Next up; the brouhaha about how Twitter and, indeed, major media outlets more generally molded the news to suit their political purposes. As you are presumably aware, Matt Taibbi at the behest of Elon Musk has published a series of tweets on how Twitter did its best to quash the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop. I don’t think that Twitter’s actions are that big a story and I don’t think that Matt Taibbi’s tweets are that shameful.
IMO you should recognize that Joe Biden has been engaged in influence peddling for decades. Politicians in high office no longer think that all sorts of corrupt activities are abuses of power any more. My sense is that they think they’re perks of the office. Pay to play in all forms, insider trading, probably even including outright bribery.
Just for the record I think that once a politician has reached a high enough office, he or she is all but unquestionably corrupt. I think the same of CEOs of big companies. In other words I think that Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Jamie Dimon, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett—all corrupt.
And the state of journalism is pathetic. I think the piece I linked to a week or so ago called it right. Media outlets are publishing what their target audiences want to hear rather than the news.
I need info outside of the mainstream presstitution.
Outside the compromised
search engines.
I need reality.
Is it not all just an Allegory of the Cave thing anyway, truth, gets fuzzy real quickly!
What I think I learned reading over what Taibbi wrote is that the only thing the government tried to have removed were the nude pictures. Also, that they removed tweets on the story for 24 hours. So I guess if removing the story for 24 hours was the best twitter could do it really wasn’t very good. I think the real story was that twitter had concerns and took some time to address them. I wish journalism acted more like that rather than the constant rush to publish first then find out the truth later. (Just a reminder that when the Post first released the story the writer asked that his byline not be used when it was published because of doubts about the validity of the story. Now that we have had months to look at the story and verify some of it we know some of it is true but at the time we are talking about Rudy Giuliani was controlling the story so there were valid concerns about it.)
Steve
Just to amplify a bit, remember that Giuliani had refused to let people examine the hard drive at the time of the story. This is what the lead general counsel for twitter said at the time, apparently his only input on the ban, which lasted for 24 hours. IANAL but it doesnt seem especially outrageous to me.
“I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked. At this stage, however, it is reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted. There are some facts that indicate that the materials may have been hacked, while there are others indicating that the computer was either abandoned and/or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes. We simply need more information.”
Steve
Errant nonsense.
Embarrassingly light.
“I don’t think that Twitter’s actions are that big a story and I don’t think that Matt Taibbi’s tweets are that shameful”
That’s about where I’m at. Taibbi’s tweets didn’t really reveal anything new that I can see. Twitter already admitted it made a mistake in suppressing the story.
steve,
The problem is the “hacked materials” standard is not applied consistently. And this really has been the problem with Twitter moderation historically – their standards and bendable and selectively enforced. Which they have a right to do, but people also have a right to criticize.
And it’s one thing for Twitter to limit the story via deprioritizing it in the algorithm, it’s quite another for Twitter to lock people’s accounts and force them to delete links to it.
If this had been Don Jr.’s laptop and not Hunter Biden’s, I think it’s pretty obvious the treatment would have been much different.
Andy- They certainly had no trouble with the stolen Dems emails or the stolen emails for Climategate 1 and 2, so unlike as is claimed it is not a one sided thing. For DDoSecrets they continued banning them even after they rescinded the policy about hacked materials.
However in this case, they took 24 hours to talk it over and look for additional info or hope that some new info arrived. If anything, that added notoriety to the story and increased coverage.
I think that if it had been Michael Moore holding Don Jr’s laptop and not letting anyone look at it the results would have been the same or worse. They know the Trumps sue and there would be every reason to suspect provenance with Moore being the one holding it.
Steve
The 1st installment of the “Twitter Files,†posted by Taibbi, were merely excerpts from files either not divulged or deleted by Elvis Chan. There is much more under the surface, supposedly, implicating a tawdry complicity between the Biden Family and countries such as China, Ukraine and others.
The legacy media and press of course want to continue to suppress or soft-soap the entire contents of a laptop showing the dark side of a presidential family, that was deliberately hidden by an administrative state wanting to gain power at any cost. It also goes way beyond the disgusting porn, child endangerment abuses or drug addled pictures of a president’s son completely out of control. The tech guy who handed the laptop’s hard drive over to the FBI, well before the 2020 election, was asked why he didn’t earlier reveal more on the hard drive himself. His answer was that he knew what Hunter Biden was capable of doing, using one of Hunter’s own texts on that laptop as proof. In that text Hunter was asking for the name and contact info of a bouncer who had thrown him out of a venue so he could get him killed.
Unfortunately, the tech guy, never received the protective cover or kudos of revealing a possible national security problem. Compare this to the one Ukraine phone call between Trump and Zelensky, whose whistleblower’s accusations formed the case for his impeachment. The corruption Trump was attempting to explore proved to be a valid quest. However, corruption is treated differently when it involves a Democrat versus a republican – the former is given media cover, anonymity, and a pass for accountability.
More and more the two tiers of justice, we have come to expect and accept, for each of the two parties, is not only embedded but thriving in our current administrative state.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1600244722819543040
Apparently James Baker oversaw the Twitter files being released. Like much of Baker’s history has been involved in censoring, limiting the flow of information, Baker has also been caught screening what files were released in the most recent Taibbi document drop.
James “The Swamp†Baker was fired today, when Musk was informed of his latest devious act of misinformation, suppression and criminal conspiracy.
The bigger story, I suspect, is that it sure looks as though the FBI set this whole thing up. Twitter may not have acted that badly (though as Andy notes consistency has been lacking) but it really looks like the FBI knowingly told Twitter that some disinformation about Hunter was likely in the pike, even though at the time they knew that this was a legitimate scandal because they’d already vetted the laptop.
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/06/fool-me-once-why-the-public-is-not-buying-the-latest-media-campaign-against-twitter/
” they knew that this was a legitimate scandal because they’d already vetted the laptop.”
They had vetted A version of the hard drive, not the one that Giuliani gave to the Post. IIRC forensic analysis showed that some of what was on the hard drive was added by people other than Biden.
Anyway, this is all over a delay of 24 hours. A bunch of nonsense. It has been shown many times that Twitter also blocked other materials thought to be hacked or stolen. Finally, while it looks like Hunter engaged in iffy behavior and maybe illegal after 3 years nothing is tied to Joe Biden. This is already much longer than any Trump investigation. Much like the Durham investigation that also found nothing. This really is the MO of the GOP now. Endless invitations that find nothing.
Steve
steve,
“However in this case, they took 24 hours to talk it over and look for additional info or hope that some new info arrived. If anything, that added notoriety to the story and increased coverage.”
The NY Post Twitter account was locked for over a week.
CStanley,
“Twitter may not have acted that badly (though as Andy notes consistency has been lacking) but it really looks like the FBI knowingly told Twitter that some disinformation about Hunter was likely in the pike, even though at the time they knew that this was a legitimate scandal because they’d already vetted the laptop.”
To me, those sound like generalized warnings and weren’t specific to the Biden laptop. Such warnings are very common in many different contexts in the national security bureaucracy, including something like the potential for foreign election interference. Those generalized warnings are, however, a double-edged sword because they prime people, especially those who lack training in analysis, to look at things in a certain way, which seems to be what happened here.
Andy- My understanding was that URL was blocked for over a week but after 24 hours you could mention the story. So you could tweet “go read the hunter Biden story at the NY Post” but not provide the actual link. Not true? (Having some trouble keeping interest in this very old story knowing that after years of investigation they haven’t found anything on Joe Biden, the real purpose of this stuff.)
Steve
steve,
I was wrong, the NY Post Twitter account was locked for over two weeks – from October 14th to 30th 2020. It’s true that Twitter eased up on others discussing the story before that.
As for the laptop story itself, I doubt it will have much effect but we shall see.
Someone went and counted. There were over 2800 stories written and published on the laptop story in the 3 weeks before the election. People could talk about the laptop on Twitter but they couldn’t link to the URL. There was no shortage of coverage.
Steve