[nkozyra]

This does seem to be the play.

There is a story here! Politicians having direct access to social networks to suppress narratives they don't like is interesting. But 1) I don't think it's surprising and 2) it appears it was not politically motivated at least in a bipartisan sense.

A story but one delivered with the kind of panache to drive traffic.

[freejazz]

> There is a story here! Politicians having direct access to social networks to suppress narratives they don't like is interesting.

That's not even remotely news. This came out years ago. Still, your characterization is a bit ridiculous.

[nkozyra]

In what sense is my "characterization" ridiculous? Should we not take Taiibis tweets at face value? That's exactly what he says.

[freejazz]

You can do whatever you want. However, Taibbi doesn't provide a single email where the Biden campaign asks to suppress a narrative. There is an email where the Biden campaign asks for twitter to take down a few posts that were naked pictures of Hunter. I'm not quite sure that's what I'd call suppressing a narrative. Frankly, given the email, I find it hard to believe that could have been even most of the Hunter nude posts on Twitter. My reasonable assumption is that they were particularly graphic.

None of this news today except that Taibbi has now proven that Twitter actually did have an internal debate about whether to take down the laptop story, which runs contrary to his own narrative.

That's why I think your characterization is ridiculous because there is: a) no suppressing of narratives; b) the "direct connection" is the same thing any other VIP would have. Further to this, the guy was running for President of the united states, I can think of dozens of reasonable reasons why the campaign would want to have quick access to someone at Twitter. Also, your characterization is ridiculous because on top of assuming all that (which are contrary to the facts you are pointing to), you also made all of these assumptions without even bother to inquire what it was that was taken actually taken down.

[nkozyra]

Your argument is not that they didn't have elevated access to control content on Twitter but that it was a specific type of access and a specific type of content.

And I agree! My point is they had that channel, not a value judgement on whether that was in or out of twitters terms of service.

You may say this was known years ago, and that's also true, but the general public probably doesn't know this.

[starkd]

That's flat out false. He clearly claimed in the thread there was clear evidenceof political motivation. For one, he cited the political donations are heavily slanted. Secondly, he mentioned the mass confusion that reigned as they tried to fit it into the hacked material case, even though it was clearly was not. It was a NY Post story about a lost/abandoned laptop. Read the thread.

A lone company acting on its own to suppress a story may not be surprising to you, but collaboration between government and a corporation to suppress speech definitely should be. It's where fascism begins.