Thread by @mtaibbi on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "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.” 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. 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. 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.” Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party. Both parties had access to these tools... 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. 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... The [Hunter Biden laptop censorship] 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. “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.”... "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". 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... 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.
Liberals claim that the Twitter files are a nothingburger. Yet they also claim that Twitter was not biased in censorship, and that there is no government censorship. Ironic.
Thread by @bariweiss on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "THE TWITTER FILES PART TWO. TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS... teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users. Twitter once had a mission “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.”. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.” Twitter denied that it does such things. In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: “We do not shadow ban.” They added: “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”... One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was @libsoftiktok—an account that was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.” The account—which Chaya Raichik began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers—was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik says. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week. Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.” But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy."... The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.” Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes. When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: "We reviewed the reported content, and didn't find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules." No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up. In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects. Here’s Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then Global Head of Trust & Safety
Hilariously, one liberal claimed that Libs of Tik Tok got special treatment, so that disproves claims of bias - not realising that it was already blacklisted and not taking action on the user without approval would've been to ensure it could not be un-blacklisted easily
Matt Binder on Twitter - "lol wait this shows Libs of TikTok got special treatment from Twitter DO NOT TAKE ACTION ON USER"
The73rd on Twitter - "Lmao! Yeah, “special treatment” by running it by SIP-PES which included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal. Please don’t tell me you think they were “protecting” her 😂🤦🏽♂️"
FlintCheck on Twitter - "Dude… seriously?? They are marked with “Trends Blacklist”, and then also DO NOT TAKE ACTION ON USER. Meaning that “trends blacklist” cannot be removed through any lower level process without escalating it to the leadership group mentioned."
Thread by @mtaibbi on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP... We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies... After J6, internal Slacks show Twitter executives getting a kick out of intensified relationships with federal agencies. Here’s Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth, lamenting a lack of “generic enough” calendar descriptions to concealing his “very interesting” meeting partners. These initial reports are based on searches for docs linked to prominent executives, whose names are already public. They include Roth, former trust and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, and recently plank-walked Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker... There was at least some tension between Safety Operations – a larger department whose staffers used a more rules-based process for addressing issues like porn, scams, and threats – and a smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs like Roth and Gadde. The latter group were a high-speed Supreme Court of moderation, issuing content rulings on the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President. During this time, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content... This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)... Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here... execs often expand criteria to subjective issues like intent (yes, a video is authentic, but why was it shown?), orientation (was a banned tweet shown to condemn, or support?), or reception (did a joke cause “confusion”?). This reflex will become key in J6. In another example, Twitter employees prepare to slap a “mail-in voting is safe” warning label on a Trump tweet about a postal screwup in Ohio, before realizing “the events took place,” which meant the tweet was “factually accurate”. “VERY WELL DONE ON SPEED” Trump was being “visibility filtered” as late as a week before the election. Here, senior execs didn’t appear to have a particular violation, but still worked fast to make sure a fairly anodyne Trump tweet couldn’t be “replied to, shared, or liked”... After Woods angrily quote-tweeted about Trump’s warning label, Twitter staff – in a preview of what ended up happening after J6 – despaired of a reason for action, but resolved to “hit him hard on future vio.”... there are multiple instances of involving pro-Biden tweets warning Trump “may try to steal the election” that got surfaced, only to be approved by senior executives. This one, they decide, just “expresses concern that mailed ballots might not make it on time.” “THAT’S UNDERSTANDABLE”: Even the hashtag #StealOurVotes – referencing a theory that a combo of Amy Coney Barrett and Trump will steal the election – is approved by Twitter brass, because it’s “understandable” and a “reference to… a US Supreme Court decision.” In this exchange, again unintentionally humorous, former Attorney General Eric Holder claimed the U.S. Postal Service was “deliberately crippled,”ostensibly by the Trump administration. He was initially hit with a generic warning label, but it was quickly taken off by Roth... Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before J6. The ban will come after other avenues are exhausted. In Twitter docs execs frequently refer to “bots,” e.g. “let’s put a bot on that.” A bot is just any automated heuristic moderation rule. It can be anything: every time a person in Brazil uses “green” and “blob” in the same sentence, action might be taken... This is all necessary background to J6. Before the riots, the company was engaged in an inherently insane/impossible project, trying to create an ever-expanding, ostensibly rational set of rules to regulate every conceivable speech situation that might arise between humans... “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?” Safe to say Trump’s “Go home with love & in peace” tweet mid-riot didn’t go over well at Twitter HQ
Some liberals claim that Trump was in power, so the censorship was his fault. But they also claim the Deep State doesn't exist (when they're not claiming it's a good thing). Ironic
It's only "misinformation" when it doesn't help the left
Thread by @ShellenbergerMD on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "TWITTER FILES, PART 4 The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7... senior Twitter execs:
- create justifications to ban Trump
- seek a change of policy for Trump alone, distinct from other political leaders
- express no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban...
As context, it's important to understand that Twitter’s staff & senior execs were overwhelmingly progressive. In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff's political donations went to Democrats. In 2017, Roth tweeted that there were “ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.” In April 2022, Roth told a colleague that his goal “is to drive change in the world,” which is why he decided not to become an academic... On J8, Twitter says its ban is based on "specifically how [Trump's tweets] are being received & interpreted." But in 2019, Twitter said it did "not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.” The *only* serious concern we found expressed within Twitter over the implications for free speech and democracy of banning Trump came from a junior person in the organization. It was tucked away in a lower-level Slack channel known as “site-integrity-auto."... Twitter employees use the term "one off" frequently in their Slack discussions. Its frequent use reveals significant employee discretion over when and whether to apply warning labels on tweets and "strikes" on users... Twitter employees recognize the difference between their own politics & Twitter's Terms of Service (TOS), but they also engage in complex interpretations of content in order to stamp out prohibited tweets, as a series of exchanges over the "#stopthesteal" hashtag reveal...
Sales exec: "are we dropping the public interest [policy] now..."
Roth, six hours later: "In this specific case, we're changing our public interest approach for his account..."...
The employee notes, later in the day, "And Will Oremus noticed the inconsistency too...," linking to an article for OneZero at Medium called, "Facebook Chucked Its Own Rulebook to Ban Trump.""
Twitter admitting that it engages in adhoc reasoning to reach desired ends is a nothingburger if you know (and celebrate) in your heart of hearts that Twitter is biased
Thread by @mtaibbi on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "the first installment of the Twitter files was published here. We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay. We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management. The process for producing the “Twitter Files” involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated... The news that Baker was reviewing the “Twitter files” surprised everyone involved, to say the least. New Twitter chief Elon Musk acted quickly to “exit” Baker Tuesday."
Twitter Ban Of Trump Came After Pressure From Michelle Obama And Others - "A tweet from former first lady Michelle Obama apparently played a major role in having former President Donald Trump removed from Twitter, the new installment of the “Twitter Files” has shown. Elon Musk and journalist Michael Shellenberger unveiled the fourth set of “Twitter Files” on Saturday and they showed communications by the company’s executives between Jan. 6-8, 2021... Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey warned his staff “to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension,” on January 7. But Dorsey was on vacation and had delegated responsibility to Yoel Roth, the Head of Trust and Safety and former Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust Vijaya Gadde, both of who, Shellenberger said, were extremely progressive in their politics... “In 2017, Roth tweeted that there were ‘ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE,’” he said. “Twitter employees recognize the difference between their own politics & Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS), but they also engage in complex interpretations of content in order to stamp out prohibited tweets”"
Elon Musk on Twitter - "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"
Meme - James Lindsay, dispelling magic @ConceptualJames: "Leftists and especially "journalists" are bots or scripts with pre-prepared taiking points like "PR" and "richest man". See for yourself. This IS how the Regime works. It's a big performance to get people to follow their script. It's reflexive hyperreality
'Imagine volunteering to do online PR work for the world‘s richest man on a Friday night, in service of nakedly and cynically right-wing narratives. and then pretending you're speaking truth to power.'
'Making a deal to do PR for the richest man in the world in exchange for exposure while advocating some kind of vague Centrism is a fitting bookend to his past few years.'
'Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world. Humilitating shit.'
'One minute you're scourging Goldman Sachs, the next you're doing PR for the richest man in the world, funny old life'
'Matt Taibbi always was, and still remains, a fraud. Doing PR for the richest person in the world should come as no surprise.'
'The Taibbi thread is a great example of overwriting when you don't have the goods but you don't want to admit you‘re just doing pr for the world's richest person'
'From calling Goldman Sachs a "vampire squid" to giving free PR to the world's richest billionaire. Man, what a career journey'
'Matt Taibbi went from a fierce and intrepid journalist taking aim at the wealthy and powerful to doing mundane PR for the world's richest huckster.'
'I continued to follow @mtaibbi as he descended from legitimate journalism into bothsides-ism over the years because i figured it was important to hear "both sides". But now he'sjust a PR outlet for the world's richest man. Sad.'"
The Twitter Files That Really Have Leftists Worried - "I truly do believe in conservative principles which dictate a private company can do pretty much whatever it wants. They should, however, be honest about it. Twitter was not. At least under the old leadership... But what is unique is how so-called journalists are reacting to it. They have spent years denying what everyone saw happening, pretending the very idea was beyond the pale. Now they’re pulling the “Everyone knew it was happening, they were open about it” card. Or at least trying to. Unfortunately for them, the Internet is forever... having your lies called out not only with facts and sources but also with a big attitude and unfriendly adjectives has to be annoying. That a lot of people would amplify that and continue to remind them of just how awful/stupid they are likely only added to their annoyance. This makes me think there will be a treasure trove of emails from those “journalists” drawing the attention of Twitter executives to the “harassment” they faced at the hands of people unpleasantly disagreeing with their politics. That’s the real gold yet to be mined. Forget about banning Donald Trump, which has been covered more than the JFK assassination, the real issue is how many people with a job to report the news were busy behind the scenes trying to silence Americans, high profile or not."
How WaPo Tried to Discredit Journalists Behind the Twitter Files With Just One Word - "WaPo labeled Taibbi and Weiss as “conservative journalists.”... Taibbi, a Substack writer, once covered politics for Rolling Stone and has described himself as “run-of-the-mill, old-school ACLU liberal.” Weiss, meanwhile, previously served as the opinion page editor at The New York Times. Neither is considered conservative, but as critics pointed out, that label has become a “smear” to discredit them and the work they’re doing. The Post eventually stealth edited the label after Fox News Digital asked about it, but no editor's note was issued indicating a correction took place. "That is hilarious," Taibbi told Fox about the Post's report. "Anyone who steps out of line in any way is labeled conservative or pro-Trump now. It's automatic and predictable.""
Thread by @bariweiss on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART FIVE. THE REMOVAL OF TRUMP FROM TWITTER... “Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.” But voices like that one appear to have been a distinct minority within the company. Across Slack channels, many Twitter employees were upset that Trump hadn’t been banned earlier... the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies... To understand Twitter’s decision to ban Trump, we must consider how Twitter deals with other heads of state and political leaders, including in Iran, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. In June 2018, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted, “#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.” Twitter neither deleted the tweet nor banned the Ayatollah. In October 2020, the former Malaysian Prime Minister said it was “a right” for Muslims to “kill millions of French people.” Twitter deleted his tweet for “glorifying violence,” but he remains on the platform... Muhammadu Buhari, the President of Nigeria, incited violence against pro-Biafra groups.“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war,” he wrote, “will treat them in the language they understand.” Twitter deleted the tweet but didn't ban Buhari. In October 2021, Twitter allowed Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to call on citizens to take up arms against the Tigray region. Twitter allowed the tweet to remain up, and did not ban the prime minister. In early February 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government threatened to arrest Twitter employees in India, and to incarcerate them for up to seven years after they restored hundreds of accounts that had been critical of him. Twitter did not ban Modi... Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be “coded incitement to further violence.”... Twitter announces Trump’s permanent suspension “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Many at Twitter were ecstatic. And congratulatory... By the next day, employees expressed eagerness to tackle “medical misinformation” as soon as possible... Outside the United States, Twitter’s decision to ban Trump raised alarms, including with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, and Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador... Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny criticized the ban as “an unacceptable act of censorship.”... Ultimately, the concerns about Twitter’s efforts to censor news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, blacklist disfavored views, and ban a president aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company. They’re about the power of a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy"
Twitter's shadow bans are why the public turned against 'experts' - "They say the coverup is worse than the crime. In this case, they’re both pretty bad. The latest release of internal Twitter files shows that users who opposed COVID lockdowns, made fun of liberal TikTok videos, or just happened to be conservative were secretly restricted. They weren’t allowed to trend, and their tweets would barely be seen by others. Twitter officials swore up and down, for years, that such “shadow banning” did not occur. “People are asking us if we shadow ban. We don’t,” Twitter’s official account posted in July 2018. “I think the real question behind the question is, are we doing something according to political ideology or viewpoints? We are not. Period,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in an interview a month later. “We do not look at content with regards to political viewpoint or ideology. We look at behavior.”... Dr. Bhattacharya was absolutely right — closed schools set back an entire generation of children in both education and social skills. But a small group of Twitter executives decided you weren’t allowed to have that opinion in 2020-21. Again and again, Twitter put its finger on the scale based wholly on ideology... Twitter lied. Their executives may even have perjured themselves. They kept claiming this “didn’t happen,” and it’s only because Elon Musk spent billions that we know it absolutely did. The “crisis of disinformation” you go on and on about, wondering why people don’t trust the “experts” anymore? This is why. Our “betters” in tech, media, and government have gaslighted us so often, we can never believe a word they say again"
Justin Lee on Twitter - "You: “It happened.”
Them: “It did not.”
You: “Here’s hard evidence.”
Them: “Of course it happened. How is this news?”
You: “But it’s really bad.”
Them: “Its good, actually.”
You: “It’s gaslights all the way down, isn’t it?”
Them: “Don’t be dramatic.”
*lights flicker, dim*"
Glenn Greenwald on Twitter - "I've never seen an orgy of hypocrisy quite as brazen as how the exact same media corporations and journalists who spent years demanding more Big Tech censorship turned *overnight* into free speech champions: because now it's their friends being silenced rather than their enemies."
The Twitter Files and the silence of the hacks - "A political party using a Big Tech platform as its personal censor? A potentially consequential piece of journalism suppressed during an election? What happened to the Hunter Biden laptop story should take its place among the great free-speech and journalistic scandals of the 21st century. And yet much of the American media is still trying to downplay this debacle, and has responded to the Twitter Files with a mix of silence and derision. The New York Times didn’t touch Taibbi’s story for a few days, before publishing a couple of questionably framed pieces – one reporting on the ‘debate’ around the Twitter Files, rather than the claims themselves, and one writing up Trump’s typically unhinged response to the revelations (he called for the ‘termination’ of the Constitution). The Twitter Files and the silence of the hacks Share Topics Free Speech Politics Science & Tech USA The Twitter Files deserve to go down in American journalistic history. These revelations, posted on Friday via a lengthy Twitter thread (of course), lay out in stark detail how one Big Tech platform became a weapon of political censorship. It makes for chilling reading, confirming what many had suspected for some time. Matt Taibbi – the independent journalist who was given access to the files by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk – reports that, in the run-up to the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign would routinely flag tweets and accounts it wanted to be censored. One screengrab shows an email exchange between executives. ‘More to review from the Biden team’, said one, on top of a list of offending tweets. ‘Handled these’, comes the reply, a few hours later. While, Taibbi notes, the Trump campaign naturally also agitated for content to be taken down, he reports that the Biden camp was ‘visibly’ more successful at this, given the ideological slant of the majority of people working at Twitter. That slant is also visible in the central revelation of the Twitter Files: that Twitter suppressed the New York Post’s infamous Hunter Biden exposé on deeply spurious grounds. The Hunter Biden story could well have changed the course of the 2020 election. This New York Post scoop, published a few weeks before election day, alleged that Joe Biden was embroiled in his son’s dodgy dealings in Ukraine. The information was gleaned from a laptop, seemingly belonging to Hunter, that had been left at a Delaware repair shop. Donate to spiked this Christmas Video Donate to spiked this Christmas spiked The article was almost immediately censored by Twitter, even though it had no solid grounds on which to do so. Publicly, the line was that the story had been flagged under Twitter’s ‘hacked materials’ policy. The speculation at the time was that the material was Russian disinformation. But as the Twitter Files reveal, even Twitter staffers were ‘struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe’. Still, they suppressed it anyway, all in the name of ‘caution’. The potential for this outrageous act of censorship – Twitter even locked the Post out of its account and stopped people from sharing the story in private messages – to influence the election apparently inspired no caution from them at all. Corporate-media outlets repeated the official line – that the story was of questionable origin. It took almost 18 months for the Washington Post and the New York Times to get a hold of and investigate Hunter’s emails for themselves. (Both papers determined, in the end, that the material at the core of the New York Post’s reporting was legit.) A political party using a Big Tech platform as its personal censor? A potentially consequential piece of journalism suppressed during an election? What happened to the Hunter Biden laptop story should take its place among the great free-speech and journalistic scandals of the 21st century. The populist who gets things done Recommended The populist who gets things done Sean Collins And yet much of the American media is still trying to downplay this debacle, and has responded to the Twitter Files with a mix of silence and derision. The New York Times didn’t touch Taibbi’s story for a few days, before publishing a couple of questionably framed pieces – one reporting on the ‘debate’ around the Twitter Files, rather than the claims themselves, and one writing up Trump’s typically unhinged response to the revelations (he called for the ‘termination’ of the Constitution). On Twitter, elite journalists have gone after Taibbi, often using the same attack line – that he is ‘doing PR’ for Musk, who has been keen to expose the Hunter shenanigans since he took control of the company. Elsewhere, the story has been dismissed as a ‘nothingburger’; the suppression of the exposé painted as ‘regular comms work’ on the part of Twitter... Given many of these people screamed ‘democracy dies in darkness’ whenever President Trump so much as passed wind in the direction of the media, I dare say they are just revealing their own biases here. Another criticism, mindlessly parrotted by this lot, is that Joe Biden wasn’t in power at the time, so his team’s meddling isn’t really a big deal. Putting to one side that a political party weaponising a powerful platform in this way clearly is a big deal, this deflection also ignores another key detail of this scandal – the potential influence of federal agents over the suppression of the Hunter Biden story... So, for all the bashing of Taibbi over the weekend, you could say his critics have been ‘doing PR’ for the Democratic elites and, quite possibly, the US security state for years. And that’s a scandal all of its own."
