Twitter boss Elon Musk has followed through on his promise to shed light on how the social media site he bought censored the Hunter Biden "laptop from Hell" story ahead of and during the 2020 presidential election, with the first instalment of the “Twitter Files” dropping on 2 December via investigative journalist Matt Taibbi.
Elon Musk believes that the inside story of how Twitter suppressed the “Hunter Biden laptop” bombshell scoop just weeks before Joe Biden’s election amounts to meddling in the 2020 poll.
“If Twitter is doing one team's bidding before an election, shutting down dissenting voices on a pivotal election, then that is the definition of election interference,” said the billionaire, who bought the microblogging site on 27 October 2022 for $44Bln.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss, added while taking part in a 'Twitter Spaces' audio event:
"Frankly, Twitter was acting like an arm of the Democratic National Committee. It was absurd."
Musk was weighing in on the first instalment of the so-called 'Twitter Files', which he has been trailing for a while and which finally dropped on 2 December after Musk furnished investigative journalist Matt Taibbi with the social media platform's internal documents.
The world's richest man explained his decision to dig deep into Twitter's archives to lay bare how the company suppressed a story which would have been damaging to US President Joe Biden's son, saying:
“It's just obvious there's been a lot of control of information, suppression of information, including things that affected elections, and that just all need to be...you just want to have the stuff out there.”
Musk added that besides Taibbi, he had given "unfettered access" to the internal files to journalist Bari Weiss, claiming he had no control over how they were revealed.
“This is not a North Korea tour guide situation - you get to go anywhere you want, whenever you want, however you want. I'm not controlling the narrative,'' the tech guru, who said he had joined the chat via a Starlink satellite connection from his private jet, emphasized.
In late November, Musk vowed that under his guidance, 'Twitter 2.0' would be "far more effective, transparent, and even-handed". At the time, he also claimed that Twitter "failed in trust and safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections".
Exactly. The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2022
Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.
'The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story' is based on redacted emails of the social media site's employees. The leaked email exchanges revealed how "Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe'." Furthermore, a tool usually set aside for extreme cases such as, for example, child pornography, was resorted to, as the scoop's transmission via direct message was also blocked, Taibbi's Twitter thread revealed.
The original Hunter Biden story had been labelled by a small circle of top-level executives at Twitter as “hacked material” without any evidence to support this, it was claimed in the 'Files'. Many of the staff, such as former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman, questioned whether they could "truthfully claim that this is part of the policy”. However, in response, former Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker appeared to argue in the leaked exchanges that it was “reasonable” to assume materials had been hacked and that “caution is warranted”.
Despite the fact that “everyone knew this was f***ed", one former employee said, no one appeared to have the "guts" to stand up to it.
Furthermore, the decision to censor reports about the laptop story was made behind the back of then-chief executive and co-founder Jack Dorsey, with Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former head of legal, policy, and trust, apparently assuming a “key role”.
The leaked exchanges also appeared to show Twitter staffers asked to "review" tweets perceived as "problematic" by "the Biden team", seeming to center on pornographic images of Hunter Biden.
Originally run by The New York Post on 14 October 2020, the exclusive story hinted at a corruption scheme allowing Hunter Biden to peddle access to his father Joe Biden (while the latter was serving as Barack Obama’s vice-president) to businessmen and women from a host of foreign entities. The details, existing in more than 200 gigabytes of data, including nearly 130,000 emails, text messages from Hunter Biden’s iPhone, photos and videos, and other files discovered on the damaged MacBook Pro he had left at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware.
Reporting on Hunter’s alleged shady dealings with foreign businessmen was swept under the carpet by mainstream media, and dismissed as "Russian disinformation". It was censored by Facebook* and Twitter. However, subsequent investigations by US law enforcement and media outlets would confirm the story was not the result of hacked material.
The first instalment of the 'Twitter Files' elicited a swift response from Republicans, including House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, Senators Rand Paul and Josh Hawley.
McCarthy vowed that once the House Republicans officially take majority control of the lower chamber in January, they intend to “get answers for the American people and the accountability they deserve”. In mid-November, House Republicans announced a criminal probe into the Biden family.
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