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comments, ephemera, speculation, etc. (protected political speech and personal opinion) 2022- 2022-12-03 b THE TWITTER FILES II TAIBBI'S TWEETS
* 2. What you’re about to
read is the first installment in a series, based
upon thousands of internal documents obtained by
sources at Twitter.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 * 4. Twitter in its
conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant
mass communication, making a true real-time global
conversation possible for the first time.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 *
5. 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.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 *
*6. 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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 7.
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.
*— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 * 9. Celebrities
and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at
the behest of a political party:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 10.Both parties had
access to these tools. For instance, in 2020,
requests from both the Trump White House and the
Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
*— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 11. 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. opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/s…
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 12. 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.
Okay, there was more
throat-clearing about the process, but screw it,
let's jump forward
*— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 Okay, there was more
throat-clearing about the process, but screw it,
let's jump forward
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 16. The Twitter Files, Part
One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden
Laptop Story
*— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 17. On October 14, 2020,
the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS,
an expose based on the contents of Hunter
Biden’s abandoned laptop:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 18.
Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress
the story, removing links and posting warnings that
it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its
transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto
reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.
*— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 19. White House
spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of
her account for tweeting about the story,
prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign
staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least
pretend to care for the next 20 days.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 20.This led public
policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a
polite WTF query. Several employees noted that
there was tension between the comms/policy
teams, who had little/less control over
moderation, and the safety/trust teams:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 21. Strom’s note
returned the answer that the laptop story had
been removed for violation of the company’s
“hacked materials” policy: web.archive.org/web/2019071714…
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 22. Although
several sources recalled hearing about a “general”
warning from federal law enforcement that summer
about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence -
that I've seen - of any government involvement in
the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the
problem...
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 *
23. The 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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 *
*24. “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.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 25.You can see the confusion
in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up
including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief
Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes,
“I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for
marking this as unsafe”:
*— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 26. By this point
“everyone knew this was fucked,” said one
former employee, but the response was
essentially to err on the side of… continuing
to err.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 27. Former VP of Global
Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully
claim that this is part of the policy?”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 28. To which former
Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems
to advise staying the non-course, because
“caution is warranted”:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 29. A fundamental problem
with tech companies and content moderation: many
people in charge of speech know/care little about
speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders.
To wit:
*— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 30. In one humorous
exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro
Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently
suggest she hop on the phone to talk about
the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the
only Democratic official I could find in the
files who expressed concern.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 31. Gadde replies
quickly, immediately diving into the weeds
of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more
worried about the Bill of Rights:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 32.Khanna tries
to reroute the conversation to the First
Amendment, mention of which is generally
hard to find in the files:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 33.Within a day,
head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson
receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl
Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which
had already polled 12 members of congress –
9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House
Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s
office.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 34.NetChoice
lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in
upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying
it's a "tipping point," complaining tech has
“grown so big that they can’t even regulate
themselves, so government may need to
intervene.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 35.Szabo
reports to Twitter that some Hill figures
are characterizing the laptop story as
“tech’s Access Hollywood moment”:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 * 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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022 * Read more complete version at: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1598822959866683394.html ______________________ Permission is hereby granted to any and all to copy and paste any entry on this page and convey it electronically along with its URL, ______________________ |
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