WASHINGTON: Twitter CEO Elon Musk released internal ‘Twitter Files’ that showed how the company handled a news article about Hunter Biden in 2020, controversially blocking people from tweeting and direct-messaging about it. Twitter had responded to a request “from the Biden team” during the 2020 election — shortly after the company cracked down on Hunter Biden’s (son of US President Joe Biden) laptop story.
Musk tweeted a link to the account of independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi, who began posting a series of tweets revealing the inner story about the decision behind the censorship of Hunter Biden’s laptop story.
In a lengthy tweet thread, writer Matt Taibbi said he received “thousands of internal documents” from sources at Twitter — and Musk himself tweeted “Here we go!! ” when the thread began.
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://t.co/q4zaMw6aVV
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
The thread came after Musk teased that past inner workings of Twitter would be exposed. On Monday, he said the “Twitter Files on free speech suppression” would soon be published, adding that the public has a right to know about past discussions there.
“The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story,” Taibbi tweeted.
The decision to censor The Post’s story was made “at the highest levels of the company,” according to Taibbi, but without Dorsey’s involvement.
As Taibbi put it: The internal communications reveal “just how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get ‘unf–ked’ (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.”
According to Taibbi, Twitter’s former head of legal, policy, and trust Vijaya Gadde played a “key role” in the censorship decision. “They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases,” he said in a tweet.
Early into the evening on Friday, the thread mostly revealed deliberations both internally and externally — including with Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. — about Twitter’s move to restrict access to the article. Khanna appeared to question Twitter’s reasoning for blocking the story. Musk tweeted in response to one of Taibbi’s tweets: “Ro Khanna is great” Khanna’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
