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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34958 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Via information from Twitter's Archives, Elon has released what he calls "THE TWITTER FILES" part one, via journalist Matt Taibbi.

And uh...

it's nothing?

So we learn the following events that I highlight because they seem important to me. If you believe I have omitted an important fact from the thread, feel free to point it out.

  1. There were ways for VIPs to report tweets to twitter staff in a way the average person couldn't. As an aside, all of the tweets in that image were nude images of Hunter Biden - not anything about the laptop story, or corruption exactly, just nudes of Hunter Biden, which are arguably prevented by any policy on revenge porn.

  2. Both the Biden Campaign and the Trump White House used these lines of communication. It is notable that only one of Biden and Trump was President in October 2020, and it was not Biden.

  3. It was biased to Dems because more dems work at Twitter. I'm kinda missing the causation here but sure.

  4. It seems like different teams at Twitter were not on the same page about their policy.

  5. Matt Taibbi sees no evidence of any government or intelligence agency having spoken to Twitter directly about the laptop story in any fashion.

  6. Twitter internally argued some more about whether this was good or bad

  7. Ro Khanna reached out to Twitter to tell them that they shouldn't be supressing speech.

  8. Twitter asked the opinions of 9 Republican and 3 Democratic House Staffers

  9. The house Dems thought there should be more moderation, said "The first amendment isn't absolute"

  10. Dorsey often intervened on high profile suspensions

Uh, this story contains the following actions from Democratic party officials who were either in office or affiliated with the government in some fashion at the time:

  1. Ro Khanna, house rep, said they should not censor the story

  2. Some Democratic staffers said that there should be more moderation in an informal bitching session

Nevertheless, Elon and others are treating this like it was some sort of horrid crime by the Biden administration, which was not in office, and when it had exactly the same capabilities as the Trump administration, actually in office had with Twitter?

And Taibbi confirmed that the federal government, FBI, CIA, etc., did at no time, for any purpose, contact Twitter directly regarding the laptop story, or tell them what to do about it?

I'm struggling to see how this is anything other than a complete repudiation of everything that was being said about the deep state colluding with Twitter to censor the news story. It seems that mid-high level staff at Twitter made a decision that about half of the company disagreed with, and they argued about it the whole time, and nobody in the Government ever told them to censor the laptop story?

I don't think FBI falsely telling a major social network that incoming story about Hunter Biden is foreign disinformation (which they very well knew isn't since they had the laptop in their custody) and asking to suppress it, and the social network suppressing it under excuse of "hacked material", which they freshly invented to protect their partisan interests, and which they had zero proof of, and which they never consistently followed, immediately before election in which Biden has been the candidate - is nothing. I think it's a collusion between partisans in law enforcement and partisans in social media to hide information from the public and thus influence the election - which was done to maintain plausible deniability (not using the words "New York Post laptop story" but talking in generics while perfectly knowing which exactly story is about to drop) - and which, according to poll data, worked.

I'm struggling to see how this is anything other than a complete repudiation of everything that was being said about the deep state colluding with Twitter to censor the news story

Very simple. Everything that was being said about the deep state colluding with Twitter to censor the news story is actually true, that's how. The government knew that the laptop exists and is genuine. They literally had it. They warned Twitter that some big story is about to drop soon (I don't remember the exact wording but you can find it), and as we learn now (not sure if Taibbi mentioned it) Hunter was specifically mentioned. They did not say "censor the laptop story" - they didn't need to. It was enough for them to say "we want you to be cautious - there would be some foreign disinformation dropping soon", knowing the laptop story is the one that is going to be dropping soon, and then, after it dropped, come out and say "this looks exactly like the foreign disinformation!". Twitter guys aren't idiots, they made their conclusions and knew what is required from them.

Another store that turned out completely true is that DNC told them who/what to ban and they routinely did. Yes, Trump admin did too, albeit more rare and reluctantly - somehow incomprehensibly, you understand it as an excuse. It's like you learned that a person robbed a bank, but also robbed a grocery store - and you think since he's not just a bank robber but also grocery store robber it's somehow better!

On 5., I think you’re misinterpreting the tweet. Pretty sure he’s saying he’s seen no evidence of foreign government involvement in disseminating the laptop. As in, contrary to the “general” warning given by the feds prior to the laptop dropping. Not that there was no USG involvement in suppressing it.

Let me put it like this.

A small Russian troll farm was enough to put a permanent asterisk on the Trump presidency as illegitimate.

Also, lets not forgot that Twitter taking down the article, banning all sharing of it, banning the NYPost and the White House Press account, essentially said "Anyone sharing this document is spreading Russian disinformation". "Good People^tm" were not supposed to traffic in it. On the debate stage, when asked about it, Joe Biden just said the whole story was Russian lies, and that was that. No follow up, no pressing him on it, nothing.

How many votes do you think that moved? Not just memory holing the story, but lighting up the Virtue Signal that if anyone tries to inform you of it, you should ignore and hate them.

If a small Russian troll farm with a small, though measurable, success at going viral counts as delegitimizing an election, Twitter's actions easily meet that goal post.

And this change in the story matters. Before people were somehow claiming it was an honest mistake. Just an oopsy. Now it seems nakedly obvious it wasn't. Activist at Twitter were on Team Biden, and their decisions were biased to the core. It was not a mistake, and especially not an honest one. We are finally allowed to claim, without being told we aren't being "charitable", that these are partisan liars who were out to swing an election. I don't need there to be explicit collusion where the FBI specifically told them to memory hole the story. The receipts we currently have are enough to damn them forever more in my eyes, and put just as much of an asterisk on the Biden election as there was on the Trump election.

Activist at Twitter were on Team Biden, and their decisions were biased to the core.

Wait just a moment. From what Taibbi said, the key role was played by Vijaya Gadde. What's the proof she's a Biden supporter?

https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=vijaya+gadde

It's not that hard. Straight (D).

I looked at her donations. Being straight D is weak evidence she's a Biden supporter (she donated to Harris). It seems possible that this is why, but very weak overall.

If that were my first conclusion, I'd not beclown myself with it in public.

It's not an FBI agent demanding they take down the story or risk arrest, so in that sense it's not a 'bombshell', but the 'room temperature' here started with public statements that social media would face increased regulation if they didn't clamp down on misinformation, and a bunch of former and a few not-so-former intel people saying the story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” by the 19th. Having them also say it privately by the 16th is unsurprising, but it's also kinda scandalous even if not unconstitutional in any enforceable way.

That Taibbi didn't find direct contact specifically about the laptop story is pleasantly surprising -- as is the Dem congressional staffer with any interest in the First Amendment -- but it's not the only thing required for there to be a scandal, here, if a lesser one. I mean, that's especially the case given that it's already known that Twitter Safety people were meeting directly with the Biden team in non-e-mail approaches, but even if all of those things were never intimidating anything about this specific story or threats of future regulation, you still have other problems:

Since 2018, I have had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security.

During these weekly meetings, the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected "hack-and-leak operations" by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October. I was told in these meetings that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter. These expectations of hack-and-leak operations were discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.

That's genuinely less bad than if the Biden administration called them up and said 'fuck the NYPost in particular', but it's still at a particularly ugly nexus of federal power and speech that's largely gone unexplored because no one with standing could challenge it. And the defense that this was the Trump ODNI, DHS, and FBI doesn't reduce the scandal very severely, for the same reason that Peter Strzok being part of the Trump FBI doesn't make Strzok's behavior less bad.

((And there's separate mini-scandals, here: the DNC was pointing at a RealJamesWoods tweet that... it's blurry as hell, and I don't really want to look at any politician's junk for very long, so I assume it's a dick? But it's also the man smoking crack. Note that the Twitter declaration above emphasizes the lack of coordination as a defense against electioneering claims. Yes, the media exception probably matters more, and yes, the RNC and DNC have long been political 'fixers', but even assuming every such removal was perfectly legitimate, it's still the DNC e-mailing Twitter and telling them to remove a private citizen's commentary on a matter of political interest. Not illegal! The DNC isn't a government! Probably not even unprecedented, given past cozy relationships to newspapers. But come on; people were raising concerns when federal campaigns said maybe Palin's involuntary biographer shouldn't rent the house nextdoor and stare at her backyard all the time.))

There's some 'charitable' explanations, here -- the FBI had a Hunter laptop well before the NYPost story and probably before the meeting warning about it, so maybe their concerns about hacks related to it were 'really' making sure none of their people leaked, for example -- but this is a pretty severe issue even if not The Worst Case.

Biden administration

You mean campaign?

Not every specific instance would break down that way, but I think it would be worse if it were someone who got hired into the early Biden admin in 2021, or worked as part of the team for that, even if not on the Biden campaign team during the 2020 election season. And, in turn, it would be even worse were anyone who held office or a Hill job at the time. Partly that's just the more direct ties to government force, but it also just feels closer to power than politics.

Now, as you point out, the Biden administration as a whole wasn't in office before the election, and it's not clear a lot of individuals who could have made those calls had other personal offices. So it's not likely, and without any specific evidence needs to be treated as purely imaginary. But it's the hypothetical a lot of people are motioning around when they say that the reveal here wasn't that bad.

The emails make it clear the management at Twitter reflexively did not want the Hunter story to spread, and they either deluded themselves or made up the "hacked materials" excuse as a pretext to suppressing the story. In the end, the suppression likely became way bigger of a story than the story itself, to the point that even Democratic lawmakers were contacting Twitter to tell them what a boneheaded move that was.

When this story first came out, I was skeptical about the laptop in part because Rudy Guiliani was the source but since then I don't have any doubts that this was really Hunter Biden's laptop and emails. I still don't know how this was supposed to be such a smoking gun. Hunter is obviously a fuck up, and I think it's obvious that he only got executive positions because of who his father is, but the attempts to stretch this up the chain haven't really delivered so far, even an another two years after.

I still don't know how this was supposed to be such a smoking gun.

Lee Smith's analysis may be informative:

These included communications regarding a deal with a Chinese energy company that earned Hunter $5 million, and his work with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that paid him $83,333 per month to sit on its board. His father later boasted in public that he’d threatened to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine unless the central government in Kyiv fired the prosecutor investigating Burisma.

...

Maxey says he also saw information on the laptop that has direct implications for U.S. national security. According to Maxey, this material includes documents relating to Pentagon cyber programs and others regarding former FBI Director Louis Freeh. According to a previously released email on Hunter’s laptop, Freeh worked with him to help a Romanian tycoon evade bribery charges. In April 2016, according to an earlier trove of emails, Freeh deposited $100,000 in a trust fund for two of Joe Biden’s grandchildren.

...

While [Joe] Biden said he never spoke with his son about his business abroad, a voicemail from another recently released laptop cache shows the president was being less than forthright. He knew about his son’s business with the Chinese energy firm and one of its top officials, Patrick Ho. After The New York Times published a softball article in December 2018 about Hunter’s work with Ho and other businessmen tied to the Chinese Communist Party, Biden left a message for his son saying, “I think you’re clear.”

Of course Hunter was clear: The FBI was watching over him. The bureau knew what he was doing because it had obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in 2017 on Ho, who Hunter called the “spy chief of China.”

...

Reports like the ones the Treasury Department is now withholding formed the basis of a September 2020 Senate Republican investigation by Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa that documented Hunter Biden’s business with foreign officials and companies. It included his relationship with Burisma in Ukraine; the Chinese energy company, which also gave money to the president’s brother Jim and his wife, Sara; and Elena Baturina, the widow of a former mayor of Moscow, from whom Hunter received $3.5 million.

The Washington Post also reports that Hunter organised various trade deals with 10% of his fee earmarked for "the big guy", said to be referring to Joe Biden.

I don't know how damning this information is, but it seems at least as damning as Trump's various scandals (Trump University etc.). If Joe Biden was bribed by a Romanian tycoon in order to make criminal charges against him go away, I think he could conceivably be brought up on charges of corruption and perverting the course of justice.

Thanks for that link. I was intrigued by the passage "Freeh worked with [Hunter] to help a Romanian tycoon evade bribery charges". It links to a NY post story with more details. Describing Louis Freeh as "former FBI Director" seems a bit misleading in this context, because at the time that he talked to Hunter he was a partner in a law firm, not a government official. It's (unfortunately) common for government officials to cash in on the contacts they made to pivot into a lucrative private practice, and in my ideal world that wouldn't happen. But I read the email between Freeh and Hunter as just a referral in the form of "hey I have a client that could use legal representation with criminal charges he's facing", and I don't see anything wrong with that. The fact that Freeh gave $100k to Biden's grandkids shows just how much these people can rake in the cash, but referral fees are neither illegal nor necessarily unethical (I once referred a client to another attorney that was probably worth $1000 and the attorney sent me a $20 amazon gift card which was kind of funny).

It's obvious Freeh made a "donation" in 2017 hoping he could convince Joe Biden to get him more client referrals. That's definitely slimey, but I don't see where you claim that Joe Biden was "bribed" by a Romanian tycoon to make charges go away. The follow-up NYpost story says there was no evidence Joe Biden ever followed up with Freeh (probably because Joe Biden was planning to be president rather than a consultant or whatever).

The Washington Post also reports that Hunter organised various trade deals with 10% of his fee earmarked for "the big guy", said to be referring to Joe Biden.

I'm confused, did you read your own link?

James Gilliar, a business associate summarizing the allocation of the equity in Oneida Holdings LLC., in the email, wrote how four partners would get 20 percent each, except for Jim Biden, who would get 10 percent. He added a question: “10 held by H for the big guy?” One of the recipients of the mail, Anthony Bobulinski, has said that the “big guy” referred to Joe Biden and that “H” referred to Hunter. Bobulinski was a guest of Trump at one of the 2020 presidential debates.

But Gilliar told the Wall Street Journal in 2020: “I would like to clear up any speculation that former Vice President Biden was involved with the 2017 discussions about our potential business structure. I am unaware of any involvement at anytime of the former vice president. The activity in question never delivered any project revenue.”

Three days after the email was sent, a draft agreement setting up Oneida was circulated. It shows each partner would receive 20 percent, including Jim Biden. No mention is made of Joe Biden. The company agreement signed on May 22, 2017, had the same allocation. Oneida was to hold 50 percent of another corporate entity called SinoHawk. Neither Gilliar nor James Biden responded to requests for comment.

The Wall Street Journal said that it had reviewed corporate records and found no role for Joe Biden. The Washington Post, in an extensive report on the CEFC dealings, also did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC. The Biden campaign at the time denied he had any role.

So one guy involved in the deal claims that there was 10% of the CEFC venture set aside for Joe Biden, but another guy involved in the deal denies that, a draft agreement doesn't mention Joe Biden, the final agreement doesn't mention Joe Biden, and both WSJ and WaPo examined CEFC and saw no involvement or benefit to Joe Biden. The weight of the evidence here seems very one-sided to me.

I don't see where you claim that Joe Biden was "bribed" by a Romanian tycoon to make charges go away.

The fact that the tycoon in question made a $100k donation to Biden's family after the fact looks suspiciously like a bribe to me, even if it's technically on the level. Point taken that Smith was being a little misleading in his characterisation.

I'm aware that Joe Biden wasn't mentioned in the final agreement. I remember reading an article at some point in the last year or two which claimed that Joe Biden's 10% would come from Hunter's share "under the table", but I haven't been able to track the article in question down.

The fact that the tycoon in question made a $100k donation to Biden's family after the fact looks suspiciously like a bribe to me, even if it's technically on the level.

Maybe I'm missing something, but where is this mentioned? The $100k "donation" came from Freeh. I didn't see anything about the Romanian tycoon giving money.

Now I feel embarrassed, you're dead right, I misread that passage.

Nothing to be embarrassed about, it happens :)

the attempts to stretch this up the chain haven't really delivered so far, even an another two years after.

You're not wrong, but I'd feel a lot more confident in the lack of such a chain if there was a horde of serious journalists attacking the matter as ferociously as possible instead of insisting that there's absolutely nothing to see and no evidence of any problems at all, so they're not going to treat it as a real story.

Really though, I actually do think having a fuck-up, crackhead failson extracting millions in graft from various sketchy dealings around the world should be disqualifying for a Presidential candidate. Obviously, I'm not going to get my wish there (and the last thing that Trump enthusiasts would want is to apply that principle consistently), but I think it's entirely fair to demand that the democratically elected most powerful person in the world not have first-order family ties to a comical level of corruption.

Your first point is fair, and I don't really disagree with your second point. In an ideal world, there wouldn't be even a whiff of nepotistic graft anywhere near the highest position of the land, but that's never going to happen. Given how far we are from that reality, I sort of understand the general lack of interest on the topic.

Tony Bobulinski personally confirming that Joe was offered to be cut in on (at least one of) the deals wasn’t enough for you? This story is from just a few days after the last linked post in your comment, btw, and it wasn’t hard to find either.

I don't think I was aware of that but no, that moves the needle very slightly but isn't enough. It seems plausible that "big guy" is indeed Joe Biden but the deal details he outlines are somewhat vague and it doesn't seem to have been consummated. I'm not exactly clear on what the accusation is here, is the idea that Joe Biden was exploiting his political position for monetary gain? We already know from the tax returns he released that him and his wife made $17 million in a year primarily just from public speaking and book deals. Is the idea that he made even more from influence peddling? That seems plausible, but an unconsummated deal vaguely outlined in an email is weak evidence.

Bobulinski was one of the people who received the email, so presumably he knows. And “moves the needle” with respect to what? All you said in the linked post was that no one had successfully “run things up the chain,” which seems like you’re saying no one had shown Joe to be directly involved. If that was all you were asserting, then this seems like pretty good evidence that he was.

Yes, the accusation is that a Biden was influence peddling. And the fact that Biden made a lot of money elsewhere says nothing at all about whether he’d want more. Rich people do bad things all the time to get more money, especially politicians. (E.g. the Clintons were making even more money pre-2016 and AFAIK it’s pretty widely agreed that they were influence-peddling too.)

Trying to influence-peddle and not succeeding is still intending to influence-peddle, and it’s still being directly involved with Hunter’s stuff. It’s perfectly strong evidence of that. I’m not trying to convict Joe Biden of a crime here, but his intentions and complicity are entirely relevant to his character and motives.

All you said in the linked post was that no one had successfully “run things up the chain,” which seems like you’re saying no one had shown Joe to be directly involved. If that was all you were asserting, then this seems like pretty good evidence that he was.

@Folamh3 helpfully pointed me to this recent Washington Post article about the CEFC deal:

James Gilliar, a business associate summarizing the allocation of the equity in Oneida Holdings LLC., in the email, wrote how four partners would get 20 percent each, except for Jim Biden, who would get 10 percent. He added a question: “10 held by H for the big guy?” One of the recipients of the mail, Anthony Bobulinski, has said that the “big guy” referred to Joe Biden and that “H” referred to Hunter. Bobulinski was a guest of Trump at one of the 2020 presidential debates.

But Gilliar told the Wall Street Journal in 2020: “I would like to clear up any speculation that former Vice President Biden was involved with the 2017 discussions about our potential business structure. I am unaware of any involvement at anytime of the former vice president. The activity in question never delivered any project revenue.”

Three days after the email was sent, a draft agreement setting up Oneida was circulated. It shows each partner would receive 20 percent, including Jim Biden. No mention is made of Joe Biden. The company agreement signed on May 22, 2017, had the same allocation. Oneida was to hold 50 percent of another corporate entity called SinoHawk. Neither Gilliar nor James Biden responded to requests for comment.

The Wall Street Journal said that it had reviewed corporate records and found no role for Joe Biden. The Washington Post, in an extensive report on the CEFC dealings, also did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC. The Biden campaign at the time denied he had any role.

So one guy involved in the deal claims that there was 10% of the CEFC venture set aside for Joe Biden, but another guy involved in the deal denies that, a draft agreement doesn't mention Joe Biden, the final agreement doesn't mention Joe Biden, and both WSJ and WaPo examined CEFC and saw no involvement or benefit to Joe Biden. The weight of the evidence here seems very one-sided to me, and it seems reasonable to conclude that Bobulinski is either lying or exaggerating. Do you disagree?

Yes, I do. “10 held by H for the big guy” literally means Hunter would be receiving 10% on behalf of whoever the “big guy” is. That entails that the “big guy” wouldn’t be getting it directly, so even if Joe were the “big guy,” that means he wouldn’t appear in the contract. So his not appearing in it is exactly what you would expect if he were being cut in after the fashion described in the email. That reduces Giliar’s statement to mere he-said-she-said, in which case Bobulinski is no less intrinsically credible than him. And in fact, Hunter getting 20% (10% more than Jim Biden) in the contract directly supports Bobulinski’s hypothesis (10% for him, just like Jim, then another 10% for Joe).

Would you still find Bobulinski's claim to be credible if he had a falling out with Hunter or was chasing a moment in the media spotlight?

Would you find his claim credible if neither of those were true? Are they even?

More comments

If this is the first time you heard the name Bobulinkski then the suppression worked on you. I heard about him, and his testimony, before the 2020 election, but I had to go looking in alternate sources to hear about it.

Seems likely that Bobulinski is either lying or exaggerating. See my comments above. And I don't know what you mean by "suppression" here.

I'm struggling to see how this is anything other than a complete repudiation of everything that was being said about the deep state colluding with Twitter to censor the news story.

You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they have like interests, they don't need to call a meeting, they know what's good for them, and they're getting it. The things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice, there are two political parties, there's two mobile phones and one desktop computer, there are a handful of social media companies, there's one email provider, but if you want a coffee you can get it any way you want because of the illusion of choice.

It seems that mid-high level staff at Twitter made a decision that about half of the company disagreed with, and they argued about it the whole time, and nobody in the Government ever told them to censor the laptop story?

It seems that Twitter worked actively for the Biden campaign by spiking a damaging story before the election, and they got their way when Biden won. Elon Musk spent $44 billion to show you clearly how the illusion of choice works, and you're choosing to say there's nothing to see. Extraordinary.

We already knew that Twitter censored the story and suspended The Post’s account. So before any of this info we had it narrowed down to three most likely possibilities: 1. Twitter censored it on their own initiative, 2. They censored it at the direct request of the Biden campaign, 3. They censored it at the behest of the federal gov’t (FBI, whatever)

Option 1, Twitter doing it on their own initiative seems by far the least explosive of those options. So these leaks just confirm it as the least interesting of the possibilities we had. I don’t see how any illusion of choice is relevant here, choice between what?

Thinking that's the best of the three possibilities is backward, IMO. If major communications networks are being strong-armed by the CIA, well, we can cut them a bit of slack. They're working as propagandists pro-bono, and you can't stop that without buying the company (maybe).

Which is why the media has taken the Musk acquisition of Twitter with such equanimity.

https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1585838262173675520

I don’t see how any illusion of choice is relevant here, choice between what?

The reference is to the George Carlin bit about how concentrated power makes people think they have choice by offering different coffee and bagel flavors, but not anything meaningful. I don't really know how the analogy is supposed to map though, I think @KMC might have jumbled their understanding of it.

The illusion is more that these things are independent and unrelated. OP fell for it when he says there was no proof, no conspiracy, no There there.

But yes, the money quote is the first sentence.

And Taibbi confirmed that the federal government, FBI, CIA, etc., did at no time, for any purpose, contact Twitter directly regarding the laptop story, or tell them what to do about it?

That's not accurate. He said he did not see anything like this in this subset of emails. He has no way of knowing anything that happened outside of these emails. This is like saying, "He confirmed God doesn't exist and has never existed," because there is no mention of God in these emails.

What's odd is that Mark Zuckerberg has gone on the record saying he was contacted by the FBI about the laptop story being Russian Misinformation.

This is not true. What Zuckerberg said is that the FBI contacted him with a generalized warning about a potential "Russian propaganda dump" before the Hunter laptop story came out. Rogan asked him if the FBI specifically say they needed to be on guard for that story and Zuckerberg says "No, I don't remember if it was that specifically, but it basically fit the pattern".

That's fair. I wasn't intending to fog their statement and your interpretation is reasonable. The overall claim is still a bit vague, and there's no indication the FBI told Zuckerberg to do anything nor does he say if the FBI said anything about the veracity of this upcoming dump. After the Rogan interview, FBI said as much and Meta also said "“The FBI shared general warnings about foreign interference — nothing specific about Hunter Biden".

While it's Twitter and probably a separate meeting:

Since 2018, I have had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security.

During these weekly meetings, the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected "hack-and-leak operations" by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October. I was told in these meetings that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter. These expectations of hack-and-leak operations were discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.

Still not about the specific story or about the laptop specifically, but specific about Hunter Biden.

((I'd be interested to know if Meta genuinely got different levels of specificity, or if it's legalisms.))

Social networks are biased. News at 11.

Elon should turn the tables on Section 230 and use it against the the left, and then get it overturned or amended, and then resell the site , so he solves online censorship against conservatives at almost no cost . That would be a 4d chess move.

You're right that there isn't anything substantially new here. Yes it proves that Twitter wrongfully censored a true news story, but we already knew that. What these revelations do show is that the previous Twitter administration was incompetent (which makes Elon look better by comparison).

they were malicious, not just incompetent

It seems that mid-high level staff at Twitter made a decision that about half of the company disagreed with, and they argued about it the whole time, and nobody in the Government ever told them to censor the laptop story?

Through any of these communications. Ah-hah!

I don't think we need to get conspiratorial though. The absence of any direct communications does mostly confirm that the decision to censor the story based off the "Hacked Info" policy was kinda-sorta just made up by Twitter employees. We find out in the string of posts that previous implementation of the Hacked Info policy required authorities to say some content was h4x0r3d in order for Twitter to remove it. Had this occurred, and we had Twitter employees citing a statement from the WH as reason for censoring it, we'd have a much stronger case to say it was the result of government pressure with Twitter laundering a false statement.

It sounds like Twitter staff made the decision to censor the laptop story and suspend the NYPOST based on personal political leanings. This was in direct contradiction to company policy. I believe "not 2016 again" was mentioned by at least one exec in these communications. I'd be more willing to cite the thing if it was in a dang news article or substack.

"The first amendment isn't absolute" bit is a conspicuous wink wink, nudge nudge vote of approval. I agree it doesn't exude the air pressure. To characterize it as a coordinated campaign of governmental interference or conspiracy would not be accurate. One thing I thought about after seeing was the Moldbuggian Cathedral essence of it all. When you look at the event as a whole it's pretty convincing. It all worked swimmingly.

Truthful October Surprise smear campaign targeting favored party candidate gets censored by employees of the largest politically relevant social media platform in the world. No direction between between favored party and party loyalists required. My recollection is the "Hunter Biden laptop story = Russian hackers" narrative went on for some weeks as the premier explanation and deflection. The media cover for a Biden win was total, complete, and impressive. So impressive that Ro Khanna thought it was too impressive and not a good look.

Maybe that theory of decentralized coordination can't ever be disproven as a convenient explanation, or we can accept this result as a logical, realistic end in a string in decisions. Of course the Twitter staff wanted to, and then did, successfully censor the story! Why wouldn't they?

EDIT: Tangential, but I checked out of curiosity. NYPost was suspended on the 14th of October. The account was reinstated 2 weeks later on the 30th and Twitter made this announcement.

This is essentially why I think the 2020 election probably was "stolen" from Trump and there really isn't anything to be done about it.

There were too many people with motive and opportunity to break or bend the rules, and they don't need to be centrally coordinated or even explicitly communicate with each other. They all just need to be on the same team and know they're fighting against fascism. The cheating is going to be opportunistic, contextual, usually bending rather than breaking the rules. There isn't going to be a clear pattern or smoking gun, because this process exploits the local knowledge of motivated individuals in positions of responsibility who know what they can get away with in each circumstance.

Thia incident at Twitter is the kind of thing I expect to be happening everywhere, and most of the time it goes unimpeded or unnoticed. This also applies to the midterms and all elections going forward for the foreseeable future, because they learned their lesson in 2016. There is nothing that can realistically be done about this.

Had this occurred, and we had Twitter employees citing a statement from the WH as reason for censoring it, we'd have a much stronger case to say it was the result of government pressure with Twitter laundering a false statement.

By "WH" do you mean the Trump White House?

"WH" is a personal nickname I have for what can broadly be described as the Deep State. It stands for "Werm Hat."

Okay, that part is a lie. This could not be possible. The WH today could have possibly have strong armed Twitter so long as they had a time machine. Not a good or accurate sentence, yeah.

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