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The Twitter Files
Confirmed

Twitter Files #1: inside the laptop story decision

Matt Taibbi's first Twitter Files thread, released with Elon Musk's approval, showed internal debate over the 2020 block of the NY Post laptop story. It showed staff doubting the hacked-materials rationale and a list of tweets flagged by the 'Biden team' marked 'Handled.' Taibbi said he saw no evidence of government involvement in the laptop decision.

Dec 2, 2022
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Whose side it served: Democrats

The laptop-story block served the Biden campaign, though the specific 'Biden team' takedowns were of nude images and Trump White House requests were also honored.

What the record shows

Taibbi wrote that the decision was made at the highest levels without CEO Jack Dorsey's knowledge, with Vijaya Gadde playing a key role. Communications staff questioned whether the hacked-materials policy really applied; one wrote of 'struggling to understand the policy basis.' A screenshot showed an executive writing 'More to review from the Biden team' and the reply 'Handled.' Taibbi wrote that requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna privately wrote to Gadde warning of a speech backlash. Taibbi wrote there was no evidence he had seen of any government involvement in the laptop story.

In their words

“More to review from the Biden team.”— Unnamed Twitter executive (internal message) · source
“no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement”— Matt Taibbi, journalist · source
“I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”— Trenton Kennedy, Twitter communications staff (internal) · source
The other side

Four of the five 'Biden team' tweets were later found in web archives to contain nude images of Hunter Biden, which violated Twitter's non-consensual nudity policy; Biden was then a private candidate, not a government official. Taibbi himself reported that the Trump White House also had requests received and honored.

Sources

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