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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!