here's your proof that our media engaged in outright censorship to influence an election, almost certainly successfully in a massive undermining of democracy, and the complaint is you do not like how the information was released? Seriously? There's a forest out there, I promise.
Comment #48 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:37 Lancesaid :
"Taibbi reports at length that Dorsey wasn't involved with suppressing the laptop story. But why didn't he fire Gadde once he found out what had been done?
Comment #49 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:30 MayBeesaid :
"Another interesting tidbit is that Twitter was justifying everything by not letting this be "another 2016". What happened in 2016? Trump won." Comment #50 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:28 MayBeesaid :
"I always wondered why people weren't more bothered that Twitter stopped the story from being shared by private DM. Taibbi confirms this had only been used in extreme cases before. This was not an extreme case. That alone should be huge news. Reporters use DMs with sources and Twitter can mess with them." Comment #51 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:09 Aggiesaid :
"Taibbi comes from a line of journalists, and embraces the role with all its history. This is the modern-day version of an old-fashioned 'Scoop', and he has scooped it right up and gotten it out there ahead of everyone else, in the fastest-possible, most-efficient way: on Twitter. Good for him! I hope he was wearing his fedora, with the Press card stuck in the hatband.
Comment #52 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:09 Achillessaid :
"Bob Boyd said...
Comment #53 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:04 Ice Ninesaid :
">Ann Althouse said...
Comment #54 
on December 03,
2022 | 09:02 Gusty Windssaid :
"This morning liberal journalists are doubling down.
Comment #55 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:59 Shoeless Joesaid :
"I'm looking for news on how the media, social media, and the Democrats suppressed accurate information prior to the 2020 election. Where should I go for that story?
Comment #56 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:52 Lurker21said :
"Taibbi said the contact from political parties happened more frequently from Democrats, but provided no internal documents to back up his assertion.
Comment #57 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:50 Michael Psaid :
"Given how well Taibbi usually presents his work on Substance, I assumed from the form of this that Musk made Twitter-as-the-medium a condition for access.
Comment #58 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:48 hombresaid :
"The response to this information dump showing collusion between (mostly) Democrats and Twitter to suppress information adverse to Democrats is that this contrivance between big tech and government violates the First Amendment. How important! Ain't it awful! Into the conservative circle jerk it goes!
Comment #59 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:45 J2said :
"Like gilbar
Comment #60 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:35 robothersaid :
"This comment has been removed by the author." Comment #61 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:35 robothersaid :
"Althouse: "...why couldn't Matt Taibbi create a readable document and then just tweet a link to that document?"
Comment #62 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:20 Imansaid :
"When the spoilage is served up, it must be at room temperature?
Comment #63 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:18 Achillessaid :
"At least Ann is being honest about her desire to find things that suppor twhat she already thinks.
Comment #64 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:17 Bob Boydsaid :
"Musk enlisted Matt Taibbi, so why couldn't Matt Taibbi create a readable document and then just tweet a link to that document?
Comment #65 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:16 Big Mikesaid :
"Why release this on Twitter? At a guess, because Twitter’s servers could handle the expected traffic load and the Substack servers couldn’t." Comment #66 
on December 03,
2022 | 08:12 James Ksaid :
"The release on Twitter was likely intended as a sort strip-tease. It's no wonder the NYT didn't cover the story, as it was part of the conspiracy. That plus the fact that the media has so trashed its reputation that this is more of a "dog bites man" story.
Comment #67 
on December 03,
2022 | 07:58 rwnutjobsaid :
"The media spin of this story is enough to affect the Earth's rotation. The Libs defense of this action on Twitter last night was being owned by people who can actually meme. It was epic." Comment #68 
on December 03,
2022 | 07:53 tim in vermontsaid :
""He's using Twitter to ratfuck the msm by introducing rogue wave perturbations into the matrix."
Comment #69 
on December 03,
2022 | 07:44 wendybarsaid :
"First the FBI claim they lost the laptop, or didn't know where it was, and THEN we find out that ex-FBI asshole Lawyer, James Baker, was involved in the decision to suppress the Hunter laptop story in October 2020. The FBI is compromised, and it is time to get rid of the Progressive Deep State operatives who are lying to us.
Comment #70
Load more comments (71 - 98)Are you saying that Althouse has fallen for a misreading of Taibbi's tweets? Good luck trying to get her to admit to that!"
Hypothesis: He didn't really have the story he wanted, so he went all out to churn traffic on Twitter.
Alternaive hypothesis: Musk has exactly what he says he has but is holding it back because the FBI has asked/demanded that he do so. Musk is hoping to be called upon in the court of public opinion to produce the evidence. He's going to keep insisting that he has it, letting pressure build to release it. The FBI is going to warn him to stop tweeting about it. This is all still in play. I think that Musk has exactly what he says he has. He's playing a dangerous game of chicken with the powers that be. He's smart enough to have a contingency plan lest something unfortunate befall him.
Lastly, let me just give a big thank you to Musk for outing all the partisan nasties at Twitter. Good riddance to them all!"
Blogger Bruce Hayden said...
“Another big takeaway-- Twitter said they throttled the story for safety and because of their hacked materials policy, but they had not one shred of evidence either thing was true. There was no danger, and it wasn't hacked.”
Remember how the DNC server was hacked" but they wouldn't let anyone examine it except a DNC contractor. Of course, the DNC contractor concluded it was hacked by Russians. Nobody was interested in the fact that the download speed required a thumb drive and an inside job. I sure would like to hear from the GW resident who was kicked out of the ICU when Seth Rich was admitted still alive."
FBI Agent Reveals in Testimony: Big Tech Companies Met with FBI ‘on Weekly Basis’ Ahead of 2020 Election
Chan stated that the FBI regularly sent social media companies lists of URLs and social media accounts that should be taken down..
“We know that FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan testified Tuesday in a lawsuit against the Biden administration brought by Republican attorneys that he organized those weekly meetings with Twitter and Facebook in San Francisco for as many as seven Washington-based FBI agents in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election,” she noted.
So, tell me MORE, about how "there is no evidence- that YOU were aware of?""
Tell me how that isn't a direct violation of the First Amendment right there.
"
Musk tweeted Friday night, amid the Taibbi posts, that Twitter had acted “under orders from the government.” Taibbi said in his series of tweets that “there is no evidence - that I’ve seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story.”
You might want to look at the entire quote form Taibii. Greenwald is saying that that is a reference to foreign government intervention. It's plausible. Taibii can clear it up. Maybe has already.
Screenshot"
As for the issue of government involvement in the pressure on Twitter, it seemed quite clearly to be there (from the "Biden team" not the FBI, but the Biden team is the relevant government suppressing force here) in the Oct. 24, 2020, 5:39PM message listing items to be suppressed, with Twitter's two-word response to Biden's team, an absolutely chilling response, "handled these." What the heck more does anyone need. Cute that two-worder, it leaves out entirely WHO handled these and what the handling did. Do we really need more? I don't."
It really was humorous. It got banned because it might have come from a hack. But then, with evidence that it was from a left behind notebook of Hunter’s, and no evidence that it was from a hack, they persisted, just in case it had even a hack. Their excuse was that they were just being careful. It might be hacked. Just in case. "
All of those are Hunter Biden dick pics posted without his consent. (Really.)"
https://www.vice.com/en/article/93w9bd/how-twitter-made-the-hunter-biden-laptop-story-even-worse
Too bad we didn't know all this before the election. Oh, wait....
12/3/22, 10:47 AM
AND YOU DON'T CARE!! The hypocrisy is sickening...and the backlash is coming."
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1598822959866683394.html
"
As Althouse noted, even in the face of the new info, they keep BS-ing. They spin The Narrative. It's isn't just the content that counts, it's the very confidence they have that they won't be called on their BS, not in any serious way. Musk or no Musk, Progs rule."
That's it? Well, first of all A. Althouse gets a C- in creative writing. But, there's more . . .I have to assume that there is more, much more documentary evidence and that Musk is simply giving the House Judiciary Committee ample reason to subpoena the documents, some of which may be problematic or covered by a NDA. Finally, Musk hopes to make Twitter a real time platform. This is that beginning.
I loved it. "
Forget elite media. I want to see analysis of a presidential caliber."
The same James Baker who went on the work for Twitter in their legal department.
How conveeeeeenient (said in a Church Lady voice)..."
The fact that Musk went through Taibbi makes me doubt this is the nothingburger it’s portrayed as here; I expect something long-form from Taibbi within the next couple weeks giving his perspective."
Baker quit on the same day as controversial FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, whose political and sometimes anti Donald Trump texts with FBI agent Peter Strzok have raised questions of bias within the Robert Mueller investigation into the president. The upheaval at the FBI has social media buzzing about Jim Baker; Baker’s name has surfaced before because he was a recipient of one of the memos that Comey wrote after meeting with President Donald Trump.
Politico reported at that time that a Congressional leak investigation into Baker involved the infamous Steele dossier. “House Republicans are investigating contact between the FBI’s top lawyer and a Mother Jones reporter in the weeks before the left-leaning outlet” was first to break the story on the dossier, reported Politico, stating that “James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, communicated with Mother Jones reporter David Corn in the weeks leading up to the November 2016 election.” However, Politico also reported that Corn denied Baker was the source for his reporting on the dossier."
In June of 2020 Baker was made Twitter's Deputy General Counsel"
You know, the weird thing about this, is that I knew all about Hunter Biden's laptop well before the election. I knew about it before I heard that Twitter was suppressing it by blocking the Post's twitter account. I had read multiple accounts of how it came to light and what was on it, in various places on the internet. I really don't know how people manage to remain so incredibly ignorant. I guess by reading NYT and WaPo, and watching TV. Imagine watching TV to find out what's going on! You'd have to be a complete idiot.
********************
You also "knew" that Biden and his campaign, and all democrats, were DENYING the story and doing everything they could to bury it.
IOW The Biden campaign and the government, including James Baker in the DOJ, were making damn sure the facts---which you did not know in a legal sense---were ever brought to light.
Those denials would have created uncertainty, doubt and confusion among the public, and....they did.
That's what matters, not whether you feel you had an inside track to the truth, the full truth and nothing but the truth.
"
Nothing of use here. Yet."
Some dumb fucks in the media are correct on one point; the Biden campaign colluding with Twitter is infuriating but legal.
**********
There's more than a nuance between the Biden *campaign* colluding with Twitter, and Democrat congress critters and (later) the Biden *White House* colluding with Twitter.
The government cannot use 3rd parties to do what it is not legal to do itself--just as it would be illegal for the government to force, request, threaten or cajole the NYT not to run a story."
I don't recall anyone ever enlisting a specific journalist to handle a document dump, rather than just releasing everything. Matt Taibbi is an excellent choice, but the Twitter format is frustrating. I don't use Twitter much, but for some reason, Taibbi's posts were in order and easy to navigate.
I subscribe to Taibbi's substack. I was surprised that he didn't address the Twitter revelations. Like, "Musk requested my hot take on Twitter. I will follow up with an article soon.""
What wasn't legal was the FBI and the security agencies putting their thumbs on the scale and using government to intentionally mislead voters (Russian disinformation lie).
Zuckerberg needs to explain the timeline of the FBI asking him to censor the Hunter laptop story before it was even published by the 'NY Post.'"
You can't figure out how to read tweets in numbered order?
I don't have a law degree and even I figured it out..."
"
when Taibbi wrote there was no evidence of government involvement in the laptop story, I was sure he meant there was no Russian/foreign government involvement in laptop itself, not that there no US government involvement in the suppression of the story itself. The FBI did, in fact, support the claims that foreign governments might be using this laptop story as disinformation- a claim the media seized on immediately in order to justify suppressing the story everywhere."
Too bad we didn't know all this before the election. Oh, wait...."
Tabbi did tweet out the campaign donations of the Twitter employees, showing 98 percent are liberal Democrats. Yoel Roth was in charge of the whole thing, along with the Indian lady lawyer, and both are SJW's.
Facebook and Google have already admitted that the FBI documents provided to Republican Congressmen are correct and that they were working with the FBI to ban people for "misinformation" so Musk will probably roll out a document/email showing that."
He's using Twitter to ratfuck the msm by introducing rogue wave perturbations into the matrix.
He sure is. The media has been lying to rubes like you for years. Since the lies supported your own policy preferences (assuming there are some), you didn't mind. I have been a substack subscriber to Taibbi for a year. I look forward to his account when he has time to clean it up and put it in Althouse-approved format. Mean while, we are finding out stuff that has been hidden for years."
Clay Travis
@ClayTravis
Remember one of the biggest, if not the biggest, powers of media is deciding which stories to cover. If you just read
@nytimes
&
@washingtonpost
, as tens of millions do, you’d have no idea about last night’s news on this site. The vast majority of Americans don’t use Twitter.
8:52 AM · Dec 3, 2022"
My wife gets outraged by the workings of the left, especially shutting down opposing views. Me too. But when we discuss it I always note the outrage is limited for most because they never see the deeds done in the dark.
Makes me think "Democracy Dies in Darkness" is an aspiration."
Reminder: Wapo's owner and Twitter's owner are competitors in an emerging market. 🚀
Take Wapo's commentary about twitter with a giant block of salt. "
Is it that easy at a newspaper? "Hey, NYTs, this is Biden's comms guy. Take that picture of Hunter off your website". "Ok. Handled". Appalling!"
Another big takeaway-- Twitter said they throttled the story for safety and because of their hacked materials policy, but they had not one shred of evidence either thing was true. There was no danger, and it wasn't hacked.
The only person who looked good was Ro Khanna, who said hacked materials given to a reporter are still printable under the first amendment. Twitter throttled that story because they wanted to, and then looked for a reason."
jimtreacher.substack.com
@jtLOL
OUT: The laptop is fake, it's Russian disinfo
IN: Why do you want to see Hunter's dick anyway?
Quote Tweet
Jason Abbruzzese
@JasonAbbruzzese
·
14h
It is, in fact, Twitter exercising its right to moderate its platform as it sees fit, including taking down nude pictures of people who did not consent for them to be posted on the internet."
I don't see how you can read this blog every day for years and make that claim. Her question was perfectly reasonable. The Twitter version is very hard to follow and make sense of. If even Ann Althouse has trouble sorting it out, you know it's a mess. "
This comes across about the same as hearing about the Hindenburg disaster and the first impression is the radio announcer used poor grammar. Or reading about Watergate and deciding the story is a questionable comma in the fifth paragraph. Do they even have editors? The rebels attack Fort Sumter! What horrible font choice!
As for the MSM, since they were co-conspirators do you really think they were going to report this and publicly admit wrongdoing? I mean they literally refused to cover the most important news story at the time, so get all your news from us, right? Do you think a perfectly written article that would make an English professor cry in joy at the sight would have made a difference? If anything, releasing it on Twitter gets a larger audience with less spin."
Why did Dorsey even hire Gadde? Where did Gadde and his cohort of censors come from?"
As others have mentioned, he warned his subscription audience (Substack) that this was coming, with apologies, and that it would be fully fleshed out later.
"
Musk enlisted Matt Taibbi, so why couldn't Matt Taibbi create a readable document and then just tweet a link to that document?
...
So it sounds like Taibbi had to agree to do it this way in exchange for the exclusive from Musk.
And Ann wants to avoid reading things that aren't filtered for her by the mainstream media."
"Instead, Elon Musk directed us to the Twitter account of Matt Taibbi...We were all supposed to cobble the story together on our own. I tried, but I couldn't even figure out how to just get a straight line of Taibbi's tweets. I couldn't move all the responses out of the way."<
That's a strange thing to say when the first link in your post is to Taibbi's thread which provides exactly that: a straight line of Taibbi's tweets sans responses. Very readable; very easy to comprehend.
But since that didn't seem satisfactory to you for some reason, there is always the easy-to-use Threadreader - https://threadreaderapp.com/ - which, with a simple copy and paste of the Twitter URL (too much "cobbling"?), gives you this: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1598822959866683394.html ."
One thing is for sure. Support for censorship, suppression of information, and pure propaganda are tools the left and their voters support.
This will not change. It will get worse.
Just check out a college campus. Their totalitarian one sided culture let’s you know exactly what liberals think of free speech, free expression, and open debate. They want none of it. "
The Washington Post?
The NY Times?
CNN?
Please tell me this was a joke. "
CNN only needs documentation when it comes to things that might make the Democrats look bad."
I think the "no evidence of government involvement" comment is weak -- as noted in a comment above, Twitter's deputy general counsel who said to keep the NY Post gagged came from the FBI, and there's a very thin line between Biden campaign operatives and former/current/future government appointees. Is it really much better if Twitter engaged in massive amounts of undisclosed in-kind campaign efforts for dozens of politicians, especially at the federal level?"
Informed conservatives, including some Republicans, are appalled. Democrats, who don't care about the First Amendment, are indifferent. Those in between who rely on the leftmedia are, and will remain, uninformed.
Somehow the notion persists that if the Democrats are caught in unconstitutional or illegal or undemocratic behavior they will be discredited, things will right themselves, and "America will be great again."
Time to forget that! The Bidens are demonstrably corrupt, as are the Clintons, the DOJ, the FBI, the IRS, the leftmedia and probably the military. Our elections are corrupt, or at least corrupted. Trump is done. There will be no correction. "
I want the deets on how/who put together the declaration from the the 50 Intelligence Professionals that it was all likely Russian disinfo.
"
Indeed, there are those of us who paid for a subscription to Taibbi's site that are asking that very question, as well as why Matt posted his reporting on Twitter first."
There was a time when bad deeds were bad deeds. And the miscreants paid a price steep enough to dissuade others devoid of ethics or morals from following that path. I’m talking about you, Democrats."
Most people who write these kind of posts try to hide their confirmation bias.
But Ann gives it to us straight!"
To answer your question, Professor, Taibbi posted this on Substack before the story started breaking on Twitter:
"Very shortly, I’m going to begin posting a long thread of information on Twitter, at my account, @mtaibbi. This material is likely to get a lot of attention. I will absolutely understand if subscribers are angry that it is not appearing here on Substack first. I’d be angry, too.
The last 96 hours have been among the most chaotic of my life, involving multiple trips back and forth across the country, with a debate in Canada in between. There’s a long story I hope to be able to tell soon, but can’t, not quite yet anyway. What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions."
So it sounds like Taibbi had to agree to do it this way in exchange for the exclusive from Musk."
"
No, it's that the msm left a large pile of explosives that they were counting on always being hidden by insiders from view by outsiders. Musk got forced into buying Twitter at top of market prices, and stumbled on to it, and figured, "why not light the fuse?" This is no elaborately constructed plan, anymore than the laptop was a creation of Russian disinformation guys, It was just there, and the powers of msm whack-a-mole to keep this stuff from coming to light has been exceeded.
You can't blame the other guy if you don't tighten your lug nuts and your wheel comes flying off driving out of the Front Range into Denver on the interstate. (OK, I saw that happen once, that wheel bounced down the highway like a golf ball in the cart path.) "
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/crooked-fbi-lawyer-james-baker-one-architects-spygate-involved-twitters-decision-suppress-hunter-biden-laptop-story/"