Elon Musk Reveals What Led to Twitter Censoring Hunter Biden Laptop Story in the Weeks Before 2020 Election
Elon Musk revealed on Friday what led to Twitter suppressing Hunter Biden's laptop story in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
According to New York Post, Musk tweeted a link shortly after 6 p.m. to the account of Substack journalist Matt Taibbi, who published what appeared to be some redacted emails between Twitter employees censoring tweets at the request of Joe Biden's team.
Taibbi tweeted that one email dated October 24, 2020, saying "an additional report from DNC," referring to the Democratic National Committee. Another email with the same date noted, "more to review from the Biden team," together with a list of tweets. As a response, someone replied, "handled these."
The emails also reportedly showed internal arguments among senior Twitter staff over the suppression of The Post's Hunter Biden story during the run-up to the 2020 election.
The former Rolling Stone writer said some of Twitter's "first tools for controlling speech" were designed to combat spam and financial fraudsters. However, he noted that the Twitter staff and executives started to find more uses for these tools "slowly, over time," Fox News reported.
Taibbi said both the Democratic and Republican 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... This system wasn't balanced... It was based on contacts," he noted.
Taibbi also wrote that Twitter was "overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation" and that there were more channels "open to the left" than the right.
He added: "'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'."
Twitter reportedly took "extraordinary steps to suppress" the reporting on Hunter's laptop by removing links to the expose shared by users and posting warnings that it may be "unsafe," according to Taibbi.
Twitter's Censorship on Hunter Biden Laptop Story
Twitter's former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, recently admitted that censoring the story about the laptop of the president's son on the platform was "a mistake," KRCR reported.
During a recent interview with journalist Kara Swisher, Roth said the story of Hunter Biden's laptop should not have been suppressed and removed from Twitter. However, Roth noted that it was "unequivocally true" that he personally directed the suppression of the story.
Intelligence experts and others initially called the reports of Hunter's laptop "Russian disinformation," which led to a media campaign against the report that was first published by the New York Post.
Both Facebook and Twitter banned the spread of the story. Twitter called the content problematic as it was "obtained through hacking" and has "private information."
Elon Musk, the new Twitter CEO, said the publication of the internal documents of Twitter was "necessary to restore public trust" in the site.
The billionaire was earlier critical of Twitter's actions during the 2020 election. He said in April that it had been "obviously incredibly inappropriate" for Twitter to suppress The Post story and suspend its account.
Hunter Biden Laptop
Last month, CBS News confirmed the authenticity of data from Hunter Biden's laptop after it commissioned an independent review.
The lawyer for the Delaware computer repair shop owner, Brian Della Rocca, reportedly provided the media outlet with what he described as an "exact copy" of the laptop data, which was given to federal investigators almost three years ago.
CBS News reported that two cyber investigators from Minneapolis-based Computer Forensics Services found in their independent analysis no evidence that the user data had been modified, fabricated, or tampered with.
Former Secret Service member and computer forensics expert Mark Lanterman and his son Sean Lanterman also did not find any new files originating after April 2019 when store records indicate Joe Biden's son dropped it off for repair.
Sean, the company's incident response director, told CBS News that there was a huge amount of data on Hunter's laptop accumulated over time that is personal in nature.
He said it included photos, videos, personal documents, text messages, emails, and voicemails from the user profile data. The audit reportedly showed more than 120,000 emails and 30,000 text messages.
"And just the sheer volume of what we're dealing with it would be difficult, if not impossible, to fabricate," Sean noted.
Mark also told the outlet that he believes the president's son created the data.
"I have no doubt in my mind that this data was created by Hunter Biden, and that it came from a computer under Mr. Biden's control," he noted.
The data in Hunter Biden's laptop and bank records are at the center of the brewing Republican-led House probe into Biden family businesses.
This article is owned by Latin Post.
Written by: Mary Webber
WATCH: Former Twitter Exec Acknowledges That Hunter Biden Censorship Was a 'Mistake' - From Fox Business
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