In what could be the biggest breaking news story of the last decade, Matt Taibbi broke what he calls The Twitter Files. This information was brought to light in a twitter thread posted by Taibbi and outlines how Twitter was used to censor American citizens at the request of both political parties. There has been no greater infringement on American’s 1st Amendment Rights since the Espionage Act of 1917.
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
The Twitter Files aims to be a series, and this thread was the first episode in it. It discussed how both the Biden and Trump White House’s had direct email contact with Twitter developers where they instructed Twitter to remove or censor certain types of content.
10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
While Taibbi makes the point that both party’s were acting in this manner he explains that since Twitter’s developers tended to have a liberal basis and over time they started to censor more conservative view points. Taibbi goes into how Twitter actively censored the Hunter Biden laptop story.
18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
There is a clear and obvious issue when people in charge of Twitter have no care for the 1st Amendment. While there is some legal ambiguity most would agree that the 1st Amendment should protect what you can say on Twitter without being censored. It took representatives from the United States Congress to step in and try to remind the Twitter team that censoring stories could lead to backlash.
30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern. pic.twitter.com/TSSYOs5vfy
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
The Twitter Files has shed light on issues regarding the social media giant that many suspected but prior had no proof to validate their claims. The active censoring of Americans on Twitter is a direct violation of their 1st Amendment writes and will go down as one of the great infringements on these inalienable rights.
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