HOUSTON, Texas — Twitter CEO Elon Musk promoted a series of tweets on Friday that disclosed old files buried or blocked by previous management relating Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal tale during the 2020 US presidential race.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi said in a lengthy thread that he received “thousands of internal documents” from Twitter sources pointing to the suppression of the Biden laptop story on Twitter, in which the company controversially blocked people from tweeting and direct-messaging about the story.
“Twitter went to great lengths to suppress the article, erasing links and publishing warnings that it was potentially ‘unsafe.’ They also prevented its dissemination via direct messaging, a tool formerly reserved for serious cases such as child pornography “Taibbi posted a tweet.
The New York Post headlined “Smoking-gun email shows how Hunter Biden connected Ukrainian businessman to VP dad” in 2020, alluding to Biden’s father, current US President Joe Biden, who was the country’s vice president at the time. However, the news never gained traction in the mainstream media, presumably due to Twitter limiting the story and stifling its public dissemination.
Twitter blocked the piece shortly after it was published by the Post, citing worries over compromised content. Twitter has a policy prohibiting the release of “hacked materials,” which are the result of political operators stealing and then leaking Democratic emails during the 2016 election.
Twitter acknowledged that guideline as one of the reasons it suppressed the story at the time.
According to Taibbi, one former Twitter employee described the decision as “simply freelanced.” “Hacking was the justification, but after a few hours, almost everyone understood it wasn’t going to work.” However, no one had the courage to reverse it.”
Taibbi’s interpretation of the internal materials suggested that Twitter’s former management had a Democratic tilt that somehow never made it to the top of the executive food chain until it was too late.
“An incredible subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop scandal was how much was done without CEO Jack Dorsey’s knowledge, and how long it took for the situation to get ‘un(expletive)’ (as one ex-employee described it) even after Dorsey jumped in,” Taibbi tweeted.
During a congressional hearing on misinformation and social media, Dorsey stated that censoring the Post’s piece was a “complete mistake.”
Twitter and Facebook took significant steps to curb the article’s dissemination.
Twitter employees were barred from tweeting or forwarding the link to the news in private chats.
Facebook stated that it was “limiting” the article’s circulation while third-party fact-checkers reviewed it.
Taibbi stated that he has found no evidence of government involvement in Twitter’s decision to suppress the story.
Federal prosecutors in the US state of Delaware are investigating Hunter Biden’s taxes, but he has not been charged.
He has categorically denied any misconduct.
Source: PNA
