Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi Reveal Why Twitter Censored the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

“The thread contains fascinating screenshots of conversations between various content moderators and company executives as the laptop story debacle was unfolding. But given how massively Musk hyped the revelations, the results are a tad disappointing, and mostly confirm what the public already assumed: A (still unidentified) employee or process flagged the story as “unsafe” and suppressed its spread, and then Twitter moderators devised a retroactive justification—violation of a “hacked materials” policy—for having taken such an extraordinary step. Then-CEO Jack Dorsey was largely absent from these conversations; Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety played “a key role.” None of this material is groundbreaking; it’s already well-known.

To be clear, it’s useful to see some of these internal messages. They confirm that Twitter’s various departments—communications, moderation, senior management—horrendously mismanaged the entire affair. They were not all on the same page: Vice President of Global Communications Brandon Borrman, for example, was immediately unconvinced by the “hacked materials” justification.”

“The most interesting revelation in Taibbi’s thread is that Twitter’s top executives were warned, over and over again, that this decision was going to create a backlash like nothing they had ever seen before. Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.), a progressive lawmaker, repeatedly emailed a Twitter communications staffer to complain that the firm was violating “1st Amendment principles.” (He raised some very valid points in his communications with the company, though strictly speaking the First Amendment does not apply in this situation.) NetChoice, a tech industry trade association, explicitly told Twitter that this would be the company’s “Access Hollywood moment.” (Unlike Twitter, both Khanna and NetChoice come off looking pretty good in all this.)”

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