Matt Taibbi shames himself with "Twitter Files" Dud
Do Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi even know what the First Amendment is?
by Ben Cohen
I spent much of the weekend trying to figure out what Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” PR stunt was about. Given Musk had promised last Friday to reveal to the world “what really happened with the Hunter Biden story suppression by Twitter,” I wasn’t holding out much hope. The favorite right wing conspiracy theory has yet to provide any meaningful evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the Biden family’s behalf, and every time Republicans claim they have a smoking gun, it turns out to be another version of “Hillary’s emails”.
Given the story was initially deemed so suspicious that Fox News and the Wall Street Journal refused to publish it, the notion then that Twitter tried to suppress it for political reasons seemed a) unlikely, and b) deeply uninteresting. But the Twitterverse was alight with many on the right claiming it was the biggest scandal since Watergate, so I felt obliged to see what all the fuss was about.
After getting to grips with what had happened and why the right was so excited about it, it became clear it was even dumber and meaningless than I had first suspected.
What happened
Musk provided journalist Matt Taibbi with a plethora of internal corporate documents detailing Twitter's decision to limit the spread of the NY Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. Taibbi, a darling of the Alt Right/Left, agreed to disclose the emails through Twitter as a neutral party. Taibbi sent an email to his Substack subscribers promising “a unique and explosive story” that he was going to release on Twitter after agreeing “to certain conditions” (presumably from Musk).
Exciting!
The Taibbi Twitter dump was certainly unique, but it was about as explosive as a Russian missile. The emails showed that the Biden campaign asked Twitter to “review” certain material — an act Musk deemed to be so brazenly criminal that he tweeted “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s first amendment, what is”.
And what was the material the Biden campaign wanted “reviewed”? Dramatic drum roll please…..:
And that was it. Some Hunter Biden ‘dick pics’ and a photo of the Biden family.
You might note that the Biden campaign didn’t “demand” Twitter take the photos down. They asked for them to be “reviewed”. You might also note the words “Biden campaign” and not “Biden White House” given Joe Biden was running for President at the time and wasn’t in government. More discerning observers might even quibble that Twitter censoring any story for any reason has absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment because Twitter isn’t the government.
Nevertheless, Taibbi reported on the story that political parties lobbied Twitter to remove content as if this was the digital version of the Mỹ Lai massacre. Furthermore, Taibbi claimed Twitter was inherently biased because Twitter was packed with San Francisco liberals:
Taibbi contends that Twitter was slanted in its content moderation policy because a) the company claimed it wasn’t sure whether the story was valid and b) they believed it could violate the company’s “hacked materials” policy.
Given the extraordinary amount of disinformation being pumped out by the Trump White House and every right wing media outlet in America, this hardly seems like a controversial decision. But according to Musk and Taibbi this is clear evidence Big Tech liberals are working with the Deep State to suppress important stories about…. Hunter Biden’s penis?
The hyperbole from Musk and Taibbi isn’t just misleading though, it is deeply disingenuous. Look at how Taibbi characterizes a letter Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice sent to Lauren Culbertson, a Manager on Twitter's Public Policy team:
According to Taibbi, Democrats wanting more moderation on social media to combat disinformation are actually engaging in the suppression of the First Amendment. Anyone with a cursory understanding of the First Amendment knows it isn’t absolute, so why Taibbi is pretending this is wrong or “chilling” is perplexing to say the least. There are many restrictions on free speech and it isn’t controversial to point it out. Furthermore, Twitter is a private company so First Amendment rights aren’t even applicable.
What is the First Amendment?
The email leaks mostly reveal the glaring fact that neither Musk or Taibbi appear to understand what the First Amendment is, or the unique threat society faces from rampant disinformation propagated through private social media platforms. No aspect of the Hunter Biden laptop story has anything to do with the First Amendment. Twitter’s decision to suppress the story as it emerged has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Elon Musk’s decision to publish private company files on Twitter’s internal history has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Matt Taibbi isn’t a brave journalist exposing “Deep State” attempts to suppress free speech. Elon Musk isn’t a benevolent billionaire looking out for the future of civilization.
The whole sordid affair is basically a grotesque right wing disinformation campaign used to attack President Biden’s family and “establishment Democrats”.
The right has gone to extreme lengths to smear Hunter Biden over his deeply troubled personal life for overtly political reasons. They have had little success proving criminal wrongdoing, so have now been gifted a new angle on the story from Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi. They might not be able to nail the “Biden crime family”, but they can put the Democrats and Big Tech on trial for censorship. As Tucker Carlson told his audience, the “documents show a systemic violation of the First Amendment, the largest example of that in modern history.”
It doesn’t show anything of the sort, but the meme is out and we are going to be hearing about it for a long, long time.
It is a shame Matt Taibbi has lowered himself to become part of this debacle, but not surprising. This is a “journalist” who insisted Trump wasn’t a threat to democracy, that there was no cause to impeach him, and that Russia was never going to invade Ukraine. According to Taibbi, all of the above was in fact a neoliberal Deep State conspiracy designed to distract the public from centrist liberal corruption and warmongering. Give Taibbi a story where he can portray Democrats as the bad guys and he’ll run with it no matter how stupid it is.
I am not opposed to exposing political influence in Big Tech. I do however want to see meaningful evidence it exists. Musk and Taibbi have exposed the fact that Twitter suppressed a story they believed could have been disinformation and/or violated their Terms of Service. Twitter got it wrong and reversed course. That’s it.
A bigger story is how malevolent right wing actors have used Twitter to spread rampant disinformation on everything from Covid-19 to Nancy Pelosi and the Biden White House. Given one of those actors now owns the platform, don’t expect any file dumps or helpful assists from “impartial” Substackers.
We’re due another “Twitter Files” special in a few days so stay tuned for a deep dive in this week’s podcast.
Substack shout out!
Jessica Craven at Chop Wood, Carry Water runs a fantastic newsletter with a ton of resources on how to take America back from right wing crazy people. You can check out her newsletter here:
Listen to the latest episode of The Banter Roundtable Podcast:
Trump's Very, Very Bad Week
The legal issues surrounding the ex-president are mounting.
And we’re back! In this week’s scintillating episode of The Banter Roundtable Podcast, Ben, Bob, and Justin discuss Trump’s week from hell. Not only did he dine with Nazis, his legal troubles are so serious it isn’t clear he’ll make it through the primary season next year. We talk about precedent one of the recent Jan. 6th court rulings sets that will have Trump sweating bullets. We talk Elon Musk’s war on liberals, and have a “Both Sides” from hell segment including…more Republican sex predators (shock, horror!).
Weird, multiple gov’t intelligence agencies burrow themselves into social platforms in order to promote their preferred narrative and quash dissenting evidence. That’s a dud?
This is gov’t coercing the press to do things it could not do itself…. because of the first amendment.
Last time I bother reading your uncurious page.
Musk & Taibbi are trying to equate fact-checking & Terms of Service enforcement by pre-Musk twitter with partisan censorship. It's obvious bullsh*t that no one is buying. I'm still laughing at someone's comment on twitter that Matt Taibbi is the Tulsi Gabbard of substack.