Matt Taibbi’s thread did not provide any direct support for Musk’s suggestions that Democrats conspired with Twitter to block the article.
Better Informed in just 3.1416 minutes
Get the daily email that makes learning about current tech and coding trends fun. Stay engaged and on top of your industry, for free.
On Friday night, Substack writer Matt Taibbi posted a thread showing former Twitter employees debating the decision to restrict sharing of a NY Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. Twitter CEO Elon Musk hyped the release of the so-called “Twitter Files,” saying they would expose how the company, under its previous leadership, engaged in “free speech suppression.”
The screenshots of internal communications reveal that Twitter employees were worried that the Post article could be the result of a Russian hacking operation. Their ultimate decision to suppress the story drew outcry from conservatives, and former CEO Jack Dorsey has said it was a mistake, noting that the company changed its policy on hacked materials as a result.
But Taibbi’s thread did not provide any direct support for Musk’s suggestions that Democrats conspired with Twitter to block the article. Taibbi wrote, “There’s no evidence — that I’ve seen — of any government involvement in the laptop story.” Furthermore, the thread exposed the names of ex-Twitter employees and the apparent email addresses of Dorsey and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (who criticized Twitter’s decision on the Hunter Biden story). On Saturday, Musk acknowledged that posting some emails was a mistake.
Elsewhere in the Twitter-verse…
- While Musk banned Ye’s account for tweeting a swastika on a Star of David, he allowed neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, who created the white supremacist website The Daily Stormer, back on the platform.
- Musk seems to have dropped his feud with Tim Cook over App Store rules, and said that Apple has “fully resumed” advertising on Twitter.
- Twitter is still hurting financially, though. Its US ad revenue was reportedly 80% below expectations during the first week of the World Cup.
