Social media
December 24, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Explaining the disruption of his professional routine, Matt Taibbi explains: “The reason for all this of course is the Twitter Files story.” Responding to the FBI’s drivel, Taibbi adds this preview to what we have seen so far: This last week saw the FBI describe Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger and me as “conspiracy theorists” whose “sole aim” is to discredit the agency. That statement will look ironic soon, as we
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December 19, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Late yesterday afternoon Matt Taibbi posted a Twitter Files Supplemental thread running to 12 substantive tweets. It is accessible here. I urge interested readers to check it out. Here are my notes and comments. • The New York Post covers it here. The Daily Mail covers it here. Mainstream media eyes remain wide shut. The revelations of the Twitter Files suggest that Elon Musk may not be public enemy number
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December 17, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Matt Taibbi posted a sixth installment of the Twitter Files in a 45-part Twitter thread yesterday afternoon. The thread is accessible here. This review is occasioned by the posting of Taibbi’s part 6. • I posted previous installments of my notes here (December 6, on Taibbi’s part 1), here (December 11, on part 2 by Bari Weiss, part 3 by Taibbi, and part 4 by Michael Shellenberger), and here (December
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December 15, 2022 — Scott Johnson
At her Free Press site Bari Weiss has posted background on the reporting behind the Twitter Files I have noted so far. She calls her backgrounder “Our reporting at Twitter.” (The URL suggests she might have called it “Why we went to Twitter.”) It answers certain of the questions I raised in my previous “Notes on the Twitter Files.” She writes (links omitted): [W]e—the journalist Matt Taibbi; investigative reporters connected
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December 14, 2022 — John Hinderaker
We know now that tech companies cooperated with government officials to suppress Americans’ freedom of speech. Was that legal? Of course! say liberals: the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private companies. (This is the first and only time when liberals accord such unfettered discretion to private industry.) But is that really the end of the story? In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, law professor Philip Hamburger took up the question. He
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December 14, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Jack Dorsey is the founder and former CEO of Twitter. In a social media post, he comments on the current Twitter controversies and takes the blame for the company’s problems: There’s a lot of conversation around the #TwitterFiles. Here’s my take, and thoughts on how to fix the issues identified. I’ll start with the principles I’ve come to believe…based on everything I’ve learned and experienced through my past actions as
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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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