Asserts Eric Levitz at Intelligencer.
All right. We have seen the "nothingburger" response to the Twitter Files. This is the I'm-rubber-you’re-glue response: You are the very thing that you denounce.
Let's see how we'll this argument works. I'll cut as close to the core as I can for this excerpt:
[The Taibbi and Weiss] reports featured a couple genuinely concerning findings about pre-Musk Twitter’s operations. But they were also saturated in hyperbole, marred by omissions of context, and discredited by instances of outright mendacity....
To appreciate how unhinged the conservative narrative about the “Twitter Files” is, and how irresponsible Musk’s presentation of them has been, one must first understand the flimsiness of the [New York Post] article that kicked off the whole controversy....
There is little question that Hunter Biden was an influence peddler who sought to monetize his access to the American vice president. Burisma... was paying to be one-degree of separation away from Hunter’s father.... But... Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal....
[The] story consisted of ill-gotten emails fed to the Post by Donald Trump’s lawyer, who’d spent months consorting with Trump sympathizers in Eastern Europe. The platform responded by taking the extraordinary step of suppressing the story on its platform, marking it as unsafe and even preventing Twitter users from sharing it via direct message
In “The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story,” Matt Taibbi sheds light on Twitter’s internal deliberations over this decision.
Taibbi frames his findings as a demonstration of Twitter’s bias in favor of Democrats. But his reporting does little to support that claim....
Both [Yoel] Roth and [Jim] Baker acknowledged that they did not actually know that the Post’s piece was based on hacked materials. “Given the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016,” however, Roth explained, “we’re erring on the side of including a warning and preventing the content from being amplified.”...
... Taibbi’s documents actually reveal internal skepticism of the decision, and expressions of ambivalence even from those who endorsed it. Taibbi quotes an anonymous former employee as saying, “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.”...
... Taibbi produced no actual evidence that the decision was motivated by anything beyond concern that Twitter would find itself complicit in promulgating hacked materials.
The closest thing Taibbi has to evidence of untoward partisan influence is an email from the Biden campaign flagging several Hunter-related tweets for Twitter’s content moderators, who then “handled” them. But all of these tweets appeared to feature nude photos of Hunter Biden that were nonconsensually shared, an unambiguous violation of Twitter’s terms of service...
“If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?” Musk tweeted, going on to explain, “Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is.” Of course, nothing in Taibbi’s reporting indicated that Twitter had suppressed the Post story at the request of the Biden campaign, let alone of government officials.
And even if it had, so long as the government did not coerce Twitter into suppressing the Post story, there would still have been no constitutional violation; the government is allowed to ask private actors to keep information secret....
The second installment of the Twitter Files had a bit more substance than the first. But like its predecessor, it affirmed conservative narratives of persecution by omitting key pieces of context, while also including one outright lie. Bari Weiss’s exposé sought to illuminate Twitter’s policy of secretly reducing the reach of certain accounts and tweets....
Since at least 2018, Twitter’s help page has said, “When abuse or manipulation of our service is reported or detected, we may take action to limit the reach of a person’s Tweets.”... Twitter’s current ownership has openly embraced this form of content moderation. Last month, Musk tweeted: “New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.”
Nevertheless, after reporting that the conservative commentator Charlie Kirk had been put on a “Do not amplify” list, Weiss bizarrely claimed that Twitter had long “denied that it does such things.” Weiss did not try to reconcile that claim with Twitter’s long-standing terms of service; in fact, she did not even inform her readers of the existence of those terms....
[Weiss] led her readers to believe that she’d caught Twitter in a lie. In other words, she deliberately misled her audience....
[S]he suggests that the conservative personalities Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk were placed on blacklists because of their political views. Yet both those commentators are provocateurs who quite plausibly might have violated the platform’s rules regarding abuse at one point or another....
Weiss suggests that these blacklists disproportionately harmed conservatives. But she doesn’t actually provide any information about the ideological breakdown of blacklisted accounts....
[P]re-Musk Twitter’s content curation policies made rightwing content more visible — and leftwing content, less — than a purely neutral hosting of tweets would have done. A journalist interested in impartially reporting on the political implications of Twitter’s content moderation policies might have mentioned this reality....
The Twitter Files provide limited evidence that the social media platform’s former management sometimes enforced its terms of service in inconsistent and politically biased ways. The project offers overwhelming evidence that Twitter’s current management is using the platform to promote tendentious, partisan narratives and conservative misinformation....
Posts
155 comments:
Worthy of Adam Schiff at his most mendacious.
The project offers overwhelming evidence that Twitter’s current management is using the platform to promote tendentious, partisan narratives and conservative misinformation....
Otherwise described as truth inconvenient to those in power.
This is how National Socialists talk.
This is how they justify censorship.
In other news the sun rises in the west.
"Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal"
Not even noteworthy. And there you have it.
Of course, the only way Hunter could "monetize his name" was on the payers' expectation that the name translated into influence. Among Dems, that's not noteworthy.
Great, now all he needs to do is show where a similar skepticism was shown when decisions were made regarding questionable “with no evidence” slanders about President Trump or his family.
Who the fuck is this guy?
The FBI had Hunter’s laptop for over a year! It was real.
Hunter paid half the money and Bitcoin he got to Joe Biden. Biden gave favors to foreign countries and continues to do so. The President has been bribed by foreign countries.
The FBI then worked with Twitter to suppress and hide from voters that Biden was bribed.
This is the biggest scandal since Benedict Arnold. The Bidens have sold out the United States for $31 million.
Why can’t people see this?
Joe Biden has blundered us almost in a nuclear holocaust to protect his and his son’s money laundering machine in Ukraine.
Trump was impeached for pulling back the curtain on this scam.
Not noteworthy.
A more eloquent version of Baghdad Bob.
'Of course, the only way Hunter could "monetize his name" was on the payers' expectation that the name translated into influence.'
Exactly this.
Corporations don't pay hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars just because you have a famous relative.
It's because you have a famous relative who can help you get what you want.
These partisan journalists are puke-inducing...
Eric worked at MSNBC. Loon.
"one must first understand the flimsiness of the [New York Post] article that kicked off the whole controversy...."
He means the one that was correct, right?
So Facebook and Twitter were just doing journalistic quality control? And the "50+ intelligence professionals" who said it had "all the earmarks" of a Russian disinformation campaign, they just meant Russian disinformation is flimsy?
They're happy to explain now that it was a nothingburger; that the story was laughably flimsy, that influence peddling is known and obvious. So why couldn't they just have done this in October 2020?
You know, and I know. So they deploy clever wordsmiths to explain that while it may look like the government and big tech coordinated to suppress information that could help a candidate they detest, only liars and fools would say that's actually what happened.
The press response to this has been so disappointing. They keep skipping over bits of these threads that counter their responses, bits they must have read. Or they pretend that the entire issue is about Hunter Biden's laptop. It's mendacious and in service to political power. What happened to journalism?
I have a vague understanding of what he means,
The political culture where I work as a line supervisor is detestable.
In order to be truly successful I’d have to become the very thing I detest.
It ain’t gonna happen.
I could not get through more than a third of this truth denying exercise. When you're slapped in the face with a fish, and you feel the sting, smell the fish on your face, and see the red welt in the mirror, yet still claim that you didn't notice anything, there is no further discussing the thing with you.
A hard slap of reality means nothing to those tasked with carry The Narrative onward.
In the meantime, we know for sure what we felt we knew: The election was, indeed, manipulated. Shout all you want about nothingburgers. Someday, you'll wish you had acknowledged the truth. Perhaps when they come for you.
It's a lot easier telling the truth than covering for lies. Eventually a serpent eating its own tail eats some important parts of itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
1. The left created a plausible narrative
2. The facts required the narrative to change
3. Some people followed along with #2 while others truly believe #1 or missed the memo
4. Infighting results. Dropping out results. Party switching results. Thought happens.
Grade school rebuttal to criticism: "I know you are but what am I?"
We are at the "of course Hunter Biden peddled influence using his father's name" phase I guess.
Claiming the Post story was flimsy when the Post had confirmation from other people involved in the emails and, of course, thousands of pictures Hunter Biden took of himself and others is...*chef's kiss*...perfection.
Two impeachments through projection. And a third election with a handmade tale, brayed. I stand with the Chinese... Ukrainians... Americans left behind in their woke (sic). Extraordinary corruption. Progressive corruption (PC).
But... Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal....
Not like it would have been if the last name was “Bush” and Dubya was in office or the last name was ”Trump,” period.
This is more of what I mentioned earlier. The Left doesn't understand what outrages us. We're sending billions of US money to Ukraine, but Hunter's connection isn't noteworthy. A company that decides who can be read on social media is overwhelmingly staffed by the Left. The POTUS is removed from the social town square on the whim of a few mucky-mucks. Instead of charging hypocrisy, help us fight for an evenhanded decision process.
It's because he's African-American, a person of color, a peach American, right? How many natives, how many Zulu, Slavs in the current instance, are we willing to sacrifice in order to sustain a handmade tale? For natural resources, for political leverage, with tolerable collateral damage in their woke (sic)?
At this point what difference does it make?
Billy Carter's taking money from middle-easterners was noteworthy enough to be remembered forty-some years later, relatively small potatoes.
"Given the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016,” however, Roth explained, “we’re erring on the side of including a warning and preventing the content from being amplified.”...
Surely he doesn't mean Hillary's Russian Collusion Hoax? Yeah, he does.
"... Taibbi’s documents actually reveal internal skepticism of the decision, and expressions of ambivalence even from those who endorsed it."
They knew it was wrong and did it anyway. And Levitz thinks this absolves them?
"Nevertheless, after reporting that the conservative commentator Charlie Kirk had been put on a “Do not amplify” list, Weiss bizarrely claimed that Twitter had long “denied that it does such things.” "
Someone posted a video montage yesterday of Dorsey telling Congress multiple times that Twitter did not suppress conservatives.
"Weiss suggests that these blacklists disproportionately harmed conservatives. But she doesn’t actually provide any information about the ideological breakdown of blacklisted accounts...."
This was Daniel12's primary argument yesterday, which he was unable to defend by naming any liberals who had been shadow banned.
Another swing and a miss. That’s some Grade A spin. Too many myths and falsehoods to waste my Saturday fisking. I’m simply amused at the flailing and gnashing of teeth and whataboutism all arranged like it’s serious journ0lism LOL.
Deposing Biden, would mean deposing Obama, would mean refunding trillions of dollars in redistributive change, not limited to conduct of lust and abortion by way of Kiev, through progressive prices ("inflation") forced/enabled by single/central/monopolistic solutions (e.g. Medicare/Medicaid/Obamacares trifecta, Green deals, academic amnesty).
Biden family corruption is a level of corruption that would land almost anyone else in prison.
The Bidens? Made president!
Trump did pull back the curtain, but he also didn't thread the needle in a way where it stuck. The left walked all over him.
We have all learned who we are dealing with on the left. THE MOB.
And even if it had, so long as the government did not coerce Twitter into suppressing the Post story, there would still have been no constitutional violation; the government is allowed to ask private actors to keep information secret....
When the government asks journalists to keep information secret, it is information that is genuinely harmful to the country, e.g., the identities of undercover DEA agents or how the military was able to track Usama bin Laden’s whereabouts in Afghanistan by tracking his satellite phone (the latter was published anyway, and it took the US over a decade to find him again). The information on Hunter’s laptop was not harmful to the country, merely embarrassing to Joe Biden.
"Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal.... "
Yes it is. It's illegal corruption.
wow - Democrat hack press is still in the tank for their Party.
News at 11.
Twitter’s current management is using the platform to promote tendentious, partisan narratives and conservative misinformation....
In the 21st century reality is spelled m-I-s-I-n-f-o-r-m-a-t-I-o-n when it is perceived to be conservative.
"Freeman Hunt said...
The press response to this has been so disappointing. They keep skipping over bits of these threads that counter their responses, bits they must have read. Or they pretend that the entire issue is about Hunter Biden's laptop. It's mendacious and in service to political power. What happened to journalism?"
C'mon Freeman, you're smarter than this. This isn't something new. Remember the JournoList? That started in 2007. The MSM is an arm of the Democratic Party and has been for decades.
It's almost like Elon should have released all these underlying emails directly, instead of handing cherry picked information to his preferred stenographers.
But that would have been too much sunshine on this topic for his preferred narrative to survive.
Eric is mistaken. He’s treating the files like a post-mortem exam. His timeline is out of scale or upside down. He and his friends can’t wave their hands frantically and “but Trump” to distract the public. The Twitter files are most important for the probable cause they give us to hold the FBI and FB and Google and Amazon and Apple accountable. Twitter is the first course of the big tech feast to come. Let’s Go Brandon!
Twitter's Deputy counsel Jim Baker vetted the first tranche of the Twitter files.
This is the same Jim Baker who was the FBI's chief counsel during the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. He was the conduit for getting the fake Trump-Alfa Bank secret server communications into the FBI and was up to his eyeballs in the illegal surveillance of Carter Page.
It's plausible that Baker edited out the worst of the communications.
The NYP article claimed that the FBI had taken the laptop in December 2019; Baker, with his contacts, should have been able to verify if the FBI had the laptop, and possibly even if the article was largely correct. Maybe he even did make these calls...
As for Weiss' "lie": Twitter (including Jack Dorsey in Congressional testimony) said Twitter did not shadow-ban based on political viewpoint. Specifically, at one point he said that their algorithms did not do this. He is technically correct, since one of Twitter files' key allegations so far is that Twitter employees were making these determinations.
Weiss' article proved this allegation. In internal communications Twitter execs admitted Libs of Tik Tok never violated the terms of service and yet they suspended her seven times. Conversely, a Tweet doxxing her was left up.
Twitter should shadow-ban the word "nothingburger" and see how these reporters like it when their account is "inexplicably" locked out.
Just more lies and bullshit.
I'm tired of "reasoning" with the bad faith Left. Typing "If the position was reversed, Leftwinger X (or Journalist X) would be saying the opposite" is so obvious and boring, it makes me want to go back to bed.
Deniers are advised to prepare for the next fallback position. All viewers of MSNBC and CNN will be instructed as follows:
(1) Insert your left index finger into your left ear canal.
(2) Insert your right index finger into your right ear canal.
(3) Sing Dur Dur D'etre Bebe as loud as you can until the impeachment trial is over or you collapse.
"... But... Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal...."
The absurdity, or perhaps amorality, of this assertion becomes clearer in the context of Biden's billion dollar extortion of Ukraine to protect Hunter and the Burisma arrangement and the Bogus impeachment of Trump to protect Biden. Burisma got what it paid for.
The second absurdity is his claim that materials gleaned from Hunter's laptop were "ill gotten" or "hacked." The facts expose this as a lie.
This article speaks volumes about the lack integrity of the author and his publication.
The Twitter exposé may disappoint as to government interference, but pre-Musk bias against conservatives is evident.
The Munk debate on whether mainstream media should be trusted (Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray v. Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg) is a satisfying long look into the incuriosity of elite media voices toward things you'd think journalists would find worth investigating:
https://vimeo.com/munkdebates/review/775853977/85003a644c
Spoiler alert: Gladwell did what ought to be irreparable self-harm to his reputation.
Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal....
Oh? Not "note" worthy? Is that different from not "news" worthy?
Is there any issue of scope or quantity? GW leveraging the Bush family name to
help swing a local property tax deal on a new baseball park in Arlington TX
seemed to be "news", at the time -- and ever after. And I'm old enough to
remember a series of stories about "Billy Beer" from the Carter Era. Wouldn't
a fair news article on American Nepotism compare the range and scope and frequency
of such monetization? Even if you wanted to do the most whataboutism and
both-side-ism and nothing-unusual-ism on the Hunter story possible, was it a good
news choice to IGNORE the claims?
Dave Begley said...
Who the fuck is this guy?
The FBI had Hunter’s laptop for over a year! It was real.
Hunter paid half the money and Bitcoin he got to Joe Biden. Biden gave favors to foreign countries and continues to do so. The President has been bribed by foreign countries.
The FBI then worked with Twitter to suppress and hide from voters that Biden was bribed.
This is the biggest scandal since Benedict Arnold. The Bidens have sold out the United States for $31 million.
Why can’t people see this?
12/10/22, 9:40 AM
Because their hatred of TRRRRUUUUUMMMPPPPPPP blinds them to real corruption.
There is little question that Hunter Biden was an influence peddler who sought to monetize his access to the American vice president. Burisma... was paying to be one-degree of separation away from Hunter’s father....
But... Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal....
Then.. Tell me Why (again?) that this info HAD TO BE suppressed?
Also, who IS 'the Big Guy'?
Temujin said...A hard slap of reality means nothing to those tasked with carry The Narrative onward.
In the meantime, we know for sure what we felt we knew: The election was, indeed, manipulated. Shout all you want about nothingburgers. Someday, you'll wish you had acknowledged the truth. Perhaps when they come for you.
12/10/22, 9:54 AM
THIS. They lied and lied, and called us all conspiracy theorists, but all our so called conspiracy theories turned out to be true.
The coverup continues. "We already knew all that. Ho, Hum!" Only problem, they suppressed the story and called it "Russian disinformation." The press and the Democrats, but I repeat myself, are nothing but neobarbarians. They'll do anything to remain in power and suppress the opposition. They'll let criminal run free and take the guns from the rest of us. They practice the Big Lie, and then say that's what Republicans do. They're White Supremacists but accuse Republicans of WP. They call Republicans Neo-Nazis when in fact Democrats are the neo-Nazis.
Levitz is full of a truly astonishing amount of shit. Almost world record breaking quantities. For that alone, he must be applauded. It takes a world class liar to pen that article.
Like I wrote over a week ago- simply imagine the hypothetical that it was the NYTimes breaking the exact same story about a laptop left at a repair shop that contained the same sorts of e-mails and photos, but with Eric Trump the laptop's owner or, even better Mike Pence's daughter Audrey; with the FBI insinuating the entire thing was Russian disinformation, and all the former intelligence operatives penning a letter claiming the same. What do you suppose Twitter would have done in that case? What do you think Levitz would be writing this morning had Twitter suppressed that story and Trump were President today? Does anyone really believe Levitz' article would have been 180 degrees the other way this morning?
And all the evidence suggests that President Shit-For-Brains Biden was helping his son by selling his influence- in short, Hunter Biden wasn't scamming the foreign entities from which he was taking cold hard cash- he really was peddling his father's influence. That isn't a minor scandal- that is impeachment material, and ass pounding prison time.
"But... Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal...."
Agreed. 2 years ago it was "no way that laptop is real, so the allegations are completely false and unsupported." The lies and editing changes these hacks in the press tell and create are truly magnificent to watch. Intellectual integrity is a completely foreign concept to these people.
Weekly in person meetings with FBI, DHS and the office of DNI IN PERSON. With DC law enforcement and Intelligence personnel. 3300 miles, ONE WAY, because airplane rides are so much fun.
After 2 years of work from home, getting perfected, the most tech savy Tech company needed in person meetings with the Tech savy FBI DHS, and DNI? Well of course, because WEBEX leaves a document trail, TEAMS meetings get recorded. The Government was not going to allow their conversation see the light of day, because shut up.
Ignore the explanations, the truth is in the actions.
All that is required is an article from a source which can be sent as a link to keep ones prior position secure.
The longer the post, the more exhaustive it appears, and the more opportunities to clap back at people who might rigorously debunk the first paragraph.
After paragraph three you feign exhaustion and end the exchange with an LOL or some such emoji.
This is how people most deeply seeking the truth become labeled “deniers”.
The argument seems to be that Twitter had public policies in place about not amplifying bad actors and this entitled it to use non-amplification techniques in secret without explanation or recourse. That's not how Twitter marketed its service. Join us [but if we don't like you. you're out and we won't admit we put you out.] Since the exclusions were not acknowledged it's difficult at this moment to prove to courtroom level that conservatives were targeted. But the left is certainly complaining that policies which affected tweets from the right are now gone and the right certainly complained that previously there were sudden inexplicable drops in traffic at their sites. In short, everyone knows it was going on and these tweets simply show exactly how it was done, exactly what the tabs were and what the process was.
They also show it was true that the FBI and other letter agencies were intervening and that Twitter employees were following their guidance. And this seems to be accepted on all sides. Free speech from citizens was suppressed by FBI Twitter whisperers. If these Twitterites merely abjectly surrendered to hints that makes their actions worse, not better.
And Musk has said that his reporters can do long stories but just have to put it out on Twitter first which shows he is a businessman.
Twitter must promote any story planted by the President, or it’s censorship. Got it.
The way I figure it, Burisma bought Hunter--and also Joe. And since Burisma is a Ukrainian company, and Joe is still bought, we are sending billions to the Ukraine in a fight that really doesn't involve us.
What a deal! Ukraine and Burisma buy Joe!!!!! Why it might even be the "deal of the century" and it was a lot cheaper for the buyer than say the Iranian nuclear deal that our New Lightworker and his idiot Vice President (not to mention Jean Fraud Kerry) made. That trio got hornswoggled. But the Ukraine bought cheap and are getting paid high.
Twitter had to destroy free speech in order to save it. Obviously.
I guess the shrill shill Levitz has nothing to say about the suppression of Dr. Bhattacharya's posts?
That's telling.
It's mendacious and in service to political power. What happened to journalism?
Journalism is mendacious and in service to political power. (This is 2022, bub.)
Where was y try his article by this guy 2 years ago? If there is none then this is just more gaslighting
So now we have progressed from:
1. It didn't happen, to ...
2. It's old news, to ...
3. It did happen, but it doesn't matter
Selling access to the Vice President is now just Okie Dokie.
Just like it suddenly became Okie Dokie for the President to get blow jobs from twenty year old interns.
This is my biggest problem with Democrats. Their willingness to accept anything to keep their party in power.
Must ought to have dumped all the emails ala Wikileaks and let anybody who's interested enough to browse through them. Why use designated interpreters for what anybody could for themselves.
I think what he's saying is that there is not enough proof that the Twitter Files show that there was an active bias against conservatives and the FBI was involved in promoting this bias.
What he is not saying is that there will never be enough proof to satisfy him because he believes with every fiber of his being that Twitter was totally objective until Musk took it over. And in his world, personal belief is more important than facts.
Blogger Mark said..."It's almost like Elon should have released all these underlying emails directly, instead of handing cherry picked information to his preferred stenographers.
But that would have been too much sunshine on this topic for his preferred narrative to survive."
What do you claim he is hiding?
Yesterday I noted my interest in Trump's DOJ and DHS meeting regularly with Twitter, to which the chortling herds here laughed and laughed at my naivete about the deep state.
Well, here's the NY Times in March 2020:
Tech Giants Prepared for 2016-Style Meddling. But the Threat Has Changed.
"To connect the dots, security executives from Twitter, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other companies said they were meeting regularly with the Department of Homeland Security, the F.B.I. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. They were also trading intelligence and discussing threats over encrypted chat messages with one another.
“I talk to them more than I talk to my husband,” Mr. Roth said of his counterparts at Facebook, Google and other companies."
Wow deep staters right there out in the open. You guys will ask endless questions about some things and completely ignore others. Whatever fits the narrative...
“I talk to them more than I talk to my husband,” Mr. Roth said of his counterparts at Facebook, Google and other companies."
For God’s sake, another fucking pervert.
gilbar:
Anyone who's been paying attention knows who "the Big Guy" is. Hunter told his daughter (niece? I forget which) in writing that his father took 50% of all his 'earnings'. That means the less-greedy Big Guy is someone else. Who's the only person in America that counts as "big" in relation to the Vice President? The president. The Big Guy is Obama. Q.E.D. And yes, I'm quite serious, and the logic seems compelling.
It sure is easy to whip paranoid ignoramuses into a tearful frenzy.
Elon Musk is the overlord you deserve.
Blogger MartyH said..."Twitter's Deputy counsel Jim Baker vetted the first tranche of the Twitter files.
This is the same Jim Baker who was the FBI's chief counsel during the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. He was the conduit for getting the fake Trump-Alfa Bank secret server communications into the FBI and was up to his eyeballs in the illegal surveillance of Carter Page.
It's plausible that Baker edited out the worst of the communications."
Think about it…these are the files Baker allowed to see the light of day. Lord knows what was deleted. This is one ball Musk dropped
"Instead of charging hypocrisy, help us fight for an evenhanded decision process."
Agreed. Please fight for evenhanded decision process, and not just replacing the old dictators with a new one. The problem is rich unaccountable elites having this much power, not which particular rich unaccountable elite.
Daniel12: conservatives are more likely to tweet banable stuff.
Chuckling hordes: noise!
Shouting Thomas: “I talk to them more than I talk to my husband,” Mr. Roth said of his counterparts at Facebook, Google and other companies."
For God’s sake, another fucking pervert."
Daniel12:
Does anybody understand what Daniel is arguing here?
"[S]he suggests that the conservative personalities Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk were placed on blacklists because of their political views. Yet both those commentators are provocateurs who quite plausibly might have violated the platform’s rules regarding abuse at one point or another....
Well, if they are "provocateurs," then of course, by all means they should be censored. Carry on, then.
That was sarcasm.
The whole freaking point of free speech is that those who challenge social and political orthodoxy must be allowed to be heard. Even--or perhaps especially--if they are "wrong."
Daniel12years old,
The problem with your inference is that the FBI and the CIA/intelligence agencies really weren't Trump's to direct, and pretty much everyone knows this except for you apparently, if I give you credit for not being a brazen liar. All of the evidence, literally all of it, demonstrates that Trump's own executive branch was out to undermine him from before he became president, and it has only continued to the present day. And when one reads the actual material Weiss and Taibbi have published, this becomes even more clear, which really proves, in my opinion, that you haven't read any of it, but are, instead, relying on the opinions of other people who are either ignorant or lying, too.
And much has been made about how there were no apparent requests from the Trump campaign/RNC to remove/suppress stories on Twitter, and that this is evidence that that Musk and Twitter are hiding such material. This is very doubtful given the obvious political bent of the vast majority of Twitter's staff- such requests weren't made because the people who would have made such requests knew it was a waste of time- the playing field at Twitter was not fair, and they knew it. Only morons and liars are, at this point, denying this obvious fucking truth.
"Trump did pull back the curtain, but he also didn't thread the needle in a way where it stuck. The left walked all over him."
Get your head out of your ass. It wasn't just the left that walked all over him. It was the people who were exposed by his pulling back the curtain--lots of them very powerful Republicans.
Do you think any of this would have happened without Trump? He wasn't "threading needles," he was smashing walls. Give him some credit.
This article reminds me of how Rush Limbaugh described how the media handles Democrat/leftist scandals; Deny, Deny, Deny, and when it becomes impossible to deny say something like, "everyone always knew this was happening and it honestly isn't a big deal, so there is no reason to cover it in depth."
Just like Joe Bidens is the overlord YOU deserve TeaBaggee.
I like Kaus's line: of the the issues you might hold against Biden, taking bribes from the world may not even make the top 20. But then, that's Biden.
The cover-up is worse than the "crime." Old-fashioned newspapers, at least in the twentieth century, would work hard to present themselves as fair. Their biases would show in headlines and story location, but a story like bribery leading to a presidential candidate would appear somewhere. Biases would be more evident in editorials. There might be an opinion piece saying "Biden taking bribes isn't as bad as it might appear." This is then open to argument and further discussion--it is not hidden. It might improve things if the wokesters had said somewhere: here is what we are doing, and here is why. We find that our terms of service are not restrictive enough to allow us to stifle views that we believe are truly harmful. We agree with senior people at CIA, Justice, the FBI and major media that the Trump phenomenon is so dangerous, extreme lengths must be resorted to in order to weaken its persuasiveness to the public. In some cases laws must be broken, and the Constitution must be violated.
My little joke: we look much more kindly on people peddling child sexual abuse than we do on conservatives--not that those groups are mutually exclusive.
Sing Dur Dur D'etre Bebe
Bebe Lyrics Matter
Our foot has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.
My eyes glaze over at this point when "Twitter files" are discussed.
Some basic assumptions regarding past Twitter:
With 90% Twitter employees (guesstimate) Democrat, any tie breaking would go to the Democrat.
With Twitter HQd in San Francisco, the home of gay culture, and gays a strong cultural and Democratic force, natural that Twitter would lean anti-Republican.
Because Democrats are deemed the cultural "good people" and Republicans the cultural "bad people", it does not matter what the findings reveal. The sides are dug in and facts are irrelevant.
Republicans and Conservatives lost the culture (not sure how/when/why) and there is no going back. I say that not with happiness, but with realism.
Conservatives (I identify as strongly conservative) must realize they are a dwindling minority and must always showcase their side as best they can and take small victories where possible. In places where Conservatives cannot win, then enjoy rat fucking the Democrats!
Cheers.
Blogger Yancey Ward said..."And much has been made about how there were no apparent requests from the Trump campaign/RNC to remove/suppress stories on Twitter, and that this is evidence that that Musk and Twitter are hiding such material."
Ohhh! Thank you, Yancey. I've been mystified by these claims that Musk is hiding stuff.
Lost me at "ill-gotten emails" and the twisted description of their provenance. I'm not fond of being lied to and just skimmed the rest. Eff em.
Yancey Ward of the state (eye roll)
So all I have to do is buy into your entire worldview, then I will truly understand the several paragraphs that are the total so far written about the TWITTER FILES.
More specifically, I will understand that Trump either didn't know or had no control over theses regular meetings publicly written about in Trump's hometown paper 8 months before the election, with the social media company that was the principal means he used to communicate.
Even a 12 year old would want to ask some questions about that before making assumptions.
overlord?
Biden family crooks = leftist do not care about their own corruption. No morals.
P-Junkie: "Republicans and Conservatives lost the culture (not sure how/when/why)..."
I say: Vietnam, Dope, Religion.
I say: Vietnam, Dope, Religion.
All's fair in [elective] Abortion, Lust (less love), and Ethics/religion (i.e. relativistic behavioral protocols).
Matt Taibbi Substack 2hrs ago: The “Twitter Files” story came together quickly. In fact, things happened so fast that the note I wrote to you all last week just before publishing the first thread represented the first real pause across four frantic days of traveling, writing, and reporting. The timeline will show I participated in the Munk debates in Canada two Wednesdays ago: after, I slept for a few hours, had a hotel wake-up call at 2:45 a.m., and flew to San Francisco. There, I spent a day at Twitter digging through the first data set, got on a redeye back to New Jersey, stepped off the plane and immediately started writing.
In the rush to get all this done, I chose words poorly. A lot has been made about the line about how I “had to agree to certain conditions” to work on the story. I wrote that assuming the meaning of that line would be obvious. It was obvious. Still, the language was just loose enough to give critics room to make mischief, and the stakes being what they are, they of course did. That’s on me, and a lesson going forward. For the record, the deal was access to the Twitter documents, but I had to publish on Twitter. I also agreed to an attribution (“Sources at Twitter”). That’s it.
Everyone involved with the project, including myself as well as Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger, has editorial control. We’ve been encouraged to look not just at historical Twitter, but the current iteration as well. I was told flat-out I could write anything I wanted, including anything about the current company and its new chief, Elon Musk. If anything, the degree of openness on that front freaked me out a little initially, being so far from any other experience I’ve had.
In our initial meeting, Musk talked about how he thought a “full confessional restores faith in the company,” and everything I’ve seen since seems to confirm he’s sincere about his desire for full open-kimono transparency with the public. He says we’re “welcome to look at things going forward, not just at the past,” and until I run into a reason to believe otherwise, I’m taking him at his word. I’d be crazy not to, considering the access we’ve already been given. This is a historic opportunity, and I think we’re all trying to treat that opportunity with the appropriate respect, which among other things means staying as focused as we can be on the documents, and trying to make as much sense of them as we can, as quickly as we can.
One last quick note. I was very skeptical at first about using Twitter to break these stories. Not only am I not exactly a skilled Tweeter (as, sadly, people have seen in the last weeks), but I worried about the logistical challenge of telling complex stories in 140-character chunks. It seemed impossible.
Two weeks later, I feel differently. In this particular instance, the story has to come out on Twitter. There’s the obvious deep irony of using the familiar drip-drip-drip format and uncontrollable virulality of Twitter to roast Twitter itself. We’re also using an inherently destabilizing medium to expose efforts to turn Twitter into an authoritarian instrument of social control. There’s genius in this. Now I would feel wrong even thinking of doing it any other way.
This is especially the case since a major subtext of the Twitter Files project is what a burn it is on conventional/corporate media, whose minions tried for years to turn Twitter into a giant conformity machine, and cheered each new advance in censorship and opinion control. Those same people now have to watch in helplessness as one horrifying revelation after another spills out, guerrilla-style, into what was not long ago their private playground. This, too, couldn’t be scripted better. It’s like sending an intercontinental shit-missile screaming into the dais of the White House correspondents’ dinner at 15,000 m.p.h. If you can’t see the humor in this, you probably never had a sense of humor to begin with. cont... ����
"More specifically, I will understand that Trump either didn't know or had no control over theses regular meetings" (emphasis added)
Daniel slept through Russia! Russia! Russia!
Matt Taibbi Substack part2 - 2hrs ago: Of course, this describes a lot of figures in media today, which I imagine accounts for at least part of the astounding paroxysm of overreaction and faux-outrage from the conventional press in the last week or so. They hate this thing, they can’t stop it, and their condemnation doesn’t matter, factors they’re unused to and can’t reconcile, at least not so far. I’d say more, but I’ve learned never to underestimate the capacity for pettiness in this crowd. They’ll find a way to hit back. They just haven’t yet.
In any case, I wanted once more to extend apologies to subscribers for recent silence. Across much of the last week I felt saying anything at all might jeopardize the project. Things are different now that I know that it will continue, with or without me. A new story about the events inside Twitter after J6 is set to drop tonight, in a thread by aforementioned bestselling author of Apocalypse Never Mike Shellenberger, at his Twitter account, @ShellenbergerMD. Mike has great stuff, and I’m looking forward to seeing it all together. It should be powerful.
Lastly, to correct a grievous oversight from last night, I’d like to thank TK’s own site manager Emily Moore, along with old friend Matt Bivens, who both flew out to San Francisco this week and helped dive through the material (in fact, they found most of the best bits from last night’s thread). Best of luck also to Mike, Bari, and the other reporters involved as they move this thing forward, and please check back in this space soon for updates, including the print version of last night’s thread.
The fired Twitter execs are free to speak up about all of the times they shadow banned liberals at the behest of the Trump white house.
Dat Piece of Schiff!
https://twitter.com/drefanzor/status/1600947654741020672?s=20&t=PSMR3FX3L2vaSxsAEuUWxA
Must ought to have dumped all the emails ala Wikileaks and let anybody who's interested enough to browse through them. Why use designated interpreters for what anybody could for themselves.
The old media would have done what they always do. Get a heads up on how to slant it. And, with all the twitter obits getting written up, New twitter need it a big boosting story exclusive to show it was still alive.
Eventually they will probably be made available to the public.
No, Daniel, all you have to actually do is (1) read the Twitter material yourself, (2) stop lying to yourself and everyone else. The material speaks for itself- Twitter was actively suppressing conservatives and news stories that would have been beneficial to the Republican Party's election success, while not suppressing Democrats or stories beneficial to the Democrat Party's election success. And Twitter was doing this with the aid of the FBI and other US government officials- the FBI was offering the predicate, a false one as most reasonable people knew at the time, for doing what the staff at Twitter wanted to all along- put their thumb on the scale of the election.
But that is ok, you are free to lie yourself and others if you like, but you will get called out on here by myself and others. Unlike Twitter, we won't get suppressed here unless Google takes us offline. So, roll your eyes right out the back of your empty head if you like.
If it's a nothingburger, then why did Twitter work so hard to suppress it?
Twitter, Facebook, Google, Instagram were all acting as operatives of the dems in 2016 and especially in 2020. They need not "take orders" from the dems--they all agree on the "proper" course of action. Please show me a single far left person or organization that has been banned. Google was suppressing emails by GOP candidates in 2020. All of them were distorting the news on their platforms. And yet islamist terrorists and iranian leaders can have posts and accounts. Oh, and the dems in congress have been and currently are threatening hearings and laws about "disinformation" --according of course to their definitions.
"The 'Twitter Files' Is What It Claims to Expose."
Reporting your conclusions openly as a journalist under your name in the "Twitter Files" is the same as Twitter blocking someone else's publication without notification?
"This is especially the case since a major subtext of the Twitter Files project is what a burn it is on conventional/corporate media, whose minions tried for years to turn Twitter into a giant conformity machine, and cheered each new advance in censorship and opinion control. Those same people now have to watch in helplessness as one horrifying revelation after another spills out, guerrilla-style, into what was not long ago their private playground. This, too, couldn’t be scripted better."
It's delicious.
And remember, Taibbi and Weiss are liberals. They probably hate more than anyone the state of modern "journalism".
Still, it shouldn't be forgotten all the damage Old Twitter did. They still got the last laugh.
Didn't we have all that investigation about Trump and Russia?
And Biden and his son getting money from foreign companies and governments is no big deal?
Would Levitz have just waved the story away if there were allegations that Trump had been bought?
I'm not sure there was a "mastermind" though. None of the Bidens is much of a mastermind. Maybe it just evolved out of what the Bidens had been doing for years.
This just depresses the shit out of me. By "this" I don't even mean the Twitter FBI cooperation, none of that is news to anyone with open eyes. I mean the utter dishonesty of the progressive left. What the hell has happened to these people? Such smug arrogant attitudes. I wonder how much of it is feigned and how much is real. They must (most of them) know how wrong they are. Right? So now Greenwald and Taibbi are right wingers? And Bari Weiss? No, just honest. What a concept.
This just depresses the shit out of me. By "this" I don't even mean the Twitter FBI cooperation, none of that is news to anyone with open eyes. I mean the utter dishonesty of the progressive left. What the hell has happened to these people? Such smug arrogant attitudes. I wonder how much of it is feigned and how much is real. They must (most of them) know how wrong they are. Right? So now Greenwald and Taibbi are right wingers? And Bari Weiss? No, just honest. What a concept.
Eric Levitz: Let me explain how it isn't what it is.
Thanks for posting that excerpt from Taibbi's substack. It perfectly describes the problem.
First, he left out that he apparently agreed to review all those materials and write the first tweet thread within a day or two. Not the usual weeks that would be needed to clearly understand what has been shared with you, go through incredible amounts of material systematically, and follow up with key players based what you've found. Why start publishing within two days, if you want to get it right? It's not time sensitive.
Second, he already had the narrative of what happened in his mind before doing this project (indeed that's why he was brought on the Elon Musk). And it shaped everything he read and every word he wrote, including this.
Third, this quote - "He says we’re “welcome to look at things going forward, not just at the past,” and until I run into a reason to believe otherwise, I’m taking him at his word. I’d be crazy not to, considering the access we’ve already been given." - is so insanely naive and arrogant and stupid and self serving that I can't believe it. A journalist taking at his word the richest and one of the most powerful people in the world? Especially this journalist, who has such scorn for other similar figures.
I'm reading this closely. I'm extremely interested in this insanely fucked up world where rich elites control public discourse (including Elon Musk!). That said it's clear Taibbi and Weiss have drawn conclusions that go well beyond the extremely limited evidence they've presented, conclusions perfectly in line with their previously held beliefs.
George Soros buys FoxNews, hires Media Matters to review internal docs and publish under similar conditions. What would your thoughts be?
Let's see the document dump. And let's hear some journalists press Musk on how he will apply this transparency to his own running of the company.
Or we could just take everyone at their word.
I'm still mulling over this "noteworthy" (or maybe, "newsworthy") thing. Who decides?
Imagine that the Biden administration's Department of Energy's deputy assistant secretary for nuclear waste was a straight white cis-het business-suited married father-of-three who had been accused (not convicted) of taking someone's else's luggage from an airport carousel. That is, if it was a guy who looked like Mike Pence instead of Sam Brinton. Would THAT be "noteworthy"? What if the same hypothetical cis-het deputy under assistant aide vice-director to a minor branch of the vast bureaucracy was a carry-over first appointed by Trump? THEN is it noteworthy? Suppose it's a cis-het (etc) Mike Pence look-alike previously famed for his Christian morals, rectitude, charity, and environmental justice activism? THEN, is his rumored prediliction to baggage kleptomania evidence of hypocrisy and therefore noteworthy?
Is there not a case to be made that the Sam Brinton story is being hyped largely on the basis of the many available glamor shots of Sam in over-done lipstick and evening gown, like JonBenét Patricia Ramsey? It's not the NEWS it's the photo album?
Back to reality -- would the Hunter Biden laptop be news even now if there were only emails (text only) suggesting financial improprieties, and not "glamor shots" of the Nude Hunter and his friends? What makes ANY story newsworthy?
The press response to this has been so disappointing.
You misspelled predictable.
. Why use designated interpreters for what anybody could for themselves.
Because Musk is a businessman and he is monetizing his assets.
"Roth has had some very interesting opinions about Republicans and conservatives, tweeting that “I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason,” among many others."
Yeah, I'd expect this guy to be even-handed…
It's almost like Elon should have released all these underlying emails directly, instead of handing cherry picked information to his preferred stenographers.
And when he does this - as he said he's going to do - and it proves what we've been saying all along, will you finally STFU?
Hunter's pal Kevin Morris is said to be organizing a counterattack team for Hunter with David Brock and others. The guys aren't going to just give up. Our Long National Nightmare continues.
Why isn't this front page news?!
What the Twitter files really reveal:
"The Hunter Biden dick pics that, according to Elon Musk, constituted vital free speech were actually posted as part of an organized campaign to use salacious content and outright false claims to hurt Joe Biden. That clearly violated Twitter’s own terms of service. Even now, under Musk, Twitter says that “sharing explicit sexual images or videos of someone online without their consent is a severe violation” of its rules. Twitter also continues to bar “coordinated harmful activity,” which it defines as “individuals associated with a group, movement, or campaign…engaged in some form of coordination” that will “cause harm to others.”
Whatever one’s view of Hunter Biden, there’s little doubt that Guo and Bannon’s New Federal State of China engaged in a coordinated campaign to harm him."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/12/hunter-biden-laptop-bannon-guo-musk/
Why isn't this front page news?! That it isn't, says so much about the news sources.
I suspect no amount of evidence will satisfy Daniel 12 as he so desperately tries to deconstruct, "censorship".
"Please show me a single far left person or organization that has been banned."
Daniel has been asked this repeatedly, and has been unable to provide one. All he's got is liberals 'don't post bannable stuff'.
We've yet to see an explanation for the banning of Dr. Bhattacharya (covid) or Judith Curry (climate change).
All he's got is he doesn't like who's doing the reporting.
Could someone please tell me what you want. Let's assume that Twitter's sole goal in life was to do everything it could to supress conservative voices on its platform. What is the solution to this "problem?" I assume you want a law. To do what?
"But... Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal....".
When you combine it with the readily available video of his father, then-Vice-President Joe Biden, bragging to reporters about how he used his position to coerce the Ukrainian government into firing the prosecutor who was investigating the organization making payoffs to his son, I think the scandal may rise to the level of "noteworthy", or even "clearly criminal".
If this depressions the poop out of you, you might be a snowflake.
If this causes you to wish people would STFU, you might be a snowflake.
Democrats used everything in their power to affect federal elections. There was never any attempt to "play fair". Twitter is an aspect of this. The other social media platforms are still doing this and government officials are working to influence them to censor speech, though they really don't have to try that hard with a bunch of true-believers.
Blogger Daniel12 said...
Yancey Ward of the state (eye roll)
So all I have to do is buy into your entire worldview, then I will truly understand the several paragraphs that are the total so far written about the TWITTER FILES.
More specifically, I will understand that Trump either didn't know or had no control over theses regular meetings publicly written about in Trump's hometown paper 8 months before the election, with the social media company that was the principal means he used to communicate.
Glad to have confirmation of "Daniel's" bias. Nice to see confirmation.
Blogger TeaBagHag said...
It sure is easy to whip paranoid ignoramuses into a tearful frenzy.
Elon Musk is the overlord you deserve
Inga, as usual you miss the point and sound stupid.
Daniel12 said:
"George Soros buys FoxNews, hires Media Matters to review internal docs and publish under similar conditions. What would your thoughts be?"
************
Taibbi and Bari Weiss are both liberals, so your analogy falls flat on its ass.
Meanwhile in today's news, this from Elon 'transparency' Musk ....
"Elon Musk demands Twitter employees pledge they won’t leak information to the press—and is threatening to sue them if they do"
Nothing says we are telling the truth like threatening employees from talking to the press just as you roll out a PR campaign against the old management.
Daniel12: "George Soros buys FoxNews, hires Media Matters to review internal docs and publish under similar conditions. What would your thoughts be?"
LOL
That would definitely be a "blue on blue" scenario, given the Murdoch's hatred for Trump and their love for the GOPe-dem adjacent RINOS.
@J Melcher (BTW, any relation to Terry Melcher?). Wishig it away isn't going to make it go away. I'm glad Musk is teasing this out in drips and drabs. I hope he saves the very best for last--the ones that prove that the FBI was in clear violation of the 1st Amendment by telling private citizens who and what to censor. And who was that little fuck the other night who liked to point out that it was Trump's FBI giving these orders, conveniently forgetting that Trump was at odds with his own FBI--the deepest of deep state criminals who need to be outed.
Daniel12 has a problem with private ownership of data. Duly noted.
Lurker21 said...And Biden and his son getting money from foreign companies and governments is no big deal?
Yes, it's that bad. Half of the country thought it no big deal that Hunter Biden and "Big Guy" got millions of dollars through the Ukraine. Half of the people in this country hated Trump so much that they excused high officials of their high crimes and misdemeanors. (And I must interject that the majority of those people were/are women). And they continue to hate and to excuse because he's Trump. These same people thought it OK to snoop on Candidate Trump (looking at Obama) even though that was criminal but it was OK because the target was Trump. That's how fucked up these people are.
I think the phrase "the government is allowed to ask private actors to keep information secret" is the place to start. If they torture 10 million of us to death, can the ask others to keep it a secret and should they? The government is not allowed to censor. But they pointed the gun and Twitter pulled the trigger. Yoel Roth, Gadde, and a dozen ex-FBI employees working at Twitter knew the law, knew the laptop was authentic, and worst of all, didn't ask the FBI if it was real so they could claim they were not part of the crime.
Yoel Roth, Gadde, and a dozen ex-FBI employees working at Twitter knew the law, knew the laptop was authentic, and worst of all, didn't ask the FBI if it was real so they could claim they were not part of the crime.
They hated Trump so much that they wanted to be part of the crimes. They believed in their heart of hearts that they were preventing a Hitler from taking over. They still believe that. I know otherwise rational people--conservatives even--who lose sight of their own morals and ethics when triggered by Trump. .
Anybody know what has become of attorney Vijaya Gadde? Has she been hired by Biden's DoJ yet. This whole Twitter story seems to have been driven by her as some kind of personal vendetta. She should apologize to America.
Blogger LibertarianLeisure said..."Why isn't this front page news?! That it isn't, says so much about the news sources."
Daniel is bitching that the real news establishment isn't being allowed to cover this, while his real news establishment won't touch it with a ten foot pole.
jim5301 said...
Could someone please tell me what you want. Let's assume that Twitter's sole goal in life was to do everything it could to supress conservative voices on its platform. What is the solution to this "problem?" I assume you want a law. To do what?
It is enough for me that people see who you are.
You and daniel and Inga and Left bank and the rest of the Uniparty want the Government and the Largest corporations to ally to silence your political opponents.
You are out in the open National Socialists.
You are more than good Germans. You are slapping that SS badge proudly on your shoulder.
You are goose stepping to Hitler's words.
And now everyone sees you.
Things will take care of themselves from here.
I am reminded by the evidentiary standards the left deployed in the earlier scandal involving a POTUS and Ukraine. You know, one of those 'deeply serious' Trump impeachments we were subjected to. The Ukrainian phone call one.
Nothing explicitly corrupt was said there but that was enough for them to trot out 'Quid pro quo' singalongs for months. And just the tenuous possibility of a Quid was enough to justify the Impeachment with all its damage.
Here, a POTUS' own son's actions, taking money given with only the one plausible corrupt purpose, are just too vague to justify even mentioning let alone investigating I guess.
'No double standard here', 'No Democrat Privilege here', no journalism here.
I find it interesting that the links in the piece don’t really back up what he’s saying. It’s pretty much all hyperbole and conjecture with no actual evidence presented. It doesn’t induce confidence in his writing, that’s for sure.
" I'm glad Musk is teasing this out in drips and drabs. I hope he saves the very best for last--the ones that prove that the FBI was in clear violation of the 1st Amendment by telling private citizens who and what to censor."
I'll add that I hope Musk is getting heat from the FBI--RIGHT NOW--to hold back the best damning evidence (and I hope he's taking notes of those new demands and has contingency plans in case the criminals at the FBI come after him). Musk is perhaps hoping that public pressure will demand the release of the worst. The FBI must come clean or be examined itself externally.
The Left and the Right have kind of changed dance partners over a generation, no? It used to be the Left who mistrusted the FBI. The right wing Birchers supported the FBI. Now it's the Left who support the FBI and their strong arm tactics. I believe that the FBI is no longer protecting American interests; they are into protecting their sinecures and G-whatever pay scales. Fuck them--hard!
"It never happened."
"It happened, but it's a nothingburger."
"It happened and it's a big deal, but it's actually a good thing."
"It happened and it's a bad thing, but everybody does it."
"Old news. Time to move on."
If Trump were assassinated in office, there would be people on the left telling you it was just democracy in action, and that Conservatives are pouncing on a nothing burger about it.
There is little question that Hunter Biden was an influence peddler who sought to monetize his access to the American vice president. Burisma... was paying to be one-degree of separation away from Hunter’s father.... But... Hunter monetizing his last name is not a noteworthy scandal....
LOL. Anyone doubt if Eric Trump had done the same thing that it would be a "noteworthy scandal." These guys are so pathetically transparent.
Blogger JHapp said...
I think the phrase "the government is allowed to ask private actors to keep information secret" is the place to start.
**************
Perhaps people should go back and learn about the "Pentagon Papers" case.
The government has no power to exert "prior restraint" on publication.
With its power to cripple private companies running afoul of it, the government holds all the cards, so they are forbidden to play them---even by "asking".
Second, employees of the federal government are bound by Federal election laws not to interfere in elections.
18 U.S. Code § 595 - Interference by administrative employees of Federal, State, or Territorial Governments
"Whoever, being a person employed in any administrative position by the United States, or by any department or agency thereof, or by the District of Columbia or any agency or instrumentality thereof, or by any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States, or any political subdivision, municipality, or agency thereof, or agency of such political subdivision or municipality (including any corporation owned or controlled by any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States or by any such political subdivision, municipality, or agency), in connection with any activity which is financed in whole or in part by loans or grants made by the United States, or any department or agency thereof, uses his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."
Also, there's the Hatch Act. Look it up. To the extent the FBI met with Twitter to discuss killing politically-charged stories, they violated it. Straight up.
Third, "Freedom of the Press" protections are predicated on media being watchdogs over the government, not its lapdog. Being in cahoots with anti-Trump government agency employees is the last thing the Framers envisioned, as that's what the British press was forced to be under the Crown.
So..Twitter and Facebook have pissed in their own whiskey by conspiring to deny the public newsworthy information that could have influenced the 2020 and 2022 elections. Even more so when their execs denied doing so while under oath.
Blogger jim5301 said...
"Could someone please tell me what you want."
Honesty would be a good start. However I don't think you're capable of being honest. No progressive is.
Twitter is just the surface...
Someone needs to buy Facebook and no doubt expose how Zuck sucked up to the feds, followed their orders, and did the same thing.
All the platforms were in the tank for Biden & Co.
Bags has entered the chat.
Chicklit has entered the chat
If you think Musk enforcing Twitter NDA's with the employees somehow compromises the disclosures he doing, just list a few organizations who would let their employees freely disclose company secrets to a press that's hostile or even friendly to that organization. I'm sure that's cool with most companies, government agencies, school boards, Boy Scout troops, or sewing clubs. If that NDA enforcement allows you to ignore the facts that are disclosed, please skip any jury duty if called.
Hey, Lem. Good to see ya.
Blogger jim5301 said..."Could someone please tell me what you want."
All of the federal employees who conspired with Twitter to interfere in the 2020 election sitting in jail cells would be a good start.
"Could someone please tell me what you want."
We have laws. Lets enforce them.
I don't know what "mendacious' means, but Adam Schiff is a pathologically liar.
I don't know what pathologically means either, but that dude lies a lot.
@bagoh20, Welcome back. I've missed you!
Everything you're not interested in is a nothingburger. Unless you write about it, then it's a somethingburger.
"The Bidens have sold out the United States for $31 million. Why can’t people see this?
What would you suggest we do about it?
We can see it. The problem is that there is nothing in our laws that allows us to do anything about it. We'd have to go outside the law.
Once you capture the inexoribly corrupt Department of Justice, then you ARE the law in the United States. Joe Biden can accept bribes all day long in the full knowledge that his buddy over at DoJ isn't going to do anything to stop him.
There is simply nothing to do. Accept that you live in this kind of a society now.
Leave. The country is lost.
In what universe are Matt Tiabbi and Bari Weiss conservatives?
Original Mike said...
Daniel is bitching that the real news establishment isn't being allowed to cover this, while his real news establishment won't touch it with a ten foot pole.
12/10/22, 7:19 PM
I think that should be a 39 and a half foot pole.
‘… But they were also saturated in hyperbole, marred by omissions of context, and discredited by instances of outright mendacity....”
Talk about being self-referential right at the start.
Years of Twitter r has taught us to pull out other sides “adjectives and descriptive” and the re-dress the skeleton with its own version of the same and say “nothing-burger….move along”
Thanks for allowing comments, Ann.
This is all wordsmithing for clicks. Nobody will pay a price for any of it and we are tired of it after 35 years.
“Many ov the senior officials in Trump’s own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.”
- Bari Weiss 3:49 pm 05 Sep. 18
Frankly, if we are inclined to blame Trump for anything without recognizing he is far superior to all of our current political class, well, we are doomed. I didn't like DJT in 2016, but am now very grateful for the fuse he lit to uncover all of this chicanery.
I don’t understand Levitz’s argument. He’s saying that Musk is doing what he accused old Twitter of doing. But what old Twitter did was suppress conservative voices. Levitz does not point to any progressive or liberal voice that has been silenced by Musk’s Twitter. So his claim of equivalence fails on its face.
The Pee-pee tapes were not dis-proven.
The Twitter information has not been proven.
Nice shop you have here twitter, shame if something ( fbi/cia/dhs/irs/sec ) were to happen to it.
"The Left and the Right have kind of changed dance partners over a generation, no? It used to be the Left who mistrusted the FBI. The right wing Birchers supported the FBI. Now it's the Left who support the FBI and their strong arm tactics. I believe that the FBI is no longer protecting American interests; they are into protecting their sinecures and G-whatever pay scales. Fuck them--hard!"
I think the definition of "left" is what's changed. The Democrats as a whole were never and are not now "left," though the Republicans insist on seeing them as such. This reflects how "right" the Republicans have become, (and/or how easily they have come to believe their own propaganda).
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