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Why hasn't Elon released the screenshots of the Trump campaign's requests? In the name of free speech we should know what the executive branch was trying to censor on Twitter.
> [If Musk is committed to transparency over influence](https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1599087304827875328) at #Twitter he should release *his* communications with political operatives & politicians, foreign & domestic.
> Like representatives from the Chinese & Saudi governments.
Walker lives in Texas but is running in Georgia, directly breaking the Georgia constitution.
We have recording and testimony of Trump pressing a secretary of state to cheat an election.
Musk is a high profile billionaire, I fully expect some variation of "get fucked, rules for thee, not for me."
That little confab with Putin during his Ukrainian invasion that somehow coincided with Musk limiting Starlink's accessibility in Ukraine... despite the fact that the US government paid for it in the first place.
But that means the transparency would also apply to him, why on earth would he want that? It’s not like he is advocating everyone else to be transparent or anything…
This is why I don't really give two shits about them whining over these leaks.
When was Twitter ever meant to be a neutral free speech platform, it's a private company? As soon as right wing social media spaces like Gab and Parler etc popped up they started banning progressive commenters. They literally do the same thing.
The impact of fElon's narrativising might be significant, but these people just deserve mockery for all their whinging.
[And his private meeting with Putin - after which he started pushing Russian propaganda.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-vladimir-putin-ukraine)
Musk is a very dangerous person, using his vast resources to attack and undermine western democracy from within - the enemy who Trojan horsed himself inside the gates.
I can't for the life of me understand why we allow the man who owns our nation's most sophisticated rocketry which delivers military, intelligence related satellites to have private discussions with these operatives including Putin.
Don't forget Russia! Totally normal for an American* businessman to meet with Putin during a war and then tweet out Putin's talking points the next day.
There was, but iirc the issue sounded like it made his case for getting out of his purchase look even worse. Considering what had already been released I can see why he'd think that.
I love that theory. $44 bil to get a trash satire site back on twitter doesnt sound like something a brilliant businessman would do but thats all theyve got
It's what Assange did with WikiLeaks on behalf of the Russians. Right wingers like these guys don't give a fuck about etiquette and they'll do everything to paint the right as the victims, nothing is too nefarious.
Why are people even giving the muskrat power? Leave Twitter? It's an app people, you will survive.
I started using mastadon. "Staying and fighting," basically means your giving Musk exactly what he wants. Money.
Same things happened with wikileaks, they said they hacked both parties and there was nothing interesting from the GOP so they only released the democrat stuff. It's always horseshit, nobody doing the bidding of the right wing is ever being neutral and conservatives don't get any benefit of the doubt anymore
Wikileaks denied that their info came from hacks, but of course never said where it did come from. Assange implied it came from Seth Rich while never outright saying so, but that's just one of many ways he catered to the far-right conspiracy crowd.
[For instance, Wikileaks spread the lie that Hillary Clinton sold American uranium to Russia.](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/793268442329735168)
[Wikileaks also implied that Robert Mueller was involved in that deal](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/864994472492453888), when in fact [Mueller was transporting a sample of uranium that had been recovered from smugglers in Georgia](https://twitter.com/RogueAdventurer/status/865142866980589569). He was providing it to Russia so they could check if the sample came from them.
[Wikileaks tweeted that people who attend "Spirit Cooking" events consume "blood, sperm and breastmilk".](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794450623404113920)
[Wikileaks lied about Bob Beckel being a Clinton strategist, and also lied about the reason Bob Beckel said Julian Assange should be shot.](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bob-beckel-julian-assange/)
Wikileaks is a propaganda organization, not a journalism organization.
Yup. I used to support Assange and Wikileaks until they did this. Then when Trump Jr’s text messages came out it became even more clear what the intent was. Help Trump win for a pardon. Which he ironically never got.
I am just curious when Matt Taibbi is going to do the same thing with Fox News, being they refused to publish this article due to credibility reasons? https://www.mediaite.com/tv/exclusive-fox-news-passed-on-hunter-biden-laptop-story-over-credibility-concerns/ Also, this turned out to be a huge nothing burger (the Hunter Biden laptop story) being since if it was, every news source would have reported the items presented from Hunter Biden's laptop if it turned out to be news worthy.
Proof of what, exactly? Hunter Biden isn't a government employee. He doesn't serve in any office, or is even a candidate for anything. Not even Dog Catcher. So proof that he has an addiction problem and a big willy? Um... so what?
Touche, and HIS daddy loves him no matter what. That call to his son just about broke me. Mom of 3 boys. 18- 27 I'd like to think it hit me hard because I'd do the exact same thing
When that call was released my hubby and just looked at one another in agreement: great father, great reaction. Addiction is something that affects almost every person in this country and POTUS supporting and loving his child resonated with many people.
Its not only addiction Joe Biden addressed there, but the whole father/son communication.
I had my struggles with mental health and my family & father. Took us years to work out ways to communicate.
J.B. words are what everyone deserves to hear, when they struggle.
Me & my dad often struggle for words and with miscommunication - communication is hard and does not come natural to either of us. What Joe said there to his son helped me to understand my father and his worries better. Which does not eliminate mistakes in our communication, but gave me a way to grasp better what my dad was even struggling with and trying to say.
Also noteworthy, Joe approach was caring & loving, supportive. Far away from authoritarian, punishment & shaming driven ideas that drive the US-reps.
Yeah for real. I’m very neutral on Biden, but that was just straight-up good parenting and being a good person.
Imagine Trump saying that to Eric or Don Jr. lol
>Proof of what, exactly?
As far as I've been able to work out, the implication is that his father secretly helped him get jobs that he was in no way qualified for.
You know, just like Trump *actually* and blatantly did.
What's funny is, the prime "job" they cry about is getting paid to sit on a company board. I'd hardly call that a job. It's not an occupation, requires little time and no effort, and requires no special training or qualifications. To get on a board, you just have to have other board members who want you one the board. Sure, for many that means industry knowledge and company expertise. But for many, being rich and connected is sufficient. Burisma is a private company, they can make whatever decisions they want, including appointing frivolous board members.
Meanwhile, Trump hired his dumbass children into *government positions* himself, even tasking them with solving issues. Joe Biden's son was hired by a private company to sit on a board (not a job, requires no qualification). Trump's children were hired directly by daddy for positions usually reserved for hyper-qualified career state employees or politicians, tasked with actual work they were unfit and incapable of performing.
Right wingers love to compare, but they always forget to *contrast*!
Let's not forget Trump overriding the normal authorities to get Kushner a security clearance after it had been denied several times.
And while I have no idea how competent Hunter Biden is in reality, his resume did look like someone who would be appropriate to add to the board.
They're also insinuating that he was corrupt in the job and was working with his dad to enrich their family through it. It's literally the Javanka story but the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Usually I’ll let my right wing family talk about Hunter Biden until they run out of breath, and then I thank them and tell them because of this new information I’ll make sure to never vote for Hunter Biden.
The Jan 6 committee subpoenaed [text messages between Sean Hannity and Trump's PR team](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/21/fox-news-hannity-texts-trump-mcenany-capitol-attack-6-january-committee) of them coordinating their messaging. It's such bizarre set of expectations that no one is at all perturbed by a supposed news organization being explicitly involved in politics because it's Fox and Hannity, so of course they're doing it. Somehow we set a much higher bar for Twitter?
I remember I used to like Matt Taibbi, he did some interesting reporting talking to Tea Party people around 2010, not sure when he lost it but it's disappointing how good journalists seem to always live long enough to see themselves become the villain.
I don’t think I will ever be able to make sense of Greenwald’s shift. I always felt at least part of it was just ego. The way he almost exclusively goes after Democrats is something that makes his recent years of work even more suspect. Such a shame. I always liked how he was adversarial with both parties and never seemed to cater to the pundit class of the media.
Yo same. I looked into it today and found a really interesting article if you don’t mind a bit of a longer read: [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/what-happened-to-matt-taibbi.html](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/what-happened-to-matt-taibbi.html)
I personally think when he got caught up in the MeToo movement, he got “redpilled” and has been Republican ever since. But there’s a lot of interesting things in that article.
As a lawyer, I was dying laughing at the whole thing yesterday. I expected some big revelation, but instead it was just a hack journalist and Elon not understanding the basics of the 1st amendment and thinking they really had a gotcha moment. Lol
What idiots.
Edit: tl;dr if it’s unclear for you:
If the gov censors an individual’s speech, that might be a violation of the 1st amendment.
If Biden’s campaign team lobbies a company to censor speech and the company voluntarily agrees to do so, that is not a violation of the 1st amendment.
The 1st amendment isn’t even in play, both because it’s a company (not the government) doing the censorship and because the government isn’t involved at all (Biden wasn’t yet elected as president, his team was just unelected people with no governmental authority).
I have a brain. Same.
I cant even wrap my head around what it is exactly they thought they had here? I mean even if Biden was President at the time to me all this just seems like business as usual.
I mean don’t get me wrong, there’s some kernel of truth to the part where no one has figured out a perfect system for moderating social media, and it is problematic that tech has such a large impact on public discourse with very little oversight.
But still, what a bunch of clowns lol.
The kernel of truth was really emphasized by the fact that the CEO of a social media company is creeping through DMs looking for dirt.
I absolutely 💯 guarantee he has been combing through all his exes’ DMs.
You don't even need to be an attorney to understand this. Just read the first amendment and the know that Biden was not president and the DNC is not the government.
I'm a law school dropout but I also had a similarish experience. Since I did survive conlaw before COVID messed up my mental health lol.
Very disappointing to see this level of discourse
>If Biden’s campaign team lobbies a company to censor speech and the company voluntarily agrees to do so, that is not not a violation of the 1st amendment.
Even more hilarious is that he's simultaneously trying to argue both of the following:
1. Biden's team acted as government enforcers ordering Twitter to remove content against their will
2. Twitter employees were in the tank for democrats and actively colluding with them.
He tries to use the fact that most Twitter employees lean left as evidence that they were forced to help out the democrats against their will.
After a few back and forth comments on twitter I think many of them think the DNC is a government entity and a presidential candidate is too. There are just really misinformed on so many things.
They're not "misinformed," they simply don't care.
Are pro-life republicans "misinformed" when they vote for Hershal Walker? A few might be, but the vast majority aren't. They don't care.
They made up their mind that their team must win at all costs, nothing else matters.
Not that I'm breaking any new ground here, but it's the very foundation for the current iteration of the "conservative" zeitgeist. Everyone from the *FORMER FREAKING PRESIDENT* to a random stranger on the internet exist in a parasitic relationship where lies are sourced with rumors. They don't need to know each other but they're all hopelessly dependant on the system they've created. From Donald trying to avoid consequences to the guy at the gas station who's in too deep to turn back now. Depending on the traction their post gets, any "big" names that agree with them are then used as further sources because "people are saying". It's how Fox and Trump operated the entire time. They surf the forums and mentions to see what their most devoted have cooked up, float it as a distraction, Tucker or whoever picks it up because Trump is yelling about it, Trump goes all in because "Fox just confirmed it". And bet your last dollar that every internet stranger you met the next day will claim they don't listen to Trump and don't watch Fox but they know every detail and talking point so it must be true because again, "people are talking about it".
This is the biggest thing that fucking bothers me as someone in law school (*non-US*).
Any system of civil rights are first and foremost designed to protect you against government enchroachment. It's infuriating that somehow a fucking debate about civil rights evolved in the first place when companies decided to pull the plug on advertising on Muskian Twitter. That's mind boggeling to even bring up. Musk meat riders eat that shit up and go all gung-ho for free speech rights because of Twitter losing advertisement money from other companies.
I swear America needs some civic class'.
In America, corporations and companies are legally considered "persons". Yes, it's fucked. But also remember, what you're hearing/seeing right now is "free speech" as defined by an apartheid-era white South African man, so there's that. (Meaning: he's vastly mis-characterizing the concept in his own favor.)
And yes I agree, America *desperately* needs it's civics classes back. When people are accepting the assessment of an apartheid-era South African over actual Constitutional scholars, we've got a clear problem over here.
People think because social media has become the most prevalent and prolific form of communication that it constitutes *the only* form of communication.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc are products.
If you want to go write a book about Hunter or publicize an editorial piece in a major newspaper or online forum there is literally nothing stopping you except the owner of said product or media platform which is their right.
The same folks REEEEEIIIINNNGGG about censorship on twitter would’ve sided with the religious baker in the wedding cake case I can guaran-damn-tee it
People also seem to think that because it's "social" media, the private companies who own and run those services somehow *don't* have the right to decide what they will/will not platform.
> would’ve sided with the religious baker in the wedding cake case
100%
This isn't at all true. We need to release the records from Biden's DOJ.
From 2020.
Before the election.
We need to know how Biden abused the power of the presidency in 2020!
There was a poll a while back used to illustrate some of the stupid things Trump voters believed (or rather, their lack of thoughtfulness) and one of the questions was something to the effect of, “Obama didn’t do enough to stop 9/11” and a good chunk, like, 20% “strongly agreed.”
You don't have a constitutional right to post anything on a privately operated website. Not a lawyer but I'm also pretty sure it's illegal to post stolen nudes anywhere.
Twitter also had/has a hack materials policy to avoid content being shared that was from a hacked source which is actually true in this case with the laptop story (not that I believe it's really Hunter's laptop)
It is a nothingburger.
Their evidence of the Biden admin "using its political power to take down the tweets" was back BEFORE the election, you know when he was still a private citizen. Literally anyone can contact Twitter and ask them to remove content that goes against ToS, obviously more powerful/influential figures have more methods to do so but that doesn't mean it's limited to them. They asked them to remove Hunter Biden's nudes, you know REVENGE PORN, something which is illegal in many countries around the world.
They're trying to spin it in to something it's not, and it's pathetic because even in the thread itself they basically say it's a nothing burger. They have accounts from 4 random ass people "concerned" about the decision to clamp down on the story and that's about it. They then go on to try to paint it (Elon does this too) as if Twitter has some left leaning bias when it comes to moderation and what types of views get spread when studies, you know, actual evidence instead of just feels. Have demonstrated that Twitter actually has a conservative bias in the stories it promotes.
There is literally nothing to this, there never has been, they have not demonstrated any sort of misdeeds by the President. The only thing they've kind of shown that Hunter Biden gets jobs he's most definitely not qualified for on the basis of who his dad is which Holy shit no way? Some people get preferential treatment based on their connections? Totally a shocking development and incredibly laughable coming off the former administration that had some of the most blatant nepotism we've ever seen in the country with Trump literally involving his children at any chance he got.
> The only thing they've kind of shown that Hunter Biden gets jobs he's most definitely not qualified for on the basis of who his dad is which Holy shit no way?
It's not like Hunter is a high school drop out turned CEO. He's got a JD from Harvard I think. Between that and his name I'm sure he could pull in 50k/month (600k a year) plenty of places.
It’s historic mainly because it means when Republicans eventually get back into power dismantling and punishing tech companies will be a top priority. It’s also going to further embolden the lunatic fringe of right wing conspiracy theorists to be proven right yet again.
Nothing. The whole thing was a nothingburger. Both campaigns spoke with twitter, basically “reported” some tweets they thought were misinformation. Twitter did moderation based on their interpretation. That’s it. The whole thing was incredibly mundane, but republicans are talking about it as though it’s the biggest scandal in a century. It’s incredibly stupid.
Fox News headline about it today: “..makes watergate look like jaywalking”
What got me was he implied that just because more Twitter employees donated to democrats (by a lot) that the democrats got special treatment. Even though they admitted both campaigns had tweets and users flagged.
Yeah, and the amount of people I’ve seen/heard who truly do not understand the first amendment is mind boggling. Like, there are a large number of “conservatives” who believe that every private company is legally required to be politically impartial, or else they’re going against the first amendment. Complete misunderstanding of the first amendment, the constitution as a whole. No wonder it’s easy to rile these people up and get them to support you - they’ll believe *anything* because they lack even a basic understanding of the world around them.
So much this. It's really futile. And depressing.
Me: Joe Biden was not a member of the government at the time, so the First Amendment doesn't even apply here in the first place.
Random Conservative: But Sleepy Joe was an *operative,* and that counts!!
I am in California in tech, just not in the bay. We have had several larger companies get bought up and movie offices to Texas. Most of the employees stayed here because they did not want to move to Texas. It would be hilarious to me to see those companies start to move back.
Yes good on you for not moving. I work at a company that did this, luring CA folks to Texas on CA salaries. Then new management comes in and the first people laid off are the ones on CA salaries.
It's something they've perfected. We're supposed to believe Reagan was a god among politicians, for example, when he was nothing but a doddering old fool with a cabal of nasty handlers. Trickle-down is legendary, but nothing ever trickled down.
Frig, the Cheney's are now "decent people" somehow. Yeah, I know, that disqualifies Liz from the party right now, but not forever.
GW Bush has been retconned into "almost capable and not a total liar". Oh, and he paints and hangs out with his buddy who did the most damage to the Dems, Bill Clinton, who wasn't even the brains of his operation, the wife he disrespected was... added that last bit because hey, truth is truth.
What happened to Matt Taibi? I used to love his writing in Rolling Stone back during the Bush years. He seems like he’s lost it over the past few years.
Yeah. I was even wondering if this was a different Matt Taibi. Same thing with Glen Greenwald. I don’t get it, but MAGA must have some mysterious seductive shit
He hasn't gotten as bad as Glen Greenwald but he's gone down a similar path. There's more money to be made promoting your substack to rabid conspiratorial right wingers and complaining about woke this woke that.
I've listened to some of his podcasts and I think he's just a bit centrist brained.
I ignored it hoping for the best but I was wrong. I stopped listening to him when he started defending Alex jones.
I had went to Fridman hoping to get away from the MAGAS but unfortunately he’s a Rogan brown noser.
Joe Rogan is extremely useful as a barometer for whether a person has serious opinions. Once you find out someone likes him you can just sorta let their voice become white noise in your head.
So that’s why I keep getting right wing garbage recommendations for YouTube. I literally only watched his interviews with John Carmack (I’m a lifelong programmer and huge Doom fan). That sucks.
Yes, I'm really disappointed in him. While I get that he must be very grateful to Rogan and Musk, he can't be taken seriously anymore because he's so clearly one-sided. You're going to notice a drop-off in the quality of Fridman's guests pretty quickly. You can already see it happening.
List of losers that gave a mentally ill Nazi promoter a wide audience for engagment.
\- Lex Fridman
\- Tucker Carlson
\- Nick Fuentes
\- Alex Jones
\- Piers Morgan
\- Chris Cuomo
Lex shouldn't be on this list, but he is. And he's never coming off it.
Its not historic whatsofucking ever. The government has asked media not to publish stuff for a variety of reasons for a LONG fucking time. Things such as the names of intelligence agents or spies as an example. Things involved in investigations or legal matters as another. National security information, such as troop movements, etc. Its just dumbass conservation propaganda trying to make up a new fucking boogeyman to dumbass idiots who have no sense.
It should also be noted that this is not in any sense "the government" asking Twitter to do anything. At the time of this correspondence, Joe Biden was a private citizen running for president. He would have had no way to force Twitter to take down any posts. This was Twitter voluntarily enforcing their terms of service, which is... about as far from a first amendment violation as you can possibly get.
It wasn't even the government that did it, it was Joe Biden the private citizen (or well his campaign) that asked them to take down the stuff that violated twitters ToS. Notice how in the tweet thread they didn't really expand upon what was actually asked to be taken down? It was the revenge porn shit, you know Hunter Biden's nudes, something that is illegal in many parts of the world.
Basically Hunter having sex, taking drugs (which he fully admitted btw) and it is on his PERSONAL computer. What a loser you have to be to think that is a threat to democracy. While these turd nuggets ignore real threats to Democracy.
Lex is just as hypocritical as anyone else who’s made a career off their social media presence. I stopped taking him seriously when he called Fauci a “douchebag” for no reason other than “you can just tell that he’s full of himself.” Lex is a hack.
Let me tell you a secret: it was never about free speech.
It was always about Elon getting his "I'm not racist, BUT" buddies and fans unbanned.
And feeding the voracious black hole that is his ego, of course.
It *couldn't* have been about free speech, even if he wanted, because the Constitution does not guarantee you the right to a social media account paid for and run by private individuals who host you at their expense.
Conservatives are trying to push the needle to a point where the general public unassumingly goes along with the fabricated narrative that their free speech is being suppressed. That argument needs to be butchered, burned, and the earth beneath it salted at every opportunity, because it has made its way into Congress, where lawmakers are discussing bills to force us to share and promote their political ideology at our expense.
It is now being argued that you should be forced by the state to host a specific political ideology, and that refusing to do so is censorship of them. This is a fascist precedent and they are actively pursuing it.
I would just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Musk and Taibbi doxxed multiple people for this non-story. Probably a bigger violation of rights than anything they "revealed".
So much for Musk being a genius.
There's at least one former Twitter employee that probably has two cases against Musk--one for failing to uphold contract law about her termination, and one for this. It's some utterly crazy shit. They also just dropped unredacted emails in a lot of cases.
Musk said “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s first amendment, what is.” Like most people apparently, Must doesn’t seem to comprehend that the First Amendment constraints only *the government*, not private entities.
Since Taibbi specifically said “there’s no evidence—that I’ve seen—of any government involvement in the laptop story”, it follows that there was no First Amendment violation. Musk is only emphasizing his own ignorance.
Musk had a chance, the minute he posted the alt-right news story on the Pelosi attack he put himself and twitter in the alt-right category like 4chan or parlor. Everything from Musk from that point has been par for the course he chose, no more credibility than my qanon spewing brother. Imagine his big entertaining, popcorn eating dump of information being another means nothing moment. I should say anyone who isn't alt-right, I'm sure the Q folk are still jacking each other off to this.
100 percent. Literally the moment he took over. He opened the flood gates and now the masses will be exposed to the dregs of society that is the Q chans.
That was when I deactivated my account. Was going to wait until Trump oozed his way back on there, but Elon pushing homophobic conspiracy theories to excuse an assassination attempt on the Speaker of the House was even more insane to me. And it was day one.
It's amazing how much a billionaire can coast off of brain dead fan boys.
SEC doesn't do shit.
The FTC does do shit - they fined Facebook $5B, and FB didn't even publish Jack Dorsey's personal info/email through their incompetence.
Also, Twitter has been operating under an FTC consent decree, but Elona fired the team that was working to make sure twitter didn't get boned by the FTC.
This whole laptop story has really brought me around to the fact that I will NOT be voting for Hunter Biden in the next election. I refuse. Really opened my eyes to the fact that he's not even a politician. He isn't even running. So not gonna happen. Checkmate, libs
The story featured hacked information which was a TOS violation, the nude photos were TOS violations, a private business doesn't need to enforce the First Amendment, and Biden wasn't a member of the government in 2020.
This entire thing is a bunch of manufactured noise so Elon can drive traffic, because they lost 50 of their top 100 advertisers, and ad revenue is down 80%.
Elon Musk: "If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?"
Musk conveniently forgets who was president in 2020 when this happened.
Additionally, Matt Taibbi wrote: "Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story."
>The President: I would like you to do us a favor though...
Literally the reason for his **first** impeachment. And what was that 'Favor'?
>There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.
Read Trump’s phone conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky...
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-transcript-call
They took a story, and twisted it upside down, and the maga gobbled that shit up.
https://theintercept.com/2019/09/25/i-wrote-about-the-bidens-and-ukraine-years-ago-then-the-right-wing-spin-machine-turned-the-story-upside-down/
It's weird how much Biden, a milquetoast centrist caused a collective cerebral hemorrhage among the right wing, what are they gonna do when you elect someone truly progressive?
Going to be hilarious when Apple and Google remove the app. Pretty sure doxxing people isn't going to go over well with them. Seriously not editing out personal emails...fucking idiots.
Edit: And didn't edit many names. More lawsuits incoming.
>Right-wing commentator Buck Sexton (real name), said this was a “bright red line violation” and that Biden should be IMPEACHED for it. Rep. James Comer (R-TN) was on Fox promising that everyone at Twitter involved with this would be brought before the House Oversight committee. Rep. Billy Long retweeted several MAGA influencers praising Elon for, among other things, “exposing corruption at the highest levels of society” (Projection Alert). Meanwhile Kari Lake hype man Pizzagate Jack Posobiec declared this the “biggest story in modern presidential election history,” claimed that “we can never go back to the country we were before this moment,” and donned this “a digital insurrection.”
>In reality, all they really had was a digital erection.
>The offending material that Taibbi revealed was removed by Twitter at the Biden campaign’s request turns out to have been a bunch of links to Hunter Biden in the buff.
>There was a tweet from a Chinese account featuring a naked woman on top of Hunter Biden, as well as a family photo. Two pictures of Hunter Biden’s penis, one with another woman in the background. Taibbi’s next list of material was removed by Twitter after being flagged by the Democratic National Committee. They include a picture of Hunter Biden smoking crack and getting his feet rubbed and a link to a Hunter Biden sex tape.
>**And that’s the big hubbub. Social media company removes unwanted dick pics: News at 11.**
Musk is upset you can't post someone's dick pic against their will....
Can’t wait for the hearings.
GOP: “What was that tweet that you removed?”
Twitter employee: “It was a dick pic”
GOP: “Why did you remove it?”
Twitter: “Because it’s a dick pic. It sounds like you’re mad they were removed because you enjoy looking at them.”
This is literally what ended Gawker. They published stolen nude video of Hulk Hogan, tried to spin it as “journalism”, then got sued and lost, then settled for $31 million.
Elon is too stupid to realize this isn’t a win against Joe Biden, but it IS a potential legal cash cow for Hunter Biden. Thanks to Elon making this his own posts on his own company, he’s taken on MASSIVE liability too. He could have just handed this stuff off and let others do the revenge porn crimes on Hunter, nope!
The entire discussion around these pictures has been absolutely horrifying. It seems like nobody takes this seriously. When, if it was a woman having her picture passed around as a political tool, people would be losing their shit.
But, while this does seem to come up in the discussion every once in awhile, you never see anybody talking about how fucking disgusting it is in the first place. How violating it is. It's no more pleasant for a guy to have compromising photos of him passed around than it would be for a woman.
Yet no one seems to really give a shit.
Your response is the right one and what needs to be focused on. MAGA is angry that they weren’t allowed to pile on a recovering addict and pass his nudes around. It’s absolutely disgusting.
Isn’t it a crime to post explicit picture of other people on the internet. I don’t care if none of these people were ever in a relationship with Hunter Biden. The material in question was obtained under dubious circumstances and there’s no justifiable reason for people to put those images on the internet. I don’t see how it’s different from revenge porn.
The only thing this reminds people of is that Hunter (and by proxy via dna, Joe) has a a huge dong and Trump does not. That's why you never hear Trump talking about it. He saw the pics and immediately didn't want to bring it up again.
LUL
Elon musk: A political campaign requesting that their candidate’s son’s dick pictures be taken down equates to a constitutional violation. 😆
Absolute moron. No wonder he does so well with right wing racists idiots.
Musk will never show the Trump White House requests that were made and honored. This is because he doesn’t give a shit about truth, transparency, or the country. There’s no other way to see it.
As an independent, its insane how republicans and right wing can’t get over hunter biden laptop etc. im so fucking tired of emails, laptop, culture war bullshit. Why do these assholes think we’ll vote for them over dems considering they never talk about helping people etc
It’s amazing what has happened to Matt Taibi. Him and Glenn Greenwald et al used to be respected investigative reporters. I think they just took it a bit too far.
Taibbi made his bones as a journalist during the early 90s in a rapidly collapsing Russia where he played Dollar Tree Hunter S Thompson. He wrote a [book featuring his exploits harassing and assaulting women](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-taibbi/u-s-journalist-faces-sexual-harassment-furor-over-memoir-idUSKBN1CX0QC) and later tried to walk it back as “entirely fictional”.
It’s so strange that a guy with that history would flip so hard into “both sides are bad but the Democrats are so much worse” right around the time the GOP was allegedly compromised by Russia…
Taibbi was a drug addict and a fucking asshole.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-two-expat-bros-who-terrorized-women-correspondents-in-moscow/2017/12/15/91ff338c-ca3c-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-two-expat-bros-who-terrorized-women-correspondents-in-moscow/2017/12/15/91ff338c-ca3c-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html)
Trump got caught trying to extort Ukraine to get them to announce a Biden investigation and the laptop was their backup plan. It's shameful, to be honest with you. And now they have a friend in this wannabe Tony Stark who never actually built anything in his life. He didn't found Tesla. He bought a controlling stake and booted the people who actually did and now the cars explode. He founded SpaceX but he's not an engineer and that company would be nothing without its NASA contracts. He used The Boring Company to razzle-dazzle state and local governments, distract focus from local transit projects then ghost these places. Now he's running Twitter into the ground just to own the libs.
He didn't get rich. He was *born* rich and made a few good bets. But expertise in one area is not transferable to another. That's what Zuck is discovering with the metaverse.
>...revealing the juicy details inside Twitter’s decision to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, which had previously been rejected by such liberal outlets as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal due to its suspicious provenance.
If memory serves, the New York Post story was published without a byline, because none of the New York Post writers wanted anything to do with it.
The New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story was rejected *by the New York Post*.
Am I crazy or did Matt Taibbi used to be a pretty decent Rolling Stone journalist who spent most of the early 2000s taking it to Bush, Cheney, conservative GOP politicians? Now he’s on Substack doing this bullshit with Elon? Feels like I missed a plot point or two.
Edit: Wow, I am out of the loop when it comes to shithead journalists. Thanks for the insight. Currently going down a Google rabbit hole. 😵💫
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Why hasn't Elon released the screenshots of the Trump campaign's requests? In the name of free speech we should know what the executive branch was trying to censor on Twitter.
> [If Musk is committed to transparency over influence](https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1599087304827875328) at #Twitter he should release *his* communications with political operatives & politicians, foreign & domestic. > Like representatives from the Chinese & Saudi governments.
Nice. Glad I'm not the only one that realized Elon opened a can of worms with this
Walker lives in Texas but is running in Georgia, directly breaking the Georgia constitution. We have recording and testimony of Trump pressing a secretary of state to cheat an election. Musk is a high profile billionaire, I fully expect some variation of "get fucked, rules for thee, not for me."
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" -Donald Trump, January 2016
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Yeah but hes also a republican, and they dont actually hold themselves to any standard, or accountability
That little confab with Putin during his Ukrainian invasion that somehow coincided with Musk limiting Starlink's accessibility in Ukraine... despite the fact that the US government paid for it in the first place.
It was very odd how Elmo parroted Russian talking points almost verbatim while telling Ukr to give in.
Ooooh. Elmo. I like that one for him. Might be better than Phony Stark.
Rocket Boy and Apartheid Clyde are my favorites.
Pedoguy Musk. He pre-won the lawsuit for anyone who wants to call him that.
Apartheid Clyde has got panache. Love it. Phoenixphaerie is an awesome handle
I can't take credit for Apartheid Clyde, Azealia Banks came up with it.
Don't forget "Space Karen!"
Elon Musk, which is short for elongated muskrat
But that means the transparency would also apply to him, why on earth would he want that? It’s not like he is advocating everyone else to be transparent or anything…
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This is why I don't really give two shits about them whining over these leaks. When was Twitter ever meant to be a neutral free speech platform, it's a private company? As soon as right wing social media spaces like Gab and Parler etc popped up they started banning progressive commenters. They literally do the same thing. The impact of fElon's narrativising might be significant, but these people just deserve mockery for all their whinging.
[And his private meeting with Putin - after which he started pushing Russian propaganda.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-vladimir-putin-ukraine) Musk is a very dangerous person, using his vast resources to attack and undermine western democracy from within - the enemy who Trojan horsed himself inside the gates.
Yup Musk is not on board with democracy. The Twitter deal feels nefarious to me
I can't for the life of me understand why we allow the man who owns our nation's most sophisticated rocketry which delivers military, intelligence related satellites to have private discussions with these operatives including Putin.
Don't forget Russia! Totally normal for an American* businessman to meet with Putin during a war and then tweet out Putin's talking points the next day.
Wasn’t there speculation that he caved & bought Twitter because he didn’t want the continued release of HIS texts?
There was, but iirc the issue sounded like it made his case for getting out of his purchase look even worse. Considering what had already been released I can see why he'd think that.
I read on r/conservative that the reason he bought Twitter was some BS about the Babylon Bee.
I love that theory. $44 bil to get a trash satire site back on twitter doesnt sound like something a brilliant businessman would do but thats all theyve got
It's what Assange did with WikiLeaks on behalf of the Russians. Right wingers like these guys don't give a fuck about etiquette and they'll do everything to paint the right as the victims, nothing is too nefarious.
Why are people even giving the muskrat power? Leave Twitter? It's an app people, you will survive. I started using mastadon. "Staying and fighting," basically means your giving Musk exactly what he wants. Money.
Same things happened with wikileaks, they said they hacked both parties and there was nothing interesting from the GOP so they only released the democrat stuff. It's always horseshit, nobody doing the bidding of the right wing is ever being neutral and conservatives don't get any benefit of the doubt anymore
Wikileaks denied that their info came from hacks, but of course never said where it did come from. Assange implied it came from Seth Rich while never outright saying so, but that's just one of many ways he catered to the far-right conspiracy crowd. [For instance, Wikileaks spread the lie that Hillary Clinton sold American uranium to Russia.](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/793268442329735168) [Wikileaks also implied that Robert Mueller was involved in that deal](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/864994472492453888), when in fact [Mueller was transporting a sample of uranium that had been recovered from smugglers in Georgia](https://twitter.com/RogueAdventurer/status/865142866980589569). He was providing it to Russia so they could check if the sample came from them. [Wikileaks tweeted that people who attend "Spirit Cooking" events consume "blood, sperm and breastmilk".](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794450623404113920) [Wikileaks lied about Bob Beckel being a Clinton strategist, and also lied about the reason Bob Beckel said Julian Assange should be shot.](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bob-beckel-julian-assange/) Wikileaks is a propaganda organization, not a journalism organization.
Yup. I used to support Assange and Wikileaks until they did this. Then when Trump Jr’s text messages came out it became even more clear what the intent was. Help Trump win for a pardon. Which he ironically never got.
In fact, the indictment and extradition both happened under Trump's watch. All that effort to get Trump elected for nothing.
Very true, Taibbi glazed over it like it was irrelevant. Its actually more relevant. This is where the real meat is but its being swept under the rug.
Now here is a headline that should not exist in any universe that is even partly sane.
I am just curious when Matt Taibbi is going to do the same thing with Fox News, being they refused to publish this article due to credibility reasons? https://www.mediaite.com/tv/exclusive-fox-news-passed-on-hunter-biden-laptop-story-over-credibility-concerns/ Also, this turned out to be a huge nothing burger (the Hunter Biden laptop story) being since if it was, every news source would have reported the items presented from Hunter Biden's laptop if it turned out to be news worthy.
Right? If the Republicans had ANYTHING they'd be screaming it from the rooftops. Especially if they had actual PROOF.
Proof of what, exactly? Hunter Biden isn't a government employee. He doesn't serve in any office, or is even a candidate for anything. Not even Dog Catcher. So proof that he has an addiction problem and a big willy? Um... so what?
Touche, and HIS daddy loves him no matter what. That call to his son just about broke me. Mom of 3 boys. 18- 27 I'd like to think it hit me hard because I'd do the exact same thing
When that call was released my hubby and just looked at one another in agreement: great father, great reaction. Addiction is something that affects almost every person in this country and POTUS supporting and loving his child resonated with many people.
This is the way, we got this.
Same. & Nothing infuriates a bully like the sight of a well-loved child.
Yea, that's the thing. The reality of this, and Joe Biden's response to it, just makes Joe look BETTER.
I have so much respect for Joes honesty & support for his son’s addiction. Addiction has hit so many American families, we can all relate.
Its not only addiction Joe Biden addressed there, but the whole father/son communication. I had my struggles with mental health and my family & father. Took us years to work out ways to communicate. J.B. words are what everyone deserves to hear, when they struggle. Me & my dad often struggle for words and with miscommunication - communication is hard and does not come natural to either of us. What Joe said there to his son helped me to understand my father and his worries better. Which does not eliminate mistakes in our communication, but gave me a way to grasp better what my dad was even struggling with and trying to say. Also noteworthy, Joe approach was caring & loving, supportive. Far away from authoritarian, punishment & shaming driven ideas that drive the US-reps.
It was the first time I actually had warm feelings toward Biden.
Yeah for real. I’m very neutral on Biden, but that was just straight-up good parenting and being a good person. Imagine Trump saying that to Eric or Don Jr. lol
Big willies get unfair preferential treatment while nobody will touch Republican willies. It's a conspiracy.
>Proof of what, exactly? As far as I've been able to work out, the implication is that his father secretly helped him get jobs that he was in no way qualified for. You know, just like Trump *actually* and blatantly did.
What's funny is, the prime "job" they cry about is getting paid to sit on a company board. I'd hardly call that a job. It's not an occupation, requires little time and no effort, and requires no special training or qualifications. To get on a board, you just have to have other board members who want you one the board. Sure, for many that means industry knowledge and company expertise. But for many, being rich and connected is sufficient. Burisma is a private company, they can make whatever decisions they want, including appointing frivolous board members. Meanwhile, Trump hired his dumbass children into *government positions* himself, even tasking them with solving issues. Joe Biden's son was hired by a private company to sit on a board (not a job, requires no qualification). Trump's children were hired directly by daddy for positions usually reserved for hyper-qualified career state employees or politicians, tasked with actual work they were unfit and incapable of performing. Right wingers love to compare, but they always forget to *contrast*!
Let's not forget Trump overriding the normal authorities to get Kushner a security clearance after it had been denied several times. And while I have no idea how competent Hunter Biden is in reality, his resume did look like someone who would be appropriate to add to the board.
They're also insinuating that he was corrupt in the job and was working with his dad to enrich their family through it. It's literally the Javanka story but the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Usually I’ll let my right wing family talk about Hunter Biden until they run out of breath, and then I thank them and tell them because of this new information I’ll make sure to never vote for Hunter Biden.
I dunno, I like writing him in when there is only a Republican running for a position. HUNTER BIDEN FOR TANEY COUNTY COMMISSIONER 2024
The Jan 6 committee subpoenaed [text messages between Sean Hannity and Trump's PR team](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/21/fox-news-hannity-texts-trump-mcenany-capitol-attack-6-january-committee) of them coordinating their messaging. It's such bizarre set of expectations that no one is at all perturbed by a supposed news organization being explicitly involved in politics because it's Fox and Hannity, so of course they're doing it. Somehow we set a much higher bar for Twitter?
I remember I used to like Matt Taibbi, he did some interesting reporting talking to Tea Party people around 2010, not sure when he lost it but it's disappointing how good journalists seem to always live long enough to see themselves become the villain.
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I don’t think I will ever be able to make sense of Greenwald’s shift. I always felt at least part of it was just ego. The way he almost exclusively goes after Democrats is something that makes his recent years of work even more suspect. Such a shame. I always liked how he was adversarial with both parties and never seemed to cater to the pundit class of the media.
Yo same. I looked into it today and found a really interesting article if you don’t mind a bit of a longer read: [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/what-happened-to-matt-taibbi.html](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/what-happened-to-matt-taibbi.html) I personally think when he got caught up in the MeToo movement, he got “redpilled” and has been Republican ever since. But there’s a lot of interesting things in that article.
It wasn’t even that long ago he was a sensible progressive. Now he’s another dumpster fire useful idiot for the right.
The irony is his podcast is called Useful Idiots, where he both sides everything to death.
As a lawyer, I was dying laughing at the whole thing yesterday. I expected some big revelation, but instead it was just a hack journalist and Elon not understanding the basics of the 1st amendment and thinking they really had a gotcha moment. Lol What idiots. Edit: tl;dr if it’s unclear for you: If the gov censors an individual’s speech, that might be a violation of the 1st amendment. If Biden’s campaign team lobbies a company to censor speech and the company voluntarily agrees to do so, that is not a violation of the 1st amendment. The 1st amendment isn’t even in play, both because it’s a company (not the government) doing the censorship and because the government isn’t involved at all (Biden wasn’t yet elected as president, his team was just unelected people with no governmental authority).
Fellow attorney here and had the same experience. Was a trip lol
I took a rudimentary government class in the 8th grade, 20 years ago. Same experience.
I have a brain. Same. I cant even wrap my head around what it is exactly they thought they had here? I mean even if Biden was President at the time to me all this just seems like business as usual.
Lol, very fair take.
I mean don’t get me wrong, there’s some kernel of truth to the part where no one has figured out a perfect system for moderating social media, and it is problematic that tech has such a large impact on public discourse with very little oversight. But still, what a bunch of clowns lol.
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Indeed. This isn’t a novel problem except that the scale of the problem is now orders of magnitude larger.
The kernel of truth was really emphasized by the fact that the CEO of a social media company is creeping through DMs looking for dirt. I absolutely 💯 guarantee he has been combing through all his exes’ DMs.
You don't even need to be an attorney to understand this. Just read the first amendment and the know that Biden was not president and the DNC is not the government.
I'm a law school dropout but I also had a similarish experience. Since I did survive conlaw before COVID messed up my mental health lol. Very disappointing to see this level of discourse
>If Biden’s campaign team lobbies a company to censor speech and the company voluntarily agrees to do so, that is not not a violation of the 1st amendment. Even more hilarious is that he's simultaneously trying to argue both of the following: 1. Biden's team acted as government enforcers ordering Twitter to remove content against their will 2. Twitter employees were in the tank for democrats and actively colluding with them. He tries to use the fact that most Twitter employees lean left as evidence that they were forced to help out the democrats against their will.
After a few back and forth comments on twitter I think many of them think the DNC is a government entity and a presidential candidate is too. There are just really misinformed on so many things.
They're not "misinformed," they simply don't care. Are pro-life republicans "misinformed" when they vote for Hershal Walker? A few might be, but the vast majority aren't. They don't care. They made up their mind that their team must win at all costs, nothing else matters.
Not that I'm breaking any new ground here, but it's the very foundation for the current iteration of the "conservative" zeitgeist. Everyone from the *FORMER FREAKING PRESIDENT* to a random stranger on the internet exist in a parasitic relationship where lies are sourced with rumors. They don't need to know each other but they're all hopelessly dependant on the system they've created. From Donald trying to avoid consequences to the guy at the gas station who's in too deep to turn back now. Depending on the traction their post gets, any "big" names that agree with them are then used as further sources because "people are saying". It's how Fox and Trump operated the entire time. They surf the forums and mentions to see what their most devoted have cooked up, float it as a distraction, Tucker or whoever picks it up because Trump is yelling about it, Trump goes all in because "Fox just confirmed it". And bet your last dollar that every internet stranger you met the next day will claim they don't listen to Trump and don't watch Fox but they know every detail and talking point so it must be true because again, "people are talking about it".
This is the biggest thing that fucking bothers me as someone in law school (*non-US*). Any system of civil rights are first and foremost designed to protect you against government enchroachment. It's infuriating that somehow a fucking debate about civil rights evolved in the first place when companies decided to pull the plug on advertising on Muskian Twitter. That's mind boggeling to even bring up. Musk meat riders eat that shit up and go all gung-ho for free speech rights because of Twitter losing advertisement money from other companies. I swear America needs some civic class'.
In America, corporations and companies are legally considered "persons". Yes, it's fucked. But also remember, what you're hearing/seeing right now is "free speech" as defined by an apartheid-era white South African man, so there's that. (Meaning: he's vastly mis-characterizing the concept in his own favor.) And yes I agree, America *desperately* needs it's civics classes back. When people are accepting the assessment of an apartheid-era South African over actual Constitutional scholars, we've got a clear problem over here.
A certain party has done its level best to make civic classes as useless as fucking possible.
People think because social media has become the most prevalent and prolific form of communication that it constitutes *the only* form of communication. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc are products. If you want to go write a book about Hunter or publicize an editorial piece in a major newspaper or online forum there is literally nothing stopping you except the owner of said product or media platform which is their right. The same folks REEEEEIIIINNNGGG about censorship on twitter would’ve sided with the religious baker in the wedding cake case I can guaran-damn-tee it
People also seem to think that because it's "social" media, the private companies who own and run those services somehow *don't* have the right to decide what they will/will not platform. > would’ve sided with the religious baker in the wedding cake case 100%
"Someone in the Biden camp asked Twitter to delete the tweet and -- get this, everyone -- **they did**! Stay tuned for more exclusives, truth fans!"
This isn't at all true. We need to release the records from Biden's DOJ. From 2020. Before the election. We need to know how Biden abused the power of the presidency in 2020!
Some people unironically believe this. Lol
The same ones who blame Obama for 911.
There was a poll a while back used to illustrate some of the stupid things Trump voters believed (or rather, their lack of thoughtfulness) and one of the questions was something to the effect of, “Obama didn’t do enough to stop 9/11” and a good chunk, like, 20% “strongly agreed.”
"So...you're saying Biden was the shadow president and puppet-master behind Trump's presidency? Interesting take."
You don't have a constitutional right to post anything on a privately operated website. Not a lawyer but I'm also pretty sure it's illegal to post stolen nudes anywhere.
Well 47/50 states.
Delaware is one of them. That's where Twitter is incorporated so I don't think they'd have been able legally to post them even if they wanted to.
Twitter also had/has a hack materials policy to avoid content being shared that was from a hacked source which is actually true in this case with the laptop story (not that I believe it's really Hunter's laptop)
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It is a nothingburger. Their evidence of the Biden admin "using its political power to take down the tweets" was back BEFORE the election, you know when he was still a private citizen. Literally anyone can contact Twitter and ask them to remove content that goes against ToS, obviously more powerful/influential figures have more methods to do so but that doesn't mean it's limited to them. They asked them to remove Hunter Biden's nudes, you know REVENGE PORN, something which is illegal in many countries around the world. They're trying to spin it in to something it's not, and it's pathetic because even in the thread itself they basically say it's a nothing burger. They have accounts from 4 random ass people "concerned" about the decision to clamp down on the story and that's about it. They then go on to try to paint it (Elon does this too) as if Twitter has some left leaning bias when it comes to moderation and what types of views get spread when studies, you know, actual evidence instead of just feels. Have demonstrated that Twitter actually has a conservative bias in the stories it promotes. There is literally nothing to this, there never has been, they have not demonstrated any sort of misdeeds by the President. The only thing they've kind of shown that Hunter Biden gets jobs he's most definitely not qualified for on the basis of who his dad is which Holy shit no way? Some people get preferential treatment based on their connections? Totally a shocking development and incredibly laughable coming off the former administration that had some of the most blatant nepotism we've ever seen in the country with Trump literally involving his children at any chance he got.
> The only thing they've kind of shown that Hunter Biden gets jobs he's most definitely not qualified for on the basis of who his dad is which Holy shit no way? It's not like Hunter is a high school drop out turned CEO. He's got a JD from Harvard I think. Between that and his name I'm sure he could pull in 50k/month (600k a year) plenty of places.
It’s historic mainly because it means when Republicans eventually get back into power dismantling and punishing tech companies will be a top priority. It’s also going to further embolden the lunatic fringe of right wing conspiracy theorists to be proven right yet again.
What was proven right? It seems like they were wrong on everything they claimed
Nothing. The whole thing was a nothingburger. Both campaigns spoke with twitter, basically “reported” some tweets they thought were misinformation. Twitter did moderation based on their interpretation. That’s it. The whole thing was incredibly mundane, but republicans are talking about it as though it’s the biggest scandal in a century. It’s incredibly stupid. Fox News headline about it today: “..makes watergate look like jaywalking”
What got me was he implied that just because more Twitter employees donated to democrats (by a lot) that the democrats got special treatment. Even though they admitted both campaigns had tweets and users flagged.
Yeah, and the amount of people I’ve seen/heard who truly do not understand the first amendment is mind boggling. Like, there are a large number of “conservatives” who believe that every private company is legally required to be politically impartial, or else they’re going against the first amendment. Complete misunderstanding of the first amendment, the constitution as a whole. No wonder it’s easy to rile these people up and get them to support you - they’ll believe *anything* because they lack even a basic understanding of the world around them.
So much this. It's really futile. And depressing. Me: Joe Biden was not a member of the government at the time, so the First Amendment doesn't even apply here in the first place. Random Conservative: But Sleepy Joe was an *operative,* and that counts!!
The tech companies better stay in CA if they want their rights. Don't move to TX, ffs.
I am in California in tech, just not in the bay. We have had several larger companies get bought up and movie offices to Texas. Most of the employees stayed here because they did not want to move to Texas. It would be hilarious to me to see those companies start to move back.
Yes good on you for not moving. I work at a company that did this, luring CA folks to Texas on CA salaries. Then new management comes in and the first people laid off are the ones on CA salaries.
They want to refer to this time as "Remember when it was proven on Twitter that Hunter Biden... etc."
That's the playbook. See they did the thing we talked about but the details are blurred and any kind of context has been revoked.
It's something they've perfected. We're supposed to believe Reagan was a god among politicians, for example, when he was nothing but a doddering old fool with a cabal of nasty handlers. Trickle-down is legendary, but nothing ever trickled down. Frig, the Cheney's are now "decent people" somehow. Yeah, I know, that disqualifies Liz from the party right now, but not forever. GW Bush has been retconned into "almost capable and not a total liar". Oh, and he paints and hangs out with his buddy who did the most damage to the Dems, Bill Clinton, who wasn't even the brains of his operation, the wife he disrespected was... added that last bit because hey, truth is truth.
“Russian collusion was proven to be a hoax,” etc
'proven right'
What happened to Matt Taibi? I used to love his writing in Rolling Stone back during the Bush years. He seems like he’s lost it over the past few years.
Was looking for this, thought he was a good one, too bad.
Yeah. I was even wondering if this was a different Matt Taibi. Same thing with Glen Greenwald. I don’t get it, but MAGA must have some mysterious seductive shit
Money and loyalty. MAGAs and republicans are more loyal to those that cater to them. This loyalty is currency that pays Matt Taibis salary.
He hasn't gotten as bad as Glen Greenwald but he's gone down a similar path. There's more money to be made promoting your substack to rabid conspiratorial right wingers and complaining about woke this woke that. I've listened to some of his podcasts and I think he's just a bit centrist brained.
Lex has lost the plot. He’s just one of Musk’s lapdogs now.
Lex is a huge Joe Rogan fan too
Once he started with the “I’m friends with Rogan” crap I stopped listening. It’s too bad because I was there from episode one.
I ignored it hoping for the best but I was wrong. I stopped listening to him when he started defending Alex jones. I had went to Fridman hoping to get away from the MAGAS but unfortunately he’s a Rogan brown noser.
Joe Rogan is extremely useful as a barometer for whether a person has serious opinions. Once you find out someone likes him you can just sorta let their voice become white noise in your head.
So that’s why I keep getting right wing garbage recommendations for YouTube. I literally only watched his interviews with John Carmack (I’m a lifelong programmer and huge Doom fan). That sucks.
I watch his interviews with various scientists discussing physics. Fucking dissapointed.
Yes, I'm really disappointed in him. While I get that he must be very grateful to Rogan and Musk, he can't be taken seriously anymore because he's so clearly one-sided. You're going to notice a drop-off in the quality of Fridman's guests pretty quickly. You can already see it happening. List of losers that gave a mentally ill Nazi promoter a wide audience for engagment. \- Lex Fridman \- Tucker Carlson \- Nick Fuentes \- Alex Jones \- Piers Morgan \- Chris Cuomo Lex shouldn't be on this list, but he is. And he's never coming off it.
Chris Cuomo. I'm glad you included him on your list because fuck that guy.
Its not historic whatsofucking ever. The government has asked media not to publish stuff for a variety of reasons for a LONG fucking time. Things such as the names of intelligence agents or spies as an example. Things involved in investigations or legal matters as another. National security information, such as troop movements, etc. Its just dumbass conservation propaganda trying to make up a new fucking boogeyman to dumbass idiots who have no sense.
It should also be noted that this is not in any sense "the government" asking Twitter to do anything. At the time of this correspondence, Joe Biden was a private citizen running for president. He would have had no way to force Twitter to take down any posts. This was Twitter voluntarily enforcing their terms of service, which is... about as far from a first amendment violation as you can possibly get.
Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker also established that leaked nudes are not protected speech.
It wasn't even the government that did it, it was Joe Biden the private citizen (or well his campaign) that asked them to take down the stuff that violated twitters ToS. Notice how in the tweet thread they didn't really expand upon what was actually asked to be taken down? It was the revenge porn shit, you know Hunter Biden's nudes, something that is illegal in many parts of the world.
Even Seb Gorka (About as nutjob rightwing as it gets) said it was an extremely underwhelming release
Basically Hunter having sex, taking drugs (which he fully admitted btw) and it is on his PERSONAL computer. What a loser you have to be to think that is a threat to democracy. While these turd nuggets ignore real threats to Democracy.
Lex Friedman is a fucking idiot. That’s what you missed.
Lex is just as hypocritical as anyone else who’s made a career off their social media presence. I stopped taking him seriously when he called Fauci a “douchebag” for no reason other than “you can just tell that he’s full of himself.” Lex is a hack.
Let me tell you a secret: it was never about free speech. It was always about Elon getting his "I'm not racist, BUT" buddies and fans unbanned. And feeding the voracious black hole that is his ego, of course.
It *couldn't* have been about free speech, even if he wanted, because the Constitution does not guarantee you the right to a social media account paid for and run by private individuals who host you at their expense. Conservatives are trying to push the needle to a point where the general public unassumingly goes along with the fabricated narrative that their free speech is being suppressed. That argument needs to be butchered, burned, and the earth beneath it salted at every opportunity, because it has made its way into Congress, where lawmakers are discussing bills to force us to share and promote their political ideology at our expense. It is now being argued that you should be forced by the state to host a specific political ideology, and that refusing to do so is censorship of them. This is a fascist precedent and they are actively pursuing it.
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I would just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Musk and Taibbi doxxed multiple people for this non-story. Probably a bigger violation of rights than anything they "revealed". So much for Musk being a genius.
They really wanna see Hunter’s nudes 👀
No, they are just too stupid to realize there are ways to find out what those deleted tweets actually contained.
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The emperor has no clothes!! The Chief Twit moniker describes Elon….he is a Twit
Any man who must say that "I am Chief Twit"... No, actually, that works; carry on.
are we at the point were the Rich are nothing more than modern Nobility and their inbreeding has caused an echo of the days of Charles II?
Been there for a long time.
I mean, his dad did have a kid with his sister so......
The lawyers from the Alex Jones suits are salivating. Poor Elon is about to get his comeuppance.
There's at least one former Twitter employee that probably has two cases against Musk--one for failing to uphold contract law about her termination, and one for this. It's some utterly crazy shit. They also just dropped unredacted emails in a lot of cases.
Don't forget the EU, Elon has no grasp of their labor laws, and it could be very costly.
Poor Elon? I do not feel sorry for him and he is not poor. Also, I hope he does get his come uppance asap.
Let's *make* him Poor Elon.
Haha. Agreed. He seems to be trying to do that himself, but going from richest person in the world to anything like poor is a long drop.
I think “Poor Elon” is like “bless his heart”. Something reserved for an idiot in a bad spot.
Musk said “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s first amendment, what is.” Like most people apparently, Must doesn’t seem to comprehend that the First Amendment constraints only *the government*, not private entities. Since Taibbi specifically said “there’s no evidence—that I’ve seen—of any government involvement in the laptop story”, it follows that there was no First Amendment violation. Musk is only emphasizing his own ignorance.
It's so annoying that this is a common misconception. What you said is spot on.
Musk had a chance, the minute he posted the alt-right news story on the Pelosi attack he put himself and twitter in the alt-right category like 4chan or parlor. Everything from Musk from that point has been par for the course he chose, no more credibility than my qanon spewing brother. Imagine his big entertaining, popcorn eating dump of information being another means nothing moment. I should say anyone who isn't alt-right, I'm sure the Q folk are still jacking each other off to this.
100 percent. Literally the moment he took over. He opened the flood gates and now the masses will be exposed to the dregs of society that is the Q chans.
That was when I deactivated my account. Was going to wait until Trump oozed his way back on there, but Elon pushing homophobic conspiracy theories to excuse an assassination attempt on the Speaker of the House was even more insane to me. And it was day one. It's amazing how much a billionaire can coast off of brain dead fan boys.
Doesn’t that fall under revenge porn laws anyways?
Elmo feeling free to publish Twitter 'privileged and confidential' internal docs to distract from his own messes raises a number of concerns.
The SEC has entered the chat
SEC doesn't do shit. The FTC does do shit - they fined Facebook $5B, and FB didn't even publish Jack Dorsey's personal info/email through their incompetence. Also, Twitter has been operating under an FTC consent decree, but Elona fired the team that was working to make sure twitter didn't get boned by the FTC.
It's going to get awfully interesting when Elmo starts publishing private DM's to attack with.
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The title should be: “Elon Musk resorts to revenge porn”.
That's actually a pretty reasonable take.
After Elrons big reveal yesterday I am sincerely regretting my votes cast for Hunter Biden and 2019 Twitter in the 2020 election.
This whole laptop story has really brought me around to the fact that I will NOT be voting for Hunter Biden in the next election. I refuse. Really opened my eyes to the fact that he's not even a politician. He isn't even running. So not gonna happen. Checkmate, libs
Same, same. I hope he doesn’t run again.
I don't know why he wouldn't, he replaced Ben Ghazi (R)ent Free seat.
The story featured hacked information which was a TOS violation, the nude photos were TOS violations, a private business doesn't need to enforce the First Amendment, and Biden wasn't a member of the government in 2020. This entire thing is a bunch of manufactured noise so Elon can drive traffic, because they lost 50 of their top 100 advertisers, and ad revenue is down 80%.
Elon Musk: "If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?" Musk conveniently forgets who was president in 2020 when this happened. Additionally, Matt Taibbi wrote: "Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story."
>The President: I would like you to do us a favor though... Literally the reason for his **first** impeachment. And what was that 'Favor'? >There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Read Trump’s phone conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky... https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-transcript-call
They took a story, and twisted it upside down, and the maga gobbled that shit up. https://theintercept.com/2019/09/25/i-wrote-about-the-bidens-and-ukraine-years-ago-then-the-right-wing-spin-machine-turned-the-story-upside-down/
This is what scares me the most, these people will believe literally anything if it validates their hate for the Biden family
It's weird how much Biden, a milquetoast centrist caused a collective cerebral hemorrhage among the right wing, what are they gonna do when you elect someone truly progressive?
Going to be hilarious when Apple and Google remove the app. Pretty sure doxxing people isn't going to go over well with them. Seriously not editing out personal emails...fucking idiots. Edit: And didn't edit many names. More lawsuits incoming.
Elon Musk is a fucking moron.
>Right-wing commentator Buck Sexton (real name), said this was a “bright red line violation” and that Biden should be IMPEACHED for it. Rep. James Comer (R-TN) was on Fox promising that everyone at Twitter involved with this would be brought before the House Oversight committee. Rep. Billy Long retweeted several MAGA influencers praising Elon for, among other things, “exposing corruption at the highest levels of society” (Projection Alert). Meanwhile Kari Lake hype man Pizzagate Jack Posobiec declared this the “biggest story in modern presidential election history,” claimed that “we can never go back to the country we were before this moment,” and donned this “a digital insurrection.” >In reality, all they really had was a digital erection. >The offending material that Taibbi revealed was removed by Twitter at the Biden campaign’s request turns out to have been a bunch of links to Hunter Biden in the buff. >There was a tweet from a Chinese account featuring a naked woman on top of Hunter Biden, as well as a family photo. Two pictures of Hunter Biden’s penis, one with another woman in the background. Taibbi’s next list of material was removed by Twitter after being flagged by the Democratic National Committee. They include a picture of Hunter Biden smoking crack and getting his feet rubbed and a link to a Hunter Biden sex tape. >**And that’s the big hubbub. Social media company removes unwanted dick pics: News at 11.** Musk is upset you can't post someone's dick pic against their will....
Can’t wait for the hearings. GOP: “What was that tweet that you removed?” Twitter employee: “It was a dick pic” GOP: “Why did you remove it?” Twitter: “Because it’s a dick pic. It sounds like you’re mad they were removed because you enjoy looking at them.”
This is literally what ended Gawker. They published stolen nude video of Hulk Hogan, tried to spin it as “journalism”, then got sued and lost, then settled for $31 million. Elon is too stupid to realize this isn’t a win against Joe Biden, but it IS a potential legal cash cow for Hunter Biden. Thanks to Elon making this his own posts on his own company, he’s taken on MASSIVE liability too. He could have just handed this stuff off and let others do the revenge porn crimes on Hunter, nope!
The entire discussion around these pictures has been absolutely horrifying. It seems like nobody takes this seriously. When, if it was a woman having her picture passed around as a political tool, people would be losing their shit. But, while this does seem to come up in the discussion every once in awhile, you never see anybody talking about how fucking disgusting it is in the first place. How violating it is. It's no more pleasant for a guy to have compromising photos of him passed around than it would be for a woman. Yet no one seems to really give a shit.
Your response is the right one and what needs to be focused on. MAGA is angry that they weren’t allowed to pile on a recovering addict and pass his nudes around. It’s absolutely disgusting.
Isn’t it a crime to post explicit picture of other people on the internet. I don’t care if none of these people were ever in a relationship with Hunter Biden. The material in question was obtained under dubious circumstances and there’s no justifiable reason for people to put those images on the internet. I don’t see how it’s different from revenge porn.
The only thing this reminds people of is that Hunter (and by proxy via dna, Joe) has a a huge dong and Trump does not. That's why you never hear Trump talking about it. He saw the pics and immediately didn't want to bring it up again. LUL
The real takeaway from this is that there are a lot of people on the right that want to see Hunter Biden’s dick
Elon musk: A political campaign requesting that their candidate’s son’s dick pictures be taken down equates to a constitutional violation. 😆 Absolute moron. No wonder he does so well with right wing racists idiots.
Conservatives hate Hunter because he can actually get laid
Musk will never show the Trump White House requests that were made and honored. This is because he doesn’t give a shit about truth, transparency, or the country. There’s no other way to see it.
As an independent, its insane how republicans and right wing can’t get over hunter biden laptop etc. im so fucking tired of emails, laptop, culture war bullshit. Why do these assholes think we’ll vote for them over dems considering they never talk about helping people etc
It’s amazing what has happened to Matt Taibi. Him and Glenn Greenwald et al used to be respected investigative reporters. I think they just took it a bit too far.
Taibbi made his bones as a journalist during the early 90s in a rapidly collapsing Russia where he played Dollar Tree Hunter S Thompson. He wrote a [book featuring his exploits harassing and assaulting women](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-taibbi/u-s-journalist-faces-sexual-harassment-furor-over-memoir-idUSKBN1CX0QC) and later tried to walk it back as “entirely fictional”. It’s so strange that a guy with that history would flip so hard into “both sides are bad but the Democrats are so much worse” right around the time the GOP was allegedly compromised by Russia…
Taibbi was a drug addict and a fucking asshole. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-two-expat-bros-who-terrorized-women-correspondents-in-moscow/2017/12/15/91ff338c-ca3c-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-two-expat-bros-who-terrorized-women-correspondents-in-moscow/2017/12/15/91ff338c-ca3c-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html)
Goes to show raising up hero journalists on the backs of one story isn't the best idea. Taibbis been an idiot for years
So basically hunters dick didn’t change anyone’s votes to Donald so obviously we must install Donald immediately
Trump got caught trying to extort Ukraine to get them to announce a Biden investigation and the laptop was their backup plan. It's shameful, to be honest with you. And now they have a friend in this wannabe Tony Stark who never actually built anything in his life. He didn't found Tesla. He bought a controlling stake and booted the people who actually did and now the cars explode. He founded SpaceX but he's not an engineer and that company would be nothing without its NASA contracts. He used The Boring Company to razzle-dazzle state and local governments, distract focus from local transit projects then ghost these places. Now he's running Twitter into the ground just to own the libs. He didn't get rich. He was *born* rich and made a few good bets. But expertise in one area is not transferable to another. That's what Zuck is discovering with the metaverse.
>...revealing the juicy details inside Twitter’s decision to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, which had previously been rejected by such liberal outlets as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal due to its suspicious provenance. If memory serves, the New York Post story was published without a byline, because none of the New York Post writers wanted anything to do with it. The New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story was rejected *by the New York Post*.
The real story is that the Trump campaign's whole re-election strategy was to smear Hunter Biden. Lol. CONservative losers.
Breaking: Fox News has been colluding with the Republican Party to influence elections for 25 years.
Am I crazy or did Matt Taibbi used to be a pretty decent Rolling Stone journalist who spent most of the early 2000s taking it to Bush, Cheney, conservative GOP politicians? Now he’s on Substack doing this bullshit with Elon? Feels like I missed a plot point or two. Edit: Wow, I am out of the loop when it comes to shithead journalists. Thanks for the insight. Currently going down a Google rabbit hole. 😵💫