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Earlier this year, the Indian government asked Twitter and YouTube to take down a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both complied. Two weeks ago, Twitter also complied with a request from the Indian government to block 122 accounts supposedly critical of India's actions in Punjab.
I don't run an international social media company but I imagine there are no obvious choices to make when a government makes a demand and threatens to jail your employees if you don't comply or has police raid your offices. You could close up your offices and not have any employees anywhere in the country, but then you risk having the government retaliate by just blocking access completely, as several countries have already.
Google also dealt with this dilemma in China. In exchange for access to a potential market with 1.3 billion people at the time, Google agreed in 2006 to offer a version of its services that hewed to the CCP's severe censorship requirements. They gave up in 2010 after they found out that several Chinese activists had their Gmail accounts hacked (presumably by the CCP). From a purely financial perspective, it probably would've been in Google's best interests to dutifully continue complying with CCP's censorship regime and just look the other way. That they didn't is commendable from a principled perspective, but it's also not obvious to me whether China's population would have been better off with a hobbled obedient Google versus nothing at all.
Despite the hostility in India, (old) Twitter wasn't a total doormat and did pushback against censorship efforts by suing the Indian government over its takedown law. This lawsuit was something that Musk specifically complained about while he and Twitter were lawfighting about the sale, as stated in the counterclaim he filed:
Musk was clearly worried that (old) Twitter was rocking the boat too much in India. Even as a free speech maximalist, I don't see an obvious choice here. There's an obvious tension between standing on principle while also not jeopardizing your wallet at the same time. One has to give, and there's nothing inherently embarrassing about that given the stakes at play.
Fast forward back to the present, in the context of India's recent takedown demands, I wouldn't have an objection if Musk came out with a statement that said "Although we disagree with the demands of the Indian government, we are exploring our legal options but have no choice but to comply in order to avoid jeopardizing access to 1.4 billion people." That's regrettable from a free speech perspective, but what else can you do? But as far as I can tell, Twitter has kept quiet and refused to say anything about its role in facilitating government censorship.
In contrast to the delicate diplomatic game Musk has to play in India, Musk faced no such concerns when speaking about the US government's efforts to take down information it didn't like. Matt Taibbi covered exactly this topic in Twitter Files No. 6, describing how the FBI made several removal requests to Twitter, not all of which were complied with.
Since Musk was the source for the Twitter Files documents, it's reasonable that as the owner of the company he would have a sharp financial interest to be extremely selective about what gets disclosed to journalists. Similarly, since Taibbi was one of the journalists handpicked by Musk to receive such a scoop, Taibbi might have an aversion from criticizing the actions of Musk-owned Twitter too strongly. So when the news about India's removal requests came out two weeks ago, MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan sarcastically tweeted "I'm sure Taibbi is all over this.", referencing the conflict of interest at play. Taibbi responded "Why don’t you invite me on your show to talk about it? Since you’re so absolutely sure of what I’ll say." and Hasan complied.
In terms of how this specific question played out, you can see for yourself at this timestamp. Hasan asks if Taibbi is willing to criticize Musk for complying with the Indian government censorship requests and Taibbi declines, claiming he doesn't know enough about the story to have an opinion. It bears repeating that the whole reason he asked to be invited on Hasan's show was to talk about India's censorship! Not knowing enough to have an opinion is fine, but this apparent gap in Taibbi's knowledge seems rather suspicious. Given his reporting, he clearly has an interest in reporting on the relationship between Twitter and censorious government requests, but apparently his curiosity stops at this particular line?
Taibbi's was clearly not happy with the interview but his follow-up statements kept avoiding the central reason he asked to be interviewed, the censorship by India's government. He pivoted instead to talking about the numerous mistakes MSNBC has made over the years which, sure, ok, but a dodge is still a dodge.
Consider a parallel scenario, involving TikTok employees. It's the easiest own maneuver, but watch how the CEO of TikTok transmogrifies into a human pretzel in front of Congress when asked about Uyghur persecution in China. The same thing happened to TikTok's Head of Public Policy last December, where he kept trying to backflip out of his skin. The evasion in answering the Uyghur question is reasonably interpreted as strong evidence that TikTok executives are afraid of being fired for acknowledging something so verboten by the Chinese state. A clear demonstration of how much control the CCP has over the platform.
So with that in mind, I think the best conclusion one can draw from the evidence above is that Taibbi feels constrained from criticizing Musk because Musk is too valuable a source. That on its own does not negate or render false the Twitter reporting he has already done, but it seems obvious that he's not playing with a free hand. Journalism is especially reliant on credibility and trust because so much of it happens behind curtains. For whatever cannot be corroborated by outside sources, we have to trust that a journalist is engaging in enough due diligence in vetting sources and investigating claims. Taibbi is seriously jeopardizing his credibility here, and I can't see how the pay-off is worth it.
[P.S. While writing this, Taibbi announced that he will leave Twitter after the platform started blocking links to Substack. That fact that he is willing to speak up against Musk/Twitter slightly mitigates my overall criticism of Taibbi's integrity.]
I don't think it's much of a defense of Matt Taibbi's credibility at all that he's willing to critique Musk for doing something that would limit the reach of his main income stream.
But the basic complaint doesn’t really ding Taibbi’s credibility (ie unless you denounce Musk over X — which you have limited knowledge about — we will assume you are in his pocket and therefore can disregard everything you published). It was a blatantly disingenuous attack and should be seen as such.
Do you believe the same thing about the Uyghur question posed to TikTok executives?
I don’t know. I haven’t followed the TikTok drama at all.
But the reason MSNBC guy said anything was an attempt to discredit reporting on a wholly ancillary point. Taibbi’s “failure” to engage with the disingenuous attack says nothing about his credibility. Indeed, even if Taibbi is hypocritical here, it doesn’t change the reporting (which once again shows why MSNBC guy was so disingenuous — it was an attempt to poison the well).
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but I can't tell what the foundation for your assertion is. You're just labeling the question to be a disingenuous attack (how?) that says nothing about his credibility (why?). Looking at my conclusion below, can you be specific about which part of it you take issue with?
Your conclusion is exactly the problem. The whole point of the question by MSNBC guy was to talk about a specific issue that isn’t central to the American debate that probably involves material detailed knowledge that Taibbi doesn’t have.
If Taibbi doesn’t respond, the mainstream media is able to make this absurd claim that Taibbi isn’t willing to criticize Musk and because of that unwillingness Taibbi’s story is bullshit.
This is of course pure ad hominem. Let’s assume ad arguendo that Taibbi feels gratitude towards Musk and therefore doesn’t want to criticize Musk (as opposed to Taibbi simply being unaware of the particulars). Taibbi failure to criticize Musk doesn’t change the merits of the story (which by and large no one has been able to refute outside of some nitpicking that has turned out to be itself not exactly correct).
But focusing on this sideshow is a way that MSNBC guy has gotten people to buy this dumb idea that Taibbi isn’t being honest and instead is pushing Musk’s narrative (why Musk has a supposed narrative is left unstated and how that narrative fails to corroborate with reality is left unstated).
That is, MSNBC is using arguments as soldiers. He doesn’t really care what Taibbi thinks about some obscure Indian-Twitter issue. He cares about casting aspersions on the Twitter Files by any means necessary. He tried to using this Indian issue as the means.
Me:
You:
I never claimed that Taibbi's story is bullshit or that his unwillingness to criticize Musk changes the merits of the story, I said the opposite. You said my conclusion is exactly the problem but I'm not seeing where we actually disagree here. Most of your post is about what MSNBC, Hasan Mehdi, and the mainstream media believe but I'm none of those people and unless I actually endorsed their opinions/arguments as my own, they're not my responsibility.
I'll try again. Here's my conclusion again, but with each clause numbered. Can you please just reply with which number you take issue with?
You throw a causal couple liner disclaimer out there and then go on and on about how yes it does affect the credibility of Taibbi and his story. It is the equivalent of “just asking questions.”
And yes, my major beef is with the MSNBC guys but you are in effect either falling for it or signal boosting it.
Let me say this unambiguously since you don’t address.
Your post is largely built on a disingenuous MSNBC reporter coupled with darkly hinting at “credibility” problems without really doing the work to show why failure to criticize Musk makes Taibbi’s reporting less credible outside of asserting that he isn’t playing with a free hand because he doesn’t want to criticize Musk over a bullshit Indian story (when in fact one of his compatriots did criticize Musk over a different story. What you left out is that Taibbi under oath (which was backed up by Michael S. also) stated that they received a massive trove of info that would’ve been hard to pre-select, there was zero limitations on what they could write, and whenever they asked for more info they got it. Moreover, Taibbi provided receipts. Do you think he made them up? Do you think Musk made them up? To date, people with knowledge have only challenged the context (unsuccessfully in my opinion).
So hear we have the very unique situation where a reporter was willing to state his methods
under oath, subjects haven’t claimed “he is lying (though one has claimed he misunderstood the facts),” there has been independent validation, it is consistent with what certain state AGs have also found, but your are casting aspersions because a bullshit MSNBC attempt at a gotcha related to an Indian Twitter squabble? Really? Really?
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I agree, but I'm willing to give partial credit.
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