Social media
December 14, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I have been keeping up in my own way with the Twitter Files documented in threads posted by Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger on Twitter. I posted previous installments here (December 6) and here (December 11). On Monday Weiss posted part 5 (“The removal of Trump from Twitter”) — a 30-tweet thread. Please forgive the repetition involved in my observations. These are my comments on part 5: •
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December 13, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The Hunter Biden scandal lies at the intersection of the great reporting of the New York Post on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the Biden family business, the 2020 presidential election, the deep state, the suppression of the scandal by Twitter and other social media platforms, Elon Musk, and the Twitter Files. It is an incredibly important story. Daniel Oliver shares my assessment. He places the scandal in the context of
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December 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Elon Musk has divvied up the Twitter Files documenting the platform’s historical censorship practices to Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger. Each has posted long threads on Twitter reporting on the contents of the files. I posted my notes on Taibbi’s first thread on December 6. I have an abbreviated set of notes and queries following on the publication of parts 2, 3, and 4 over the past few
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December 8, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Twitter asserted unequivocally back in 2018 that they did not shadow ban anyone: But today the latest traunch of internal Twitter documents was released (on Twitter—a condition Musk laid out for initial disclosure) by Bari Weiss. And it reveals Twitter to have brazenly lied: Read the whole thing, but here are a couple highlights:
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December 8, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I wish National Review would let Andrew McCarthy’s columns out from behind its paywall, but it is not to be. I have paid the big bucks to read Andy’s columns and found the fee worth it, but it rubs against the grain of the Internet. Surely some one or two of NR’s benefactors could spring for whatever it would take to free up Andy’s columns, at least on occasion. I
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December 6, 2022 — Scott Johnson
James Baker is a key player in old Twitter’s suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop reporting before the 2020 election. Jonathan Turley noted his ubiquity as a player in the scandals of the past six years in “Six degrees of James Baker.” After including him in my “Notes on the Twitter Files” this morning, I now have to add this mind-boggling postscript. It never occurred to me
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December 6, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Herewith a few short notes on the Twitter Files disclosing the suppression of the New York Post’s reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop three weeks in advance of the 2020 presidential election. • Twitter is a powerful instrument for good and evil. Elon Musk’s efforts to create a new Twitter with a favorable disposition to free speech has made him an enemy of the regime. They are crying
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December 5, 2022 — Scott Johnson
New York Times media reporter Michael Grynbaum gives us the Times’s first take on the Twitter Files. RealClearPolitics links to an accessible version of Grynbaum’s story published at DNYUZ. Turning to the story posted here on the Times site, I see that Grynbaum’s story is published on page B5 of today’s Times. Between the national news and the sports section falls the shadow. Grynbaumn provides a bemused account of the
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December 2, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Forbes has a report on how Chinese state media use TikTok to try to influence American elections. It dwarfs the piddling effort the Russians made several cycles ago: TikTok accounts run by the propaganda arm of the Chinese government have accumulated millions of followers and tens of millions of views, many of them on videos editorializing about U.S. politics without clear disclosure that they were posted by a foreign government.
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December 1, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, creation of a new regime favoring free speech, and promise to account for the platform’s past censorship must be one of the most important stories in the country. The Biden administration has now announced that it is keeping an “eye on Twitter” in the wake of Musk’s purchase. They yearn for the old days when stories unfavorable to Biden were mercilessly barred from the platform.
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November 29, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Elon Musk seeks to recast Twitter as a free speech platform. He is an important player in the struggle to resist the impositions of the authorities and their supporters in social media. I am following Musk’s updates on Twitter. Perhaps most notably, Musk gives us a preview of coming attractions in the tweet below. Let it be. Buried in the Twitter Files is the saga of Hunter Biden’s laptop —
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November 28, 2022 — Scott Johnson
If he’s writing his own material and running his own Twitter feed, I infer that Elon Musk has an excellent sense of humor. It must help him keep things in perspective. I take it, for example, that he understands his critics quite well. He doesn’t want to drive them off Twitter. He will take them on in his own way. He resists their efforts to continue the censorship regime they
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November 26, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The Associated Press is one of the anchors of the garbage media in its newsprint form. The garbage manifests in a wide variety of aspects. See, for example, its story “Musk says granting amnesty to suspended Twitter accounts.” The headline is a bit difficult to decipher and the “reporter” who wrote it is not identified. The story, however, is datelined San Francisco. Perhaps that is all ye need to know.
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November 23, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Resuming our coverage of the Twitter death watch, I can report that Twitter is still up and running and that the new owner seems to think there is life in the old bird yet. World Cup traffic hit almost 20,000 tweets per second today! Great work by Twitter team managing record usage. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022 Assuming that Musk is writing his own material, I think he
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November 21, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The bien pensants (hereinafter “bp“) are afflicted with heartburn resulting from Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. The heartburn is thus a good sign. Ditto with what seems to me wishful thinking regarding Twitter’s impending demise. One can’t miss the intense desire among the bp for Musk to fail. I hope he makes a go of it. The bp devoutly resist a social media platform whose limits they don’t control. I
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November 20, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Every one of the several news services to which I subscribe email updates reported last night: Trump returns to Twitter! Elon Musk had been conducting his own Twitter poll on the subject — I think his purpose was facetious, but nobody seems to grok Musk’s sense of humor. The vote was close. At one point Musk suggested that bots were voting — again, I doubt we are to take the
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November 19, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I take it from Elon Musk’s Twitter feed that he has the engineering help needed to keep the site up and running. These must be some of the “hard-core” employees who have signed up for continuing duty under their new taskmaster. Just leaving Twitter HQ code review pic.twitter.com/pYcXRTJm14 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2022 The new taskmaster has imposed a new regime. I take it that he is unintimidated
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