The TwitterGate is here! Elon Musk and the new management of Twitter have decided to make public all the documents pertaining to what is known as the "Hunter Biden Laptop" story, and how the New York Post scoop that brought it to light and the people that were sharing it were silenced by the social media platform.
What is the Hunter Biden Laptop story
The laptop story made headlines just some weeks before the US elections in 2020 where incumbent US President, Joe Biden was running against former president Donald Trump who was seeking a second mandate at the time. Thousands of emails related to the Bidens started to circulate to the press. The source was identified as being the laptop of Hunter Biden, son of then Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden. The laptop was left to a computer repair shop by a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden. The laptop's owner never returned back to pick it up from the store. This made the computer shop owner turn it over to the FBI. That's the easiest tl;dr as I have no competence in analysing the contents that were found inside the laptop.
Elon Musk released Twitter internal communication about the Laptop story.
Mr. Musk decided to make public the communication and internal decision making processes about the Hunter Biden story. This happened after a Twitter poll that "Chief Twit" ran asking his followers if he should release the Twitter files on free speech suppression. The poll as expected rendered positive results, making Elon state that the public deserves to know what happened behind the scenes.
Hunter Biden Part 1
What we have learned so far is that both Democrats and Republicans had a direct line to the Twitter Safety team where they could ask for posts that they perceived were false or problematic to be taken down.
We also learned that Twitter Safety took down some of the posts because they were personal images shared without Hunter Biden's consent, or at least that was part of their reasoning. If yes, that's understandable as those images would be breaching the platforms TOS.
Then we so what were the internal dynamics in play behind these decisions. According to the documents Twitter Head of Legal, Policy and Trust Vijaya Gadde played a pivotal role in the process of suppressing the story whereas CEO Jack Dorsey wasn't actively involved.
Last the decision to suppress the story was contentious with various Twitter execs arguing back and forth if the policy of blocking it under hacked material TOS was valid and could stand as a case if questioned.
Initial conclusions
We have to wait for the other 3 parts of the Twitter Files suppression story to see if there is something more noteworthy to this. Author and Substack blogger Matt Taibi, who was given exclusive access to the documents by Twitter posted that the files will be made public in different installments. I'm not sure why Elon or Twitter didn't publish themselves the story or share the documents. Most of the things that have come to light so far are stuff that people already suspected.
How private companies deal with content moderation is not a matter of the 1st Amendment. Their goal is to generate profit for their shareholders and satisfy their advertisers. If you feel that your opinions are censored on a social platform, move to another one. If you want to become un-censorable, the best solution can be found in the form of decentralized social networks built on the Blockchain like Hive.
What is particularly important in the whole story so far is that we had the opportunity to see how companies like Twitter operate internally. How moderation is applied, effected, or influenced and what are the processes in place for that.
Furthermore, we were shown original primary sources. That's a first for centralized social media platforms. It can set the stage for other platforms to follow suit. Openness helps in building trust.
Will this become a trend and will Elon continue to make public other instances of suppression or other social media interference? We don't know yet.
Will Elon make available and open source the internal deliberations that are taking place after he purchased Twitter or will he only bring to light decision making processes from the previous management? That remains to be seen.
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