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Popular social media platform is making a comeback thanks to an unlikely hero

Fri, 01 May 2026 13:30:43 -0400

Does anyone here remember Vine?

Unless you're between the ages of 25 and 40, you likely have no idea what I’m talking about, but for millennials, Vine was basically a precursor to TikTok, wherein creators would have a maximum of six seconds to put together a video conveying what they wanted to say.

It was a snapshot of a very specific slice of pop culture during the early-to-mid 2010s and delivered more memes per capita than any social media platform outside of Twitter.

Then, just as quickly as it came, it disappeared, making way for other brain-rot vessels like the aforementioned TikTok.

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Well, what if I told you Vine made a comeback?

That’s right, folks! According to the New York Post, Vine is back and better than ever before, and it’s all thanks to a relatively unlikely source.

"By bringing back Vine on a decentralized network, they are finally correcting every mistake," former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey said.

Though it won't be called Vine -- they're opting for Divine, clever -- it will still deliver the short-form video goodies it did during its heyday, this time in an AI-free format (how refreshing).

The app launched on Thursday and is available on both the App Store and Google Play, and, according to the Post, over 500,000 former creators, including stars like Lele Pons, JimmyHere, MightyDuck, and Jack & Jack, have already reclaimed their accounts.

"We want social media that makes us feel happy," said Evan Henshaw-Plath, who runs Divine and was one of the original Twitter developers, "We need more of that joy. We need technology that makes us happy… When I give people the app and they start playing with it, they start giggling, they start laughing."

Henshaw-Plath went on to say that he wants people who spend their time on Divine to start "joy scrolling" instead of "doom scrolling."

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I'm here for it.

This might be my rose-tinted nostalgia goggles talking, but social media just felt simpler and happier during the days of Vine, so if Jack Dorsey and the boys can bring even a modicum of that happiness back to our lives, then count me in.

The fact that AI-generated content is banned from the platform feels like an added bonus, too.

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So, if you're feeling down today, just put on some Carly Rae Jepsen, dust off your Romney-Ryan 2012 shirt and download Divine.

Then you can forget all about just how far we've slid in the last dozen years, if only for a brief moment.

Mark Cuban says liberal alternative to X has become 'hateful' due to leftist groupthink

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 17:08:15 -0400

Billionaire Mark Cuban seemed to realize this week that liberals’ social media alternative to X, the platform Bluesky, has become toxic and "hateful" because of the anger on display there.

In a series of recent posts to Bluesky, the business mogul lamented that people on the platform – the majority being liberals – have "grown ruder and more hateful."

"Even if you agree with 95% of what a person is saying on a topic, if there is one point that you might call out as being more of a gray area, they will call you a fascist etc.," Cuban wrote.

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Bluesky, a social media platform created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, saw a massive growth in users following President Donald Trump’s election in 2024, many of them fleeing X to escape conservative voices. Dorsey quit Bluesky's board last year.

A recent Pew Research Center study found that Bluesky went from 10 million to 30 million users between November 2024 and May 2025, the majority of them being liberals looking for friendlier online spaces.

Prominent outspoken liberals like actor Mark Hamill, actor John Cusack, and author Stephen King have moved their regular anti-Trump postings from X to Bluesky following Trump’s win.

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Cuban created an account on the platform as well, initially posting about his hope for the platform. "Hello Less Hateful World," he wrote after joining the platform in November 2024, days after the election.

In the months since, it appears that the Dallas Mavericks owner’s tune has changed. The billionaire posted on Monday, "The replies on here may not be as racist as Twitter, but they damn sure are hateful. Talk AI: FU, AI sucks go away. Talk Business: Go away. Talk Healthcare: Crickets."

"Engagement went from great convos on many topics, to agree with me or you are a nazi fascist. We are forcing posts to X," he added.

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In another post, Cuban shared a Washington Post column, titled "The Bluesky bubble hurts liberals and their causes."

The piece argued, "Because the Musk and Trump haters are the largest and most passionate group, the result is something of an echo chamber where it’s hard to get positive engagement unless you’re saying things progressives want to hear — and where the negative engagement on things they don’t want to hear can be intense."

Cuban appeared to agree with the analysis, commenting, "The lack of diversity of thought here is really hurting usage."

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How do tech titans feel about AI? Thoughts from Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg

Thu, 04 May 2023 02:00:12 -0400

With the growing presence of artificial intelligence in the everyday lives of people around the world, many tech leaders have spoken out about the controversial and revolutionary new technology.

Some of the biggest names in tech have differing opinions on AI and how it will impact society as a whole.

Even though forms of AI technology have been around for quite a while, AI has exploded in importance this year, and dominated conversation of late, in part because of how quickly the technology has advanced.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FAQ

What follows are thoughts from the tech industry's biggest players on AI: its potential, capabilities, economic impact, risks, and future.

Bill Gates: Microsoft co-founder
Elon Musk: Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX CEO
Satya Nadella: Microsoft CEO
Andy Jassy: Amazon CEO
Jack Dorsey: Former Twitter CEO, CEO of Square
Mark Zuckerberg: CEO of Meta
Jeff Bezos: Former CEO of Amazon, current executive chairman
Danielle Feinberg: Director of Photography for Lighting at Pixar

1. Bill Gates: Microsoft co-founder

The Microsoft co-founder believes AI will have positive impacts on society. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI, which released ChatGPT chatbot.

In March 2023, Gates released a blog post called "The Age of AI has begun," where he touched on his thoughts about AI and the problems it could solve.

WHAT IS CHATGPT?

"It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other," Gates wrote in his post. He also believes that "entire industries will reorient around it" and "businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it."

Gates believes that "AI can reduce some of the world's worst inequities." He believes that some of the problems that can be worked on through AI are health, education and climate change.

He has also spoken out about the letter which was signed by Musk, along with over 1,000 other tech leaders, calling for a pause on the development of AI. Gates has said that he doesn’t think that a pause will "solve the challenges" ahead.

"I don’t think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges," he told Reuters. "Clearly there’s huge benefits to these things…what we need to do is identify the tricky areas."

WHAT ARE THE FOUR MAIN TYPES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE? FIND OUT HOW FUTURE AI PROGRAMS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

2. Elon Musk: Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX CEO

Musk has made a splash in the AI conversation, but not for his support. Rather, he's been a loud voice with a more skeptical take on the growing technology.

Musk was one of the many who signed a letter asking for a pause in AI. The letter claimed AI could pose "profound risks to society and humanity." The letter also cited the potential for AI to "flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth." The letter, in its entirety, urges the government to implement a pause on AI research.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, which heavily relies on AI, has warned of the dangers of the growing technology and the regulations that should be enforced.

"There should be some regulatory body that oversees what companies are doing so that they don't cut corners and potentially do something very dangerous," Musk said during an interview with Bill Maher in April 2023.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE QUIZ! HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW AI?

The newly appointed Twitter CEO also spoke regarding how dangerous AI can be.

"AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production in the sense that it has the potential, however small one may regard that probability, but it is not trivial; it has the potential of civilizational destruction," he said during the April 2023 interview with Tucker Carlson.

Musk has talked about how fast AI is changing and growing. He expressed that it is "already past the point of what most humans can do."

"Most humans cannot write as well as ChatGPT and certainly no human can write that well that fast, to the best of my knowledge. Maybe Shakespeare," he said during the interview.

WHAT IS AI?

Musk doesn’t believe the solution is to shut it down all together, but rather enforce more regulation in an area where there currently isn’t much.

"I'm not suggesting we blow up the server centers right now but there may be some – it may be wise to have some sort of contingency plan where the government’s got an ability to shut down power to these service centers. Like you don’t have to blow it up, you can just cut the power," he said during the April 2023 interview.

3. Satya Nadella: CEO of Microsoft

Since Nadella is the CEO of a company that invested heavily in OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it comes as no surprise that he is a supporter of the technology.

He made remarks about AI as a whole in February 2023 in an interview with CBS, when he talked about how huge the creation of the technology is and how important it is for humans to test it in order to get it "really perfected."

WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF AI?

Nadella has also talked about the importance of creating bias-free AI.

"We will have many, many mechanisms to ensure that nothing biased, nothing harmful gets generated," Nadella told the outlet. This particular matter is one that has already become a big issue around AI, with chatbots that have given biased answers to questions.

4. Andy Jassy: Amazon CEO

Jassy became Amazon CEO in 2021, a role previously held by Bezos.

Amazon has been using AI in different ways for many years and the company has continued to invest large amounts of money into AI research and development.

Jassy has discussed his beliefs on AI software, stating that it will be beneficial for the future, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI.

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"Let’s just say that LLMs and Generative AI are going to be a big deal for customers, our shareholders, and Amazon," he wrote in a 2022 letter to shareholders.

Amazon has been using AI for the better part of 25 years, according to Jassy, for things like providing customers with product recommendations, drone technology, and in the context of personal assistant Alexa.

"We have been working on our own LLMs for a while now, believe it will transform and improve virtually every customer experience, and will continue to invest substantially in these models across all of our consumer, seller, brand, and creator experiences," he said in his letter.

5. Jack Dorsey: Former Twitter CEO, CEO of Square

Dorsey was the CEO of Twitter until November 2021. The position is now held by Musk, who bought the company in October 2022. Dorsey has shared some of his AI thoughts, especially in regard to how he thinks it will benefit the everyday worker.

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"I think it allows us to give back time to people and to focus on higher leverage jobs … And I think that’s really important," Dorsey told CNBC in an interview in 2017.

He also said he thinks "it gives time back to people to focus on pursuits that are creative and important."

Based on Dorsey’s view, AI isn’t taking away jobs, as many fear, but instead providing more time to employees to work on other things.

6. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta

Zuckerberg is the CEO of Meta and yet another tech mogul who is embracing AI.

Zuckerberg has had a big focus on developing the metaverse, which is ongoing, but now AI has become a key focus as well.

"A narrative has developed that we’re somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision, so I just want to say up front that that’s not accurate," Zuckerberg said during a first-quarter earnings call in April 2023 with The New York Post. "We’ve been focusing on both AI and the metaverse for years now, and we will continue to focus on both."

ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE: SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT STEP IN? AMERICANS WEIGH IN

Zuckerberg believes that AI is a positive thing that is going to have great impacts on the user experience for Meta.

"I think there’s an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful," he said during the call. AI could play a great role for Meta's "chat experiences," such as those that take place in WhatsApp and in Messenger.

7. Jeff Bezos: Former CEO of Amazon, current executive chairman

Bezos is the current executive chairman of Amazon after stepping down as the CEO in 2021.

Bezos has made encouraging comments about the work that AI can do.

"We are now solving problems with machine learning and artificial intelligence that were … in the realm of science fiction for the last several decades," Bezos said during the Internet Association’s annual gala in 2017 per CNBC. "And natural language understanding, machine vision problems, it really is an amazing renaissance," he said.

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He also discussed some of the things that AI does on a more behind the scenes basis for Amazon.

"It is things like improved search results, improved product recommendations for customers, improved forecasting for inventory management, and literally hundreds of other things beneath the surface," Bezos said at the gala.

Bezos has also been outspoken about AI taking over society: it is not a fear that he has.

"The idea that there is going to be a general AI overlord that subjugates us or kills us all, I think, is not something to worry about. I think that is overhyped," Bezos said at the George W. Bush Presidential Center's Forum on leadership in April 2018 per CNBC. "I think it is unlikely that such a thing’s first instincts would be to exterminate us. That would seem surprising to me."

Bezos has also criticized the contention that AI is going to take over jobs.

"And then the jobless…Is AI going to put everybody out of work? I am not worried about this," Bezos said during the conference.

Rather, Bezos believes AI will change what jobs look like, and how they are performed.

WHAT ARE THE FOUR MAIN TYPES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE? FIND OUT HOW FUTURE AI PROGRAMS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

8. Danielle Feinberg: Director of Photography for Lighting at Pixar

"I cannot imagine a place where art is replaced by a machine." These are the words of Feinberg, who serves as the Director of Photography for Lighting for Pixar Animation Studios. She talked about AI and art during a 2016 interview on the Up Next podcast with Gabriella Mirabelli, and discussed her feelings that a human touch is always going to be needed in the world of animation.

Feinberg started working at Pixar during its beginning stages, when all they had under their belt was "Toy Story." Now Pixar is a leader in animation and Feinberg is an animation expert with some of the studio's most notable films.

The first film she worked on was the 1998 animation "A Bug’s Life." Since then, she has worked on movies including "Toy Story 2," "Monsters, Inc.," "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles," "Cars," "Ratatouille," "Brave," "Inside Out," "The Good Dinosaur," "Coco" "Turning Red" and "WALL-E."

The 2008 film "WALL-E" that Feinberg worked on is an intriguing one to look at when it comes to advanced technology and AI, since it is a movie about a robot existing in the year 2805, a time when Earth has become a wasteland from which humans were forced to escape. WALL-E was a robot created to clean up the trash on Earth to make it a habitable place for humans once again. Even though WALL-E is a robot who was built to clean up the planet, he doesn't lack personality or feelings, leading us to ponder the character and personal traits AI could possess in the future.

Feinberg explains her job as one that is equal parts art and technology. The lighting in an animation movie, which Feinberg said is one of the last steps of the animation process in the interview on the Up Next podcast, is extremely technological. It takes an immense amount of coding and writing computer programs in order to achieve ideal lighting.

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In the interview with Up Next, Feinberg added that Pixar is "always trying to advance and get better and better" and that there has been "massive advancement very quickly."

That being said, Feinberg believes that humans are critical to storytelling, and a machine can’t do it all.

"I certainly think we can get some interesting things out of that," she said of AI during the 2016 interview. "One of the most critical elements of art is the humans behind it so I can’t imagine that ever changing."

With respect to positives of AI, she argues it has the potential to be exciting and also inspiring because it allows individuals to see things that they have never seen before, as well as solve problems.

Ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey insists there was 'no ill intent or hidden agendas' amid fallout from Twitter Files

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 21:30:19 -0500

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey maintained his stance that there was never any political motivation behind his company's decisions even after the damning revelations from the "Twitter Files" released by his successor Elon Musk.

"There’s a lot of conversation around the #TwitterFiles. Here’s my take, and thoughts on how to fix the issues identified," Dorsey began his newsletter on Tuesday. "I’ll start with the principles I’ve come to believe… based on everything I’ve learned and experienced through my past actions as a Twitter co-founder and lead: Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control. Only the original author may remove content they produce. Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice."

"The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles," Dorsey admitted. "This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. I no longer had hope of achieving any of it as a public company with no defense mechanisms... I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company."

Dorsey said his "biggest mistake" as Twitter CEO was investing in "building tools for us to manage the public conversation" instead of "building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves," saying that "burdened the company with too much power" and "opened us to significant outside pressure."

TWITTER FILES FLASHBACK: JACK DORSEY TESTIFIED UNDER OATH TWITTER DOES NOT CENSOR, ‘SHADOW-BAN’ CONSERVATIVES

Regarding the permanent suspension of former President Trump, which has since been reversed by Musk, Dorsey maintains "we did the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society."

"I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time," Dorsey wrote. "Of course mistakes were made. But if we had focused more on tools for the people using the service rather than tools for us, and moved much faster towards absolute transparency, we probably wouldn’t be in this situation of needing a fresh reset (which I am supportive of). Again, I own all of this and our actions, and all I can do is work to make it right."

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He went on to denounce efforts by the government and large corporations "to shape and control the public conversation" and that authors of tweets should be the only ones to delete their own posts.

"I do still wish for Twitter, and every company, to become uncomfortably transparent in all their actions, and I wish I forced more of that years ago. I do believe absolute transparency builds trust," Dorsey wrote. "As for the files, I wish they were released Wikileaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider. And along with that, commitments of transparency for present and future actions. I’m hopeful all of this will happen. There’s nothing to hide… only a lot to learn from. The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and doesn’t solve anything. If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof."

Dorsey refrained from addressing any of the specific revelations that were reported by independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss. However, Twitter's censorship efforts as Weiss outlined last week appear to directly contradict what Dorsey told lawmakers under oath in a 2018 congressional hearing.

In an exchange with Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Penn, Dorsey was asked point-blank whether Twitter "censors" its users.

"I want to read a few quotes about Twitter's practices and I just want you to tell me if they're true or not," Doyle began the exchange. "Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?"

"No," Dorsey responded.

"Are you censoring people?" Doyle asked next.

"No," Dorsey answered.

"Twitter's shadow-banning prominent Republicans... is that true?" Doyle followed.

"No," Dorsey said.

Reporting from Weiss suggests the opposite.

"A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users," Weiss began her thread Thursday.

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Weiss pointed to Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.

"Twitter secretly placed him on a 'Trends Blacklist,' which prevented his tweets from trending," Weiss reported.

The Free Press editor reported that 91�� host Dan Bongino was placed on a "Search Blacklist" and Twitter had Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk on "Do Not Amplify."

Weiss revealed that "shadow-banning," a term described to secretly suppressing the presence of Twitter users without their knowledge, was referred to by Twitter executives and employees as "Visibility Filtering" or "VF."

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Internal communications also reveal Twitter staffers admitting that the popular account Libs of TikTok never violated its "hateful conduct" policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so.

There are growing calls by GOP lawmakers, who will take control of the House of Representatives next month, to bring current and former Twitter staffers, including Dorsey, to testify about the censorship efforts that transpired at the tech giant before Musk's takeover.

Indict Jack Dorsey? Former Twitter CEO's potential legal liability after congressional testimony

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 10:06:51 -0500

The latest Tw.itter disclosures have raised potential legal liability for Twitter and its executives. No one appears more at risk than Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey

It is an ironic turn of events since Dorsey supported the takeover by Elon Musk and has called for all files to be released without filtering. Dorsey has the feel of a "designated defendant," someone who was pushed forward by others to take any legal hit.

On its face, Dorsey has vulnerability after the latest release. He was repeatedly asked by members of Congress about censoring and shadow-banning, which has now been confirmed in these files.

In September 2018, Dorsey testified under oath and denied what these files appear to now confirm. Rep. Mike Doyle, D., Pa., asked, "Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?"

TWITTER FILES REVEAL TRUMP BAN CAME AFTER MICHELLE OBAMA, OTHERS PRESSURED THE COMPANY

Dorsey responded, "No."

Doyle then asked "Are you censoring people?"

"No," Dorsey said.

"Twitter’s shadow-banning prominent Republicans… is that true?" Doyle asked.

Dorsey again said no.

Dorsey was also asked about my prior testimony on private censorship in circumventing the First Amendment as a type of censorship by surrogate. Dorsey and the other CEOs were asked about my warning of a "‘little brother’ problem, a problem which private entities do for the government that which it cannot legally do for itself." In response, Dorsey insisted that "we don’t have a censoring department."

It now appears that the entire company was operating as a censoring department. However, there were in fact super-censors. Dorsey did not mention the Strategic Response Team-Global Escalation Team (SRT-GET), which operated above what journalist Bari Weiss described as "a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper."

That group reportedly included Vijaya Gadde, head of Legal, Policy and Trust; Yoel Roth, the global head of Trust and Safety; CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.

Notably, others at the company made similar denials as Dorsey but may not have done so under oath. In 2018, Gadde and head of product Kayvon Beykpour expressly declared, "We do not shadow-ban. And we certainly don't shadow-ban based on political viewpoints or ideology."

‘TWITTER FILES’ MOST OVERLOOKED FINDING? THAT DORSEY, ZUCKERBERG AND HALF OF AMERICA SHRUG AT CENSORSHIP

Even if untrue, lying in public is generally not a crime. However, when you repeat a lie to federal investigators or Congress or the courts, it becomes a federal offense.

The question is whether Dorsey was left in the dark on these decisions. He was reportedly a member of SRT-GET. However, some of the files indicate that these decisions may have been made without his knowledge. That includes the decision on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which Dorsey called a "total mistake."

Dorsey could quibble over the term "shadow-banning" but the question was obviously meant as a follow-up to the inquiry over "rigging" discourse on the platform. He could also stress other answers, where he tied "shadow-banning" to a more subjective notion of political bias. For example, Dorsey also repeated these statements in public, including an appearance with Sean Hannity on Fox, when he was asked if "Twitter has ever been involved in shadow-banning, Dorsey again categorically denied such practices: "We do not shadow-ban according to political ideology or viewpoint."

For most people, Dorsey's comments clearly suggested that there was no shadow-banning. However, he could claim that he knew that they were shadow-banning but that they were not doing so "according to political ideology or viewpoint." That is clearly refuted by the new files showing a hair-triggered censorship system directed against conservative and Republican posters.

The other defense is lack of knowledge but, even if accepted, that will raise the question of whether this was a case of a designated defendant or willful blindness.

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In some cases, there is a suspicion that corporations will assign some executive to sign off on compliance or certifications as the fall guy or designated defendant if things go wrong. The chump is often a junior lawyer or executive who takes personal responsibility for certifying a false fact.

Dorsey is clearly no chump or junior executive. The question is then whether this was a case of willful blindness or an attempt by other executives like Gadde or Roth to give him plausible deniability by keeping him in the dark. He then became the public face in unequivocally and confidently denying practices like shadow-banning.

The greatest defense for Dorsey may be found in the Justice Department itself. Any prosecution of Twitter executives could prove a hard sell for Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose department has been repeatedly accused of pronounced political bias.

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While Garland has aggressively pursued contempt sanctions against Trump associates, it is not clear if he would prove as aggressive with Democratic allies like Dorsey or other Twitter executives. He could face that question if the House under the GOP pursues perjury or contempt sanctions.

Dorsey once said about Twitter that "It's really complex to make something simple." He may now be hoping that his answers before Congress were simple enough to make any prosecution complex.

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Twitter Files reveal former CEO Jack Dorsey was on vacation when Trump was suspended, delegated responsibility

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 21:05:52 -0500

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was on vacation when the social media giant made the decision to suspend the account of former President Donald Trump, part four of the "Twitter Files" revealed.

Substack writer and journalist Michael Shellenberger said that Dorsey was on vacation in the French Polynesia during the week of January 4-8, 2021, when the Twitter account of Trump was suspended.

Twitter announced the suspension of Trump's account on Jan. 8, 2021, citing "the risk of further incitement of violence." Shellenberger said Dorsey delegated much of the responsibility of the situations handling to Twitter's former Head of Trust & Safety, Yoel Roth, and former Head of Legal Policy and Trust Vijaya Gadde.

"Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia the week of January 4-8, 2021. He phoned into meetings but also delegated much of the handling of the situation to senior execs @yoyoel, Twitter’s Global Head of Trust and Safety, and @vijaya Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust," Shellenberger tweeted on Saturday.

TWITTER FILES PART 4 DROP SHOWING EXECUTIVES' APPROACH TO 'CHANGE OF POLICY FOR TRUMP ALONE'

Dorsey emailed employees at Twitter on Jan. 7, 2021, stating that the company "needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension," Shellenberger said, paraphrasing the former Twitter CEO.

After Dorsey sent the email, Roth said in a Slack message that "people who care about this are thinking deeply about these problems and aren't happy with where we are.

Later on Jan. 7, 2021, Roth said in another Slack message that "Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity," Shellenberger revealed, showing that Roth shared a new five "strike" approach to permanent suspensions.

"Directional approach would be something like: Labels which are severe enough to result in disabled engagements incur strikes. Strike 1: Label only Strike 2: Label only Strike 3: Label + 12 hour timeout Strike 4: Label + 7 day timeout Strike 5: Perm Suspension," Roth said in a Slack message.

ELON MUSK'S SECOND INSTALLMENT OF ‘TWITTER FILES’ REVEALS ‘SECRET BLACKLISTS,' BARI WEISS REPORTS

"Progress," a Twitter employee responded to Yoel's Slack. "Does this affect our approach to Trump, who I think that we publicly said had one remaining strike? Or does the incitement to violence aspect change that calculus?"

Around 20 minutes after outlining the new approach to permanent suspensions, Roth said that "Trump continues to just have his one strike."

In the Jan. 8, 2021 announcement of Trump's suspension, a Twitter blog post stated that the company reviewed the former president's recent tweets "and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter."

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"Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service," Twitter wrote in the blog post.

Twitter Chief Elon Musk made the decision to restore Trump's Twitter account following poll on Nov. 18.

Dem Rep silent on Twitter Files after calling shadowban claims 'a load of crap’

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 22:33:57 -0500

Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Penn., is remaining mum following the explosive revelations to come out of the "Twitter Files" that were reported by journalist Bari Weiss after he called Twitter's censorship efforts towards conservatives "a load of crap."

During a 2018 congressional hearing featuring then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Doyle attempted to defend the tech giant by suggesting Twitter was an "equal opportunity shadow banner" and that it was based on algorithms versus political bias.

"You didn't just shadow-ban four Republicans. You shadow-banned 600,000 people across your entire platform across the globe who had people following them that had certain behaviors that caused you to downgrade them coming up. Is that correct?" Doyle asked.

"Correct," Dorsey responded.

"So this was never targeted at conservative Republicans. This was targeted to a group of 600,000 people because of the people who followed them. And then you determine that wasn't fair and you corrected that practice, is that correct?" Doyle followed.

"Correct," Dorsey said.

TWITTER FILES PART 3 REVEALS WHAT LED TO TRUMP'S REMOVAL FROM SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM

"So just for the record, since you've been singled out as a social media platform before this committee, Twitter undertook no behavior to selectively censor conservative Republicans or conservative voices on your platform. Is that correct?" the Democrat sad

"Correct, Dorsey answered.

Good," Doyle replied. "So let the record reflect that because that's the whole reason supposedly we're here, because House Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote our chairman a letter and said ‘Hey, this is going on and we think your committee should investigate it,’ and it's a load of crap."

Doyle's office did not immediately respond to 91��' requests for comment.

Ironically, Doyle also went viral for a separate exchange he had with Dorsey at that same hearing, asking him point-blank whether Twitter censors conservatives.

"I want to read a few quotes about Twitter's practices and I just want you to tell me if they're true or not," Doyle said. "Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?"

"No," Dorsey responded.

"Are you censoring people?" Doyle asked next.

"No," Dorsey answered.

"Twitter's shadow-banning prominent Republicans... is that true?" Doyle followed.

"No," Dorsey said.

During the same hearing, then-Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, grilled Dorsey over his past claim that Democratic politicians, too, were affected by shadow-banning. When asked if he could identify which Democrats were affected, Dorsey refused to say, claiming it was for "protecting their privacy."

"Can you personally vouch that statement is a true statement that there are Democrat politicians who, when you did the auto-search, they didn't show up?" Barton asked.

"Yes," Dorsey said.

When pressed what percentage of accounts affected were Democrats versus Republicans, Dorsey dodged from giving specifics but told Barton that the results were "not impartial."

"Do you discriminate more on philosophy, like anti-conservative versus pro-liberal?" Barton asked.

"No, our policies and our algorithms don't take into consideration any affiliation, philosophy or viewpoint," Dorsey responded.

In a separate exchange with Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., Dorsey insisted the algorithm that led to the shadow-banning of multiple Republican lawmakers "was not written with that intention."

Dorsey's testimony appears to directly contradict reporting from The Free Press editor Bari Weiss, who was tapped by current Twitter owner Elon Musk to rummage through the "Twitter Files."

She pointed to Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.

"Twitter secretly placed him on a 'Trends Blacklist,' which prevented his tweets from trending," Weiss reported.

She reported that 91�� host Dan Bongino was placed on a "Search Blacklist" and Twitter had Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk on "Do Not Amplify."

"'Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,' one senior Twitter employee told us," Weiss tweeted. "'VF' refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the ‘trending’ page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches. All without users’ knowledge."

The independent journalist also reported that Libs of TikTok faced heightened scrutiny from a specific group referred to as the Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support (SIP-PES). The popular account was placed on a "Trends Blacklist" designated as "Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES."

"The account—which Chaya Raichik began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers—was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik says. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week. Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against ‘hateful conduct.’ But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that ‘LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy,’" Weiss revealed.

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The first installment of "The Twitter Files," shared Friday by Substack writer Matt Taibbi, offered insight as to what led to Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election. At the time, Twitter alleged it was enforcing its "hacked materials" policy that banned the sharing of digitally stolen material on the platform despite any evidence that the laptop was hacked.

Taibbi reported that the decision to censor the Hunter Biden scandal was made at the highest levels at Twitter but without the knowledge of its then-CEO Jack Dorsey.

In the third installment of the "Twitter Files," Taibbi revealed the internal deliberations that went into the removal of former President Trump following the Jan. 6 riots and the evolving restrictions that were enforced on other users during and after the 2020 election.

91��' Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report.

JESSE WATTERS: Our democracy was poisoned by a $40 billion tech company that censored conservatives

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 21:02:38 -0500

91�� host Jesse Watters calls out former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for purportedly lying to Congress about whether the company was censoring Republicans on "Jesse Watters Primetime."

JESSE WATTERS: People like Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, Libs of TikTok and even a Stanford doctor who said lockdowns would hurt children were secretly shadowbanned on Twitter. Their posts were being purged, buried, secretly censored. Many conservatives were straight-up being banned. Bongino had people telling him they couldn't find him on Twitter and Bongino is the most viral guy on Facebook, but he was a ghost on Twitter some weeks. No one could see him. The media told us we were imagining things. Headline after headline told us, "Move along, there's nothing to see here." Every reporter said Twitter isn't shadowbanning Republicans even though they were. The CEO at the time, Jack Dorsey, even went under oath to say the same thing.

EX-TWITTER CEO JACK DORSEY, LIBERAL MEDIA MEMBERS DENIED ‘SHADOWBANNING’ PRIOR TO ELON MUSK LEAK

…

Turns out, he lied under oath, lied to Congress — which is supposed to be a crime — and he lied to you. Twitter wasn't just censoring conservative speakers. Elon said today, they were even censoring Republican political campaigns… A $40 billion company rigged America's political debate to help their preferred political party. A private company was doing political favors for Democrat candidates. Election laws were broken. Elections were interfered with.

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Twitter was providing in-kind contributions to Democrat candidates and none of this was disclosed. It was all done in the dark and Republican fundraising was affected. Democracy was poisoned.

Twitter feud has Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey arguing over platform’s child safety protections

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 19:40:29 -0500

Fellow billionaires Twitter CEO Elon Musk and founder Jack Dorsey feuded in the comments of a post about whether the platform failed to protect children’s safety before the Tesla CEO took over the company.

"It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!" Musk replied to a tweet showing a New York Post report on a lawsuit that alleges Twitter refused to take down images of a teen sex trafficking victim, claiming it didn’t violate its policies.

"This is false," Dorsey replied to Musk with the SpaceX founder retorting, "No, it’s not."

He added, "When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety. She raised this with [then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal], but they rejected her staffing request. I made it top priority immediately."

EX-TWITTER CEO JACK DORSEY, LIBERAL MEDIA MEMBERS DENIED ‘SHADOW BANNING’ PRIOR TO ELON MUSK LEAK

Twitter told the Post of the lawsuit, "Twitter has zero-tolerance for any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation. We aggressively fight online child sexual abuse and have heavily invested in technology and tools to enforce our policy. Our dedicated teams work to stay ahead of bad-faith actors and to ensure we’re doing everything we can to remove content, facilitate investigations, and protect minors from harm — both on and offline."

Twitter didn’t immediately respond to 91�� Digital’s request for comment.

ELON MUSK CALLED ‘WORST BOSS OF THE YEAR’ FOR ‘ABUSE’ OF EMPLOYEES

The two were arguing in the comments of a tweet posted by someone who said she and two others had just resigned from Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, writing, "it is clear from research evidence that, despite claims from Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline."

The statement continued, "The question has been on our minds: Should Musk be allowed to define digital safety as he has freedom of expression. Our answer is a categorical 'no.'"

ELON MUSK'S SECOND INSTALLMENT OF 'TWITTER FILES' REVEALS 'SECRET BLACKLISTS,' BARI WEISS REPORTS

Hundreds of employees have resigned from the company after Musk gave an ultimatum for long hours and an "extremely hardcore" work ethic for what he called "Twitter 2.0" last month to workers who remained after he laid off about half the company.

Dorsey and Musk have been friendly in the past but have been at odds after Musk's takeover. Earlier this week, Dorsey asked Musk why he didn't just release what he calls the "Twitter Files," detailing the platform's decisions on alleged "shadowbanning," without "filter."

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"If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions? Make everything public now," Dorsey tweeted.

Musk answered, "Most important data was hidden (from you too) and some may have been deleted, but everything we find will be released."

Ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, liberal media members denied ‘shadow banning’ prior to Elon Musk leak

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 17:29:14 -0500

CEO Jack Dorsey and top Twitter employees, as well as members of the liberal media, have repeatedly claimed over the years that the social media company did not "shadow ban" users or secretly censor conservative accounts.

Yet, the second installment of the "Twitter Files" released Thursday revealed a comprehensive system and internal communications in which the social media site created secret "blacklists" that applied to certain users and tweets, many of which leaned right politically.

According to journalist Bari Weiss, Twitter prevented disfavored tweets from trending and limited the visibility of entire accounts and topics—all without informing account holders.

ELON MUSK CONFIRMS POLITICAL CANDIDATES WERE SUBJECT TO 'SHADOW-BANNING' BY TWITTER

Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an opponent of COVID lockdowns, was ticketed as "trends Blacklist" internally, and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk was labeled "Do Not Amplify." Many other users, often criticized by left-leaning figures, also saw their accounts throttled.

Twitter executives and liberal journalists and pundits repeatedly insisted that shadow banning and censorship on the platform did not exist. In other instances, Twitter and Dorsey used vague language or narrow views of what shadow banning entailed when pressed on the matter.

In July 2018, Vice News reported that several Republican politicians were not appearing in suggested searches on Twitter when their names were typed in. Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour claimed it was an issue with "behavioral signals and machine learning."

The next day, top Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde and Beykpour released a blog post in which they insisted "we do not shadow ban."

"You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology," Beykpour and Gadde wrote.

Dorsey added more context to the blog post in a subsequent tweet, writing that Twitter does not shadow ban generally or more specifically against certain political viewpoints.

"We do rank tweets by default to make Twitter more immediately relevant (which can be flipped off)," he added.

TWITTER FILES: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS REMAIN AFTER 'SHADOWBAN' REVELATIONS

Following the release of "Twitter Files 2.0," Beykpour pushed back on the idea that Twitter was shadow banning, referencing the blog post.

"We never denied de-amplifying things. In fact, we made clear that we do rank. We defined exactly what we meant by "shadow banning" (b/c there are many definitions) and made very clear that we didn’t do *that*…"

He then followed up with another tweet in which he accused Weiss of "deliberately misleading" readers or creating a "lazy interpretation" by equating "de-amplification" with "shadow banning."

In the blog post, Twitter offered this narrow definition to define shadow banning: "Deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster."

Liberal tech journalist Kara Swisher rushed to Beykpour’s defense, claiming that no Twitter executive ever denied "de-amplifying accounts," and that the use of the term "shadow ban" sounded more "sinister."

Several journalists and left-leaning figures also slammed critics for worrying about shadow banning, asserting that Musk himself was a proponent of the term.

The critique was likely a reference to Musk’s statement on Dec. 8, when he wrote "Twitter is working on software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadow banned, the reason why and how to appeal." On Nov. 18, he noted "Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach," saying "negative/hate" tweets would "be max deboosted & demonetized." Some liberal journalists pointed to those words this week as proof that Musk was guilty of the same conduct as previous leadership.

However, the main difference between Musk’s policy and the policy under previous Twitter ownership appears to be that users in the past were not made aware of how their accounts or posts were being throttled by the site.

DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKER SAYS TWITTER CENSORSHIP WENT TOO FAR: 'SIMPLY NOT WHAT WE DO IN THIS COUNTRY'

Dorsey testified under oath to Congress on Sept. 5, 2018, that the company does not censor conservatives.

"I want to read a few quotes about Twitter's practices and I just want you to tell me if they're true or not," Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Penn., said. "Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?"

"No," Dorsey responded.

"Are you censoring people?" Doyle asked next.

"No," Dorsey answered.

"Twitter's shadow banning prominent Republicans... is that true?" Doyle followed.

"No," Dorsey said.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in April 2019, Twitter Director of Public Policy and Philanthropy Carlos Monje, Jr., was asked if the company engaged in shadow banning.

Monje denied that Twitter engaged in the practice, but admitted that the company would "downgrade" users' posts "if we have signals that indicate that a person is being spammy, meaning they are using multiple accounts to do the same thing if they are using automated activity, but we’re not 100 percent sure that they’re breaking our rules, if they’ve been abusive, then what we will do is make it harder for that content to be found."

DAN BONGINO RIPS MEDIA 'HACKS' AFTER ELON MUSK EXPOSED TWITTER'S SHADOW BAN OF HIS ACCOUNT

In October 2020, after Dorsey called the blocking of URL sharing or direct messages involving the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop "unacceptable," the host of "The Rubin Report," Dave Rubin, asked Dorsey whether shadow banning occurs at the company based off political ideology.

"No," Dorsey replied.

Major liberal media networks largely defended Twitter, similarly asserting that the company did not shadow ban, or at the very least, was not disproportionately censoring conservative voices.

"Trump says right-wing voices are being censored. The data says something else," CNN’s Oliver Darcy wrote on CNN Business in May 2020.

The actual data in the article completed omitted any mention of Twitter, only focusing on data derived from Facebook.

Another headline from CNN’s Hunter Schwarz read "Donald Trump Jr. has a history of incorrectly suggesting Twitter is censoring or blocking tweets."

Refutations about shadow banning could also be found on-air.

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Dorsey, in August 2018, was asked by then-CNN host Brian Stelter about the "truth" behind shadow banning.

"So, I think a lot of the statements behind the statements and the question behind the question is—look shadow banning is a very widely defined term. There’s not one single definition," Dorsey said, before reading off the definition presented in the blog post.

"The real question behind the question is are we doing something according to political ideology or viewpoints, and we are not," he added.

In March 2019, MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt claimed that shadow banning on Twitter had been "debunked," by none other than Twitter themselves.

"This has been debunked by Twitter—they say that this is not something that they actively engage in," she said.

Twitter Files flashback: Jack Dorsey testified under oath Twitter does not censor, 'shadow-ban' conservatives

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 07:30:19 -0500

Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, previously testified under oath to Congress that his company does not censor conservatives.

Following the second installment of the "Twitter Files" that revealed the platform's efforts to suppress prominent conservatives, a resurfaced September 2018 clip of Dorsey's testimony to a congressional committee was asked point-blank whether Twitter "censors" its users.

"No," Dorsey responded.

"Are you censoring people?" Doyle asked next.

"No," Dorsey answered.

"Twitter's shadow-banning prominent Republicans... is that true?" Doyle followed.

"No," Dorsey said.

ELON MUSK'S SECOND INSTALLMENT OF ‘TWITTER FILES’ REVEALS ‘SECRET BLACKLISTS,' BARI WEISS REPORTS

"Can you personally vouch that statement is a true statement that there are Democrat politicians who, when you did the auto-search, they didn't show up?" Barton asked.

"Yes," Dorsey said.

JIM BAKER, OUSTED TWITTER LAWYER AND EX-FBI OFFICIAL INVOLVED IN RUSSIAGATE, WAS A CNN ANALYST IN BETWEEN JOBS

When pressed what percentage of accounts affected were Democrats versus Republicans, Dorsey dodged from giving specifics but told Barton that the results were "not impartial."

"Do you discriminate more on philosophy, like anti-conservative versus pro-liberal?" Barton asked.

"No, our policies and our algorithms don't take into consideration any affiliation, philosophy or viewpoint," Dorsey responded.

In a separate exchange with Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., Dorsey insisted the algorithm that led to the shadow-banning of multiple Republican lawmakers "was not written with that intention."

Dorsey's testimony appears to directly contradict reporting from The Free Press editor Bari Weiss, who was tapped by current Twitter owner Elon Musk to rummage through the "Twitter Files."

She pointed to Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.

"Twitter secretly placed him on a 'Trends Blacklist,' which prevented his tweets from trending," Weiss reported.

ELON MUSK TELLS JACK DORSEY ‘IMPORTANT’ TWITTER FILES WERE ‘HIDDEN’ FROM BOSSES, SUGGESTS SOME WERE ‘DELETED’

She reported that 91�� host Dan Bongino was placed on a "Search Blacklist" and Twitter had Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk on "Do Not Amplify."

Taibbi reported that the decision to censor the Hunter Biden scandal was made at the highest levels at Twitter but without the knowledge of its then-CEO Jack Dorsey.

"'They just freelanced it,' is how one former employee characterized the decision. ‘Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it,’" Taibbi wrote.

Taibbi then shared a screenshot of an exchange between Gadde, Roth and former Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy, who wrote, "I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe... "

"… can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?" Twitter's former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman similarly asked at the time, according to a separate screenshot shared by Taibbi.

Twitter's former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker replied, "I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked," but added it was "reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted."

It was later revealed that Baker had vetted the first batch of "Twitter Files" unbeknownst to Musk, which quickly led to Baker's termination. It is unclear whether Baker's involvement in vetting the "Twitter Files" led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

DEMOCRATIC REP. RO KHANNA EXPRESSED CONCERNS OVER TWITTER'S CENSORSHIP OF HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY

Taibbi initially reported, "Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story."

Musk had been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter's past and present actions it takes when it comes to curating content on the platform, including censored content.

Twitter famously blocked its users from sharing the New York Post's reporting of Hunter Biden's laptop in tweets and in direct messages.

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At the time, Twitter Safety alleged that the articles were in violation of its "hacked materials policy." Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey admitted his company's actions were a mistake.

Many critics believe the suppression of the Hunter Biden scandal by Big Tech and the media at large was enough to sway the election in favor of his father.

Elon Musk tells Jack Dorsey 'important' Twitter files were 'hidden' from bosses, suggests some were 'deleted'

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 18:05:11 -0500

Twitter head Elon Musk informed his predecessor Jack Dorsey on Wednesday that some of the "most important data" was kept hidden from him and suggested that some "may have been deleted."

Musk fired Twitter's deputy general counsel Jim Baker on Tuesday after it was brought to his attention that Baker had vetted the first installment of the so-called "Twitter Files" shared by Substack journalist Matt Taibbi last week without his knowledge.

Baker's involvement in curating files relevant to Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story sparked a firestorm on the platform, particularly since Baker formerly served as the FBI's general counsel during the Russian collusion investigation.

That prompted Dorsey, who stepped down as Twitter's CEO last year and left its board of directors in May, to call for full transparency with the release of the "Twitter Files."

OUSTED TWITTER COUNSEL JIM BAKER VETTED 'TWITTER FILES' WITHOUT ELON MUSK'S KNOWLEDGE, MATT TAIBBI REVEALS

ELON MUSK REVEALS WHAT LED TO TWITTER SUPPRESSING HUNTER BIDEN STORY IN 2020

"Most important data was hidden (from you too) and some may have been deleted, but everything we find will be released," Musk replied.

It is unclear whether Baker was directly involved in the suppression or deletion of the "Twitter Files."

Musk on Tuesday announced that he had terminated Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker "in light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue."

And when asked by a Twitter user if Baker was able to explain himself, Musk replied, "His explanation was …unconvincing."

Moments later, Taibbi began his own Twitter thread calling it a "Twitter Files Supplemental."

"On Friday, the first installment of the Twitter files was published here. We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay," Taibbi tweeted. "We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of 'Twitter Files' – without knowledge of new management."

MATT TAIBBI, TAPPED TO SHARE ELON MUSK'S ‘TWITTER FILES’ ON HUNTER BIDEN STORY, AGREED TO CERTAIN CONDITIONS

Taibbi explained, "The process for producing the ‘Twitter Files’ involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated. Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @BariWeiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim. When she called to ask ‘Jim’s’ last name, the answer came back: ‘Jim Baker.’

"‘My jaw hit the floor,’ says Weiss," Taibbi wrote.

The Substack writer then shared a screenshot of first batch of files both he and Weiss received, which were labeled "Spectra Baker Emails."

"Baker is a controversial figure. He has been something of a Zelig of FBI controversies dating back to 2016, from the Steele Dossier to the Alfa-Server mess. He resigned in 2018 after an investigation into leaks to the press," Taibbi told his followers. "The news that Baker was reviewing the 'Twitter files' surprised everyone involved, to say the least. New Twitter chief Elon Musk acted quickly to 'exit' Baker Tuesday.

"Reporters resumed searches through Twitter Files material – a lot of it – today. The next installment of 'The Twitter Files' will appear @bariweiss. Stay tuned," Taibbi teased.

Weiss later added, "It's been quite a weekend."

Baker did surface in the first installment of the so-called "Twitter Files" shared by Taibbi on Friday night.

While revealing internal discussions about how to explain Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election, Baker told his colleagues, "I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked" but added that "it's reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted."

DEMOCRATIC REP. RO KHANNA EXPRESSED CONCERNS OVER TWITTER'S CENSORSHIP OF HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY

Taibbi's original thread similarly revealed that decisions to censor the New York Post's reporting "were made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role."

Additionally, Taibbi initially reported, "Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story."

It is unclear whether Baker's involvement in vetting the "Twitter Files" led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Musk has been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter's past and present actions as to curating content on the platform, including censored content.

Twitter infamously blocked its users from sharing the New York Post's 2020 reporting of Hunter Biden's laptop in tweets and in direct messages.

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At the time, Twitter Safety alleged that the articles were in violation of its "hacked materials policy." Since then, both Dorsey and ex-Twitter safety chief Yoel Roth have admitted the company's actions were a mistake.

Some critics believe the suppression of the Hunter Biden scandal by Big Tech and the media at large was enough to sway the presidential election in favor of his father.

With Twitter's Jack Dorsey gone, now is the time for Americans to take back control of their communication

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 10:51:05 -0500

Since arriving in the Senate in 2019, I’ve crossed swords many times with Twitter’s outgoing CEO, Jack Dorsey. That’s because, over and over again under Dorsey’s leadership, Twitter willfully took upon itself the role of being the arbiter of truth.

The platform’s increasingly heavy-handed content moderation is a clear abuse of its longstanding liability protections under Section 230, a law that presupposed that companies would provide "a true diversity of political discourse," not an echo chamber of far-left orthodoxy.

WHO IS PARAG AGRAWAL, THE NEW CEO OF TWITTER?

Examples are legion. Twitter has repeatedly attempted, with the help of partisan political groups, to suppress conservative speech that they mislabel as "misleading," while ignoring blatant falsehoods peddled on the left or by China. This problem was at its apex last year when Twitter deliberately suppressed the distribution of an unflattering Hunter Biden story in the New York Post, describing the report as "potentially spammy or unsafe." That was a lie, and the Post was eventually vindicated on the facts. But the damage was done.

As Dorsey departs, though, I can’t help thinking that the free speech situation at Twitter could get worse. In a 2018 Wired interview, Dorsey outlined his general philosophy of Twitter’s role in supporting free expression. Twitter would enthusiastically support free speech, he said, because Twitter "looks like a public square" and people "have the same sort of expectations of a public square."

Under Dorsey’s leadership, Twitter regularly failed to meet that standard. But Dorsey at least paid lip service to a defensible ideal, one that reflected the reality that dominant social media platforms have become fixtures in civic life—and so should be held to the free speech standards appropriate to civic life.

Yet Dorsey’s replacement, Parag Agrawal, offers a different vision, an authoritarian vision. In a 2020 interview with the MIT Technology Review, Agrawal rejected Dorsey’s view that traditional "public square" standards should apply on the platform. Instead, he said the role should be "reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation." In other words, Twitter should "focus less on thinking about free speech" and more "about how the times have changed."

Let’s be clear about what this means: Agrawal is saying that going forward, Twitter will openly shape the user experience according to its own value judgments about what counts as "healthy" public engagement. And that means promoting Silicon Valley values.

Even the fig leaf of neutrality is now gone. It certainly seems to me that in the months and years to come, we can expect a lot more crackdowns on user speech, and a lot more shamelessness about it.

All of this, though, bespeaks a larger problem. Free speech-loving Americans shouldn’t need to pay attention to who’s running Twitter in the first place. They shouldn’t be this beholden to a handful of ideologically-driven private companies at all.

Our laws must change to accommodate the new reality of Big Tech dominance. Fortunately, Congress has a wide range of options if it finally chooses to act. For one thing, it can reform Section 230: if dominant platforms want to act like publishers, they need to be held liable like publishers when they editorialize.

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For another, it’s time for policymakers to rethink moderation itself. Users, rather than unaccountable Twitter bureaucrats, should be able to decide what algorithms are used to moderate their content feeds.

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With Agrawal at the helm of Twitter, sorry times lie ahead for free expression. But maybe this new turn will finally galvanize the long-overdue policy reforms that will pare back Twitter’s power. That’s how Americans will really take back control of their communication—and their lives.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN. JOSH HAWLEY

Whitlock blasts 'rush for racism gold,' as Big Tech seeks to run off patriots like miners did to Natives

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 23:09:04 -0400

Sportswriter and commentator Jason Whitlock criticized what he called the increasingly prevalent "gold rush" in search of racism, akin to how miners rushed to California in 1849 when elemental gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill.

Whitlock told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that, like in the original gold rush, those folks who are rushing for "racism gold" are driving off American patriots the same way miners slaughtered Native Americans in the Pacific coast states.

He used the most recent example, the hasty false allegations made against an elderly Colorado Rockies fan that he was calling a Black Miami Marlins batter the n-word, rather than trying to loudly get the attention of the Rockies' triceratops mascot, Dinger.

Whitlock told host Tucker Carlson that there was little remorse among social media critics, who were quick to condemn the unidentified fan, after it was concluded he was yelling "Dinger" at the purple dinosaur rather than the racist epithet at Marlins' outfielder Lewis Brinson.

"Racism is now the new gold and people mine for racism gold the same way they mind for gold in the 1840s and 1850s," he said.

"We have to understand that the miners, in this desperate rush to get rich – take Patrice Cullors, the founder of Black Lives Matter -- she plays the racial game with Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, any other dead man that she thinks has been unjustly killed resisting arrest – and she's now bought four homes across America," he said.

Whitlock also called high-profile attorney Benjamin Crump another example of a prospector seeking – and finding – "racism gold", pointing to how the lawyer is consistently the representative for the families of Black Americans killed by police.

"Ben Crump has made millions of dollars negotiating settlements for the families of criminals who resisted arrest. These guys are mining for that racism gold that's out there and they are being rewarded for it," he said.

However, Whitlock later added that while people like Crump and Cullors continue to enrich themselves, the true winners in the new "gold rush" are the Big Tech giants that he noted ironically reside in Northern California – where the original 49ers sought their fortunes.

"The people that are really benefiting are actually the people that are exploiting the miners, I believe, that's social media, I believe that's Twitter, I believe that's Facebook," he said.

"These platforms promote traffic and push the values of people that love to play the racial game, love to do racial division, they are feasting off this racial division that they are promoting over Facebook and Twitter, and it's no different than the gold rush."

MEDIA LEAD CHARGE TO SMEAR ROCKIES FAN THEY FALSELY ACCUSED OF USING SLUR TOWARD OPPOSING PLAYER

Whitlock said that, just as in 19th Century California, the 21st Century ‘gold miners’ meet a temporary fortune, while their exploiters make exponentially more money and wield influence for much longer.

"They've set up this game where everybody rushes out on a desperate hunt to find this racism gold and it's not really scarce, but it's just hard to find, and it's hard -- it's costly to produce and point to it and say it contributes to systemic racism because that's been changed by laws and rules," he said.

"But this racism has a goal through social media, it's making people wealthy and they are exploiting the rest of us."

He said the victims, in the end, are Americans with traditional patriotic values, who believe in God and cherish the Founding Fathers.

Just as in the 1849 gold rush, there were victims – in that case, Native Americans who were either driven out of their homelands or slaughtered by the new arrivals.

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"And I'm trying to help people understand we are the victims of this. Those of us with traditional American values, those of us who believe in God, those of us who believe in the founding documents of this country," Whitlock said. "When the 49ers came in in the 1800s in California, they ran off the indigenous people."

"That's what's happening to us! We are allowing Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, and the people in Northern California to destroy us and run this country away from us and we need to put a stop to it."

Scalise blasts Big Tech, social media execs over censorship: 'These aren't mistakes'

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:07:56 -0400

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise slammed social media executives, including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, for censorship "mistakes" and "abuses", primarily against conservative accounts. Scalise, R-La., grilled Dorsey Thursday on the company's decision to block an October New York Post article about President Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

BIG TECH CRACKDOWNS 'AS TERRIFYING AS THE GOVERNMENT ARRESTING YOU', AUTHOR ABIGAIL SHRIER SAYS

STEVE SCALISE: Look, so we saw bipartisan frustration and anger with tech CEOs and the way they’re abusing their platforms, the way they’re hiding behind Section 230 of the law that gives them immunity from prosecution...

Yet, they’re not just acting like the town square, they’re literally censoring and picking winners and losers in a forum where they thought they were going to just exchange information with friends and be able to put ideas out there. Now you see they selectively block certain people...

It seems like conservatives are being targeted more by some of these social media platforms and Twitter’s probably had the worst abuses on this. I mean they just took Marjorie Taylor Greene off of Twitter last week for probably 12 hours and they said it was a mistake.

Who’s making these mistakes and is it really a mistake? Why aren’t people being held accountable and I asked him that twice and he refused to answer who’s doing this and if they’re even being held accountable. These aren’t mistakes.

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Twitter official says it will have a 'global approach' when tackling 'misleading' info, leaked video shows

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 18:16:23 -0500

A leaked recording of a top Twitter official suggests the company will have a "global approach" when it comes to tackling misinformation as critics in recent weeks have sounded the alarm on political censorship.

The right-wing guerrilla news outlet Project Veritas released a new video featuring Vijaya Gadde, the "Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety" lead for the tech giant, who explains the measures the company will take to suppress inflammatory rhetoric on its platform during a virtual evening on Jan. 8, the same day President Trump's Twitter account was permanently suspended.

"Whether we believe Trump's tweets are inciting violence and have real-world harm, I think we've seen that in fact, they are since coming back from the timeout to deescalate the situation," Gadde said.

TWITTER 'WHISTLEBLOWER' LEAKS VIDEO OF DORSEY TELLING STAFF ACTIONS WILL BE 'MUCH BIGGER' THAN TRUMP BAN

Gadde explained that practices that it is enacting in the U.S. are guided by results they found around the world.

"In other places around the world where we've seen violence unfold as a result of either misleading information or coded rhetoric," Gadde explained. "So, a lot of our learnings here have come from other markets. So, in that sense, we do feel like it is- this is our global approach."

Gadde spoke about going "beyond de-amplification," which included permanently suspending accounts spreading "conspiracy theories," but also vowed that Twitter would provide "adamant notice" before taking a "very aggressive step like a permanent suspension."

She also shed light on the internal discussions that took place as the violence on Capitol Hill unfolded two days prior.

TWITTER CEO JACK DORSEY DEFENDS TRUMP BAN, BUT ADMITS COMPANY'S POWER SETS 'DANGEROUS' PRECEDENT

"What we saw on Wednesday morning was really concerning to us, obviously. So a small team gathered from Trust and Safety and we were discussing the potential for violence to happen," Gadde said. "And we decided to escalate our enforcement of the Civic Integrity policy and use a label that disabled engagements to stop the spread of potentially inflammatory content, which is the content around election interference, election fraud, stealing the election, that type of thing."

A spokesperson for Twitter told 91��, "The remarks shown in the video were delivered to our more than 5,400 employees and are nearly the same words [Twitter CEO] Jack [Dorsey] shared in a recent Tweet Thread offering context around and reflections on our work to protect the conversation in recent weeks."

Twitter offered the same response to 91�� after Project Veritas leaked a video of CEO Jack Dorsey, who told staff that its actions will be "much bigger" than the ban of President Trump.

TWITTER BANS TRUMP, BUT IRANIAN AYATOLLAH, LOUIS FARRAKHAN, CHINESE PROPAGANDISTS STILL ACTIVE

"We know we are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration," Dorsey said in the video that leaked last week. "So, the focus is certainly on this account and how it ties to real-world violence. But also, we need to think much longer-term around how these dynamics play out over time. I don't believe this is going away anytime soon."

Last week, Dorsey defended Twitter's decision to permanently suspend President Trump's account, saying that it was the "right decision."

He did acknowledge, however, that taking such actions "fragment the public conversation," "divide us" and "limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning." He also admitted that the power of his corporation in the "global public conversation" has set a "dangerous" precedent.

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In a recent interview on "Hannity," Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe told the host that "in this time of moral and political crisis, I think courage is contagious, and we have all these whistleblowers coming to us, insiders helping us expose."

"We need more of these people," O'Keefe added. "Right now, I think, is the time to be hopeful if we can create an army of exposers, because exposure itself, sunlight needs to be the best disinfectant. Exposure itself is the solution."

O'Keefe: Exposure of Big Tech censorship agenda leading to ‘revolution of whistleblowing’

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 23:46:56 -0500

A leaked recording of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discussing potential future actions against users is part of a "revolution of whistleblowing", Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe told 91��’ "Hannity" Thursday.

Earlier in the day, Project Veritas published video from a Jan. 8 virtual meeting in which Dorsey obliquely discussed plans to restrict and ban more users from posting on the social network.

"They’re explicitly saying they’re going to be censoring days, weeks in the future," O'Keefe told host Sean Hannity. "So this person comes to me ... and gives us this video and it’s kind of creating this revolution of whistleblowing in Big Tech."

O’Keefe explained that the whistleblowers are having a "crisis of conscience," but many more have been stepping forward with information they want released, especially relating to Twitter.

TWITTER 'WHISTLEBLOWER' LEAKS VIDEO OF DORSEY TELLING STAFF ACTIONS WILL BE 'MUCH BIGGER' THAN TRUMP BAN

FACEBOOK CRITICIZED BY DEMS, LIBERAL WATCHDOG FOR SKIRTING CAPITOL RIOT BLAME

"So many are upset and coming forward now with videos and we have more and we’ll be releasing more," he revealed.

Since Twitter and other tech companies arguably have more power than the government, O’Keefe said insiders have been "courageously" leaving tips and "coming out in droves."

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In the leaked call, Dorsey told staff that Twitter will do a "full retro" that will "take some time," but drew focus to the platform's former most high-profile account.

"We know we are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration," Dorsey said. "So, the focus is certainly on this account and how it ties to real-world violence. But also, we need to think much longer-term around how these dynamics play out over time. I don't believe this is going away anytime soon."

91��’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.

Twitter 'whistleblower' leaks video of Dorsey telling staff actions will be 'much bigger' than Trump ban

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:39:07 -0500

A leaked recording of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey suggests that the company's policy enforcement actions will go far beyond banning President Trump.

The right-wing guerilla news outlet Project Veritas released a clip on Thursday given to them by a purported Twitter "insider whistleblower" who secretly recorded remarks by Dorsey to staff.

"You should always feel free to express yourself in whatever format manifestation feels right," Dorsey said in the clip.

Dorsey, who recently addressed the controversy over his company's decision to permanently suspend the president, told staff in a virtual meeting that Twitter will do a "full retro" that will "take some time," but drew focus to the platform's former most high-profile account.

TWITTER CEO JACK DORSEY DEFENDS TRUMP BAN, BUT ADMITS COMPANY'S POWER SETS 'DANGEROUS' PRECEDENT

"We know we are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration," Dorsey said. "So, the focus is certainly on this account and how it ties to real-world violence. But also, we need to think much longer-term around how these dynamics play out over time. I don't believe this is going away anytime soon."

Dorsey then referenced actions taken against QAnon conspiracy theorists as part of a recent purge of Twitter accounts, telling staff it's part of a "much broader approach that we should be looking at and going deeper on."

"You know, the U.S. is extremely divided. Our platform is showing that every single day," Dorsey later said. "And our role is to protect the integrity of that conversation and do what we can to make sure that no one is being harmed based off that. And that is our focus."

TWITTER BANS TRUMP, BUT IRANIAN AYATOLLAH, LOUIS FARRAKHAN, CHINESE PROPAGANDISTS STILL ACTIVE

Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe teased Thursday that more leaks from Twitter may come, saying "we've had over a dozen people reach out to us this week with video evidence inside Twitter."

"Stay tuned," O'Keefe told viewers. "They may be private companies, but they have more power than all three branches of government."

A Twitter spokesperson told 91��, "The remarks shown in the video were delivered to our more than 5,400 employees and are nearly the same words Jack shared in a recent Tweet Thread offering context around and reflections on our work to protect the conversation in recent weeks."

On Wednesday, Dorsey defended Twitter's decision to permanently suspend President Trump's account, saying that it was the "right decision."

He did acknowledge, however, that taking such actions "fragment the public conversation", "divide us" and "limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning." He also admitted that the power of his corporation in the "global public conversation" has set a "dangerous" precedent.

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In a recent interview on "Hannity," O'Keefe told the host that "in this time of moral and political crisis, I think courage is contagious, and we have all these whistleblowers coming to us, insiders helping us expose."

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defends Trump ban, but admits company's power sets 'dangerous' precedent

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 20:06:26 -0500

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke out Wednesday about his company's decision last week to ban President Trump from its platform.

"I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump, or how we got here," Dorsey began a lengthy Twitter thread. "After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?

TWITTER CALLS FOR 'OPEN INTERNET,' 'ACCESS TO INFORMATION' DURING ELECTION... IN UGANDA

"I believe this was the right decision for Twitter," Dorsey continued. "We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all.

"That said, having to ban an account has real and significant ramifications. While there are clear and obvious exceptions, I feel a ban is a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation. And a time for us to reflect on our operations and the environment around us," the CEO went on.

Dorsey acknowledged that taking such actions "fragment the public conversation", "divide us" and "limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning." He also admitted that the power of his corporation in the "global public conversation" has set a "dangerous" precedent.

TWITTER BANS TRUMP, BUT IRANIAN AYATOLLAH, LOUIS FARRAKHAN, CHINESE PROPAGANDISTS STILL ACTIVE

"The check and accountability on this power has always been the fact that a service like Twitter is one small part of the larger public conversation happening across the internet. If folks do not agree with our rules and enforcement, they can simply go to another internet service," Dorsey wrote.

The CEO then pointed to other social media giants who have also suspended or permanently banned Trump's accounts, writing "I do not believe this was coordinated," but positing that such companies were likely "emboldened" by the actions of their competitors.

TWITTER SILENT AFTER PELOSI TWEET DECLARING 2016 ELECTION WAS 'HIJACKED' RESURFACES

"This moment in time might call for this dynamic, but over the long term it will be destructive to the noble purpose and ideals of the open internet," Dorsey said. "A company making a business decision to moderate itself is different from a government removing access, yet can feel much the same. Yes, we all need to look critically at inconsistencies of our policy and enforcement. Yes, we need to look at how our service might incentivize distraction and harm. Yes, we need more transparency in our moderation operations. All this can’t erode a free and open global internet."

Dorsey then highlighted a Twitter-funded initiative called "bluesky", which he said would hopefully determine an "open decentralized standard for social media." He then vowed to commit to "public transparency" as the program is being developed.

TWITTER SUSPENDS @REALDONALDTRUMP ACCOUNT PERMANENTLY

"It’s important that we acknowledge this is a time of great uncertainty and struggle for so many around the world. Our goal in this moment is to disarm as much as we can, and ensure we are all building towards a greater common understanding, and a more peaceful existence on earth," Dorsey continued. "I believe the internet and global public conversation is our best and most relevant method of achieving this. I also recognize it does not feel that way today. Everything we learn in this moment will better our effort, and push us to be what we are: one humanity working together."

After the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, Twitter concluded that allowing Trump to return to the social media platform risked "further incitement of violence."

Highlighting two relatively tame tweets from the president, one of which stated he would not attend Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the company argued that they had to be viewed in a wider context.

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"These two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks," the company said. "After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service."

Brit Hume: Twitter's reasons for banning Trump are 'pure editorial judgments'

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 13:34:59 -0500

91�� Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume is calling out big social media companies for banning President Trump's accounts based on what he says are "pure editorial judgments."

"These social media companies have a legal right to do this, but they should not then pose as open platforms entitled to legal protections from the legal risks faced by publishers," he wrote in a tweet Friday night.

The tweet was in response to Twitter's announcement that it would permanently suspend the president's account following a violent riot by Trump loyalists at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.

Twitter employees, like many business leaders and government officials, blamed Trump for inciting the riot, and accused their employer of enabling the president to do so.

TWITTER SUSPENDS @REALDONALDTRUMP ACCOUNT PERMANENTLY

Twitter first suspended Trump temporarily -- a marked escalation in its response after months of flagging his tweets. The final blow came Friday, following posts he made after the 12-hour suspension ended.

"After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence," the company explained in a blog post.

"In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action," Twitter continued. "Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open."

"However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement," Twitter said.

In a statement following the ban, the president condemned Twitter as an opponent of free speech.

A day earlier, Facebook announced it would block Trump from its namesake platform as well as photo-sharing app Instagram "indefinitely" and at least until the end of his term.

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"We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Wednesday's storming of the Capitol led to the deaths of five people, including 42-year-old Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick.

Washington's Metropolitan Police Department announced Thursday that at least 70 people had been arrested so far.

House Republicans demand hearing on Big Tech's censorship of Hunter Biden stories

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 11:00:57 -0500

House Republicans have doubled down on their request for an emergency hearing on Big Tech's censorship of stories damaging to Hunter Biden, the president-elect's son, just days before the Nov. 3 election.

All 18 GOP members of the House Oversight Committee are demanding that the Democratic-led committee hold a hearing to investigate Twitter and Facebook's "unjustifiable censorship" of the New York Post's reporting on Biden's foreign business entanglements.

TOP FACEBOOK, TWITTER EXECS DONATED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO BIDEN CAMPAIGN

The hearing is especially warranted since Biden revealed after the election that he is under federal investigation for his "tax affairs," the GOP members say in a new letter obtained first by 91��.

"Reporting indicates this investigation is related to his overseas business dealings," the House Republicans wrote. "In light of Hunter Biden's admission that he is under investigation, especially after Big Tech's unjustifiable censorship of the New York Post's report, we are renewing our hearing request."

HOUSE REPUBLICANS CALL FOR EMERGENCY HEARING ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK CENSORSHIP

The letter was addressed to New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the Democrat who chairs the House Oversight Committee. A spokesperson for Maloney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether she'd invite Twitter and Facebook executives to testify.

The lead author was Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the top Republican on the Oversight Committee. The Republicans first requested the hearing back on Oct. 15, after Facebook and Twitter reduced the distribution of the New York Post's reporting on emails purportedly from Biden's laptop.

FROM 'SMEAR CAMPAIGN' TO 'RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION,' LIBERAL MEDIA TEAMED UP TO DISMISS HUNTER BIDEN STORY

The clampdown on the social media distribution of the story drew the ire of Republicans who accused the tech giants of interfering in the 2020 presidential election and essentially giving a campaign contribution to then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

And there's been sharp criticism of mainstream media for dismissing the Hunter Biden email story since it's been revealed that his affairs have warranted a federal probe.

President Trump, whose tweets about election fraud have been repeatedly flagged by Twitter, has said that the social media companies should no longer have a liability shield under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. He has threatened to veto the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act that's on his desk because it did not include the repeal of Section 230.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have previously testified before the GOP-led Senate over the New York Post censorship. Dorsey admitted the decision to block the distribution of the article was wrong.

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"We made a quick interpretation using no other evidence that the materials in the article were obtained through hacking, and according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread," Dorsey told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. "Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours."

Rubio blasts Twitter for inaction on Chinese official's tweet with doctored image of Australian soldier

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 18:39:24 -0500

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., took aim at Twitter Tuesday for its inaction against the spread of disinformation by a Chinese government official on its platform.

Zhao Lijian, the deputy director-general of China’s Information Department, shared a photoshopped image Sunday of an Australian soldier smiling while holding a bloodied knife over an Afghan child.

"Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers. We strongly condemn such acts, &call [sic] for holding them accountable," Lijian wrote in the post that was pinned to top of his Twitter account.

The image also had a caption depicting the soldier saying, "Don't be afraid, we are coming to bring you peace!"

TWITTER SLAMMED FOR NOT ACTING ON CHINESE MEDIA TWEET ALLEGING COVID-19 CAME FROM 'IMPORTED FROZEN FOOD'

Rubio, who repeatedly called on Twitter to take action on the fake image, appeared to reach a boiling point on Tuesday.

".@Twitter has had over 36 hours to investigate & flag a tweet by Zhao Lijian,a deputy director of #China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that contained a doctored image that could inspire deadly violence," Rubio tweeted. "They have done nothing[.] But Trump tweets get flagged within minutes".

In a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Tuesday, Rubio wrote, "It defies belief that Twitter is unaware of the image, which falsely portrays an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to the throat of a young Afghan child, as Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison requested the image be taken down."

TWITTER, FACEBOOK CENSOR TRUMP'S MESSAGE COMPARING CORONAVIRUS TO FLU

"As such, it appears Twitter made an intentional decision not to remove the tweet or even issue a warning label," Rubio continued. "We know your company has the ability to move rapidly, as it frequently issued warning labels on tweets of prominent Americans during the election -- sometimes within minutes of a tweet being sent."

Rubio then posed the following questions to Dorsey: "When was Twitter made aware of Zhao’s tweet? Did Twitter conduct a review of the tweet? If so, what was the nature of that review and why was no action taken as a result? If not, why was the tweet not subject to review? Do you stand by the process and the decision? If not, what steps have been taken to avoid such mistakes in the future?"

He went on to ask Dorsey if Twitter wants to "operate in China in the future" and if so, "has it had any conversations with relevant officials or entities in China?"

"The American people increasingly see mainstream social media, especially Twitter, as little more than a liberal echo chamber inclined to censor conservatives," Rubio concluded. "I share their concern, especially when enemies of America are allowed to post falsified and dangerously misleading images with no consequence."

TWITTER VOWS TO HAND OVER '@POTUS' ACCOUNT TO BIDEN ON INAUGURATION DAY REGARDLESS IF TRUMP CONCEDES OR NOT

A spokesperson for Twitter confirmed to 91�� that Rubio's letter to Dorsey was received and that the tech giant "intends to respond."

While the spokesperson told 91�� that Lijian's image was "marked as sensitive media," the tech giant has repeatedly pointed to its policy on tweets from world leaders and official government accounts, which states that "direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on political issues of the day, or foreign policy saber-rattling on economic or military issues are generally not in violation of the Twitter Rules."

Last month, Twitter was criticized for allowing a tweet by the Chinese government-run media outlet People's Daily, China. That post stated that the coronavirus "may come into China through imported frozen food products and their packaging."

That tweet remained untouched for several days despite an outcry from critics. A spokesperson for Twitter told 91�� that it was looking into the tweet but never followed up with the results of its inquiry.

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Back in October, Twitter censored a tweet by President Trump that compared the coronavirus to the flu.

"Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!" Trump wrote at the time.

Not long after that tweet was sent, Twitter slapped it with a label that initially shields users from reading what was written by the president.

"This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

Adonis Hoffman: Facebook, Twitter and 2020 election -- Top takeaways from Tuesday's Big Tech Senate hearing

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 06:00:54 -0500

America paid attention on Tuesday as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg both appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on "Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election."

In a full committee hearing long-awaited by both Republicans and Democrats, the two tech leaders were challenged to explain their policies on content moderation and the decision to quash a report by the New York Post on Hunter Biden just weeks before the 2020 presidential election.

Testifying remotely, Dorsey and Zuckerberg admitted to making mistakes and pointed to their remedial effort to undo the snap decision to censor the New York Post. With those admissions, the two tech CEOs provided a revealing look into how they hope to change the narrative going forward.

The only problem is that many senators, from both sides of the aisle, are not convinced that either Facebook or Twitter is prepared to make the necessary changes needed to avoid regulation.

DAN GAINOR: TWITTER, FACEBOOK WERE A BIG PART OF TAKEDOWN EFFORTS AGAINST TRUMP IN 2020 ELECTION

Here are 7 top takeaways from Tuesday's hearing.

1. Social Media Giants Wield Great Electoral Power

Both Twitter and Facebook wield outsized power and influence in the United States, especially when it comes to our national elections.

Twitter has gone from being a novel curiosity in 2006 to an indispensable element of free speech, democracy and human expression in 2020. It has over 330 million monthly active users and over 145 million daily active users. The social media giant counts President Trump as one of its most prominent and prodigious users, if not always its most prolific.

In fact, it has been the president’s adept use of Twitter to communicate directly with Americans and Twitter’s policies labeling and restricting the president’s tweets, that had it front and center before the United States Senate.

That, and the company’s decision to initially suppress the New York Post's story on Hunter Biden. Even though Twitter's CEO admits “we made a mistake," the company's decision points out just how powerful the medium has become in the freedom of expression debate.

With over 140 million people visiting the Voting Information Center on Facebook and Instagram since it launched, and over 33 million on election day alone, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company helped 4.5 million people to register to vote. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 17, Zuckerberg said Facebook set out to run “the largest voting information campaign in American history.”

2. Content Moderation Rules Are Flawed

Both Twitter and Facebook launched policies to help them protect the integrity of the election. Twitter’s “civic integrity policy” allowed it to label or remove false and misleading information, along with content that would intimidate or dissuade people from participating, sow confusion about the laws and regulations, undermine public confidence in the election and would be otherwise harmful. Twitter labeled over 300,000 tweets under this policy, with 456 of those tweets containing a warning message.

In their quest to “tackle misinformation and voter suppression,” Facebook partnered with election officials to remove false claims and displayed warnings on over 150 million pieces of content that were reviewed by “independent third-party fact-checkers.”

Of course, this begs the question: who are these independents, what are their affiliations and biases, and how do we know they are being fair?

In short, where is the transparency, which could have helped Facebook credibly explain its decision to limit the reach of the New York Post story on alleged emails and photos from Hunter Biden’s laptop?

The company’s one-size-fits-all content moderation policy has proven woefully inadequate to address the complexities of such a highly-charged matter.

It also begs the question of how the policy gets decided and enforced at all.

In addition, Facebook implemented “policies prohibiting explicit or implicit misrepresentations about how or when to vote as well as attempts to use threats related to COVID-19 to scare people into not voting,” according to Zuckerberg’s testimony.

As the votes were being counted, Facebook “added labels to posts about voting by candidates from both parties to direct people to reliable information.” The company attached informational labels to content that “sought to delegitimize the outcome of the election.” And it strengthened its enforcement against “militias, conspiracy networks, and other groups” in an effort to stop them from using the platform “to organize violence or civil unrest in the period after the election.”

3. Influence Extends Beyond Elections into Our Lives

These policies and practices reveal what we all have come to know but are slow to admit. For better or worse, social media exerts an outsized – and arguably dangerous-- influence over American society in ways previously unimaginable.

Facebook, Inc is much more than a social network. With WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and the Facebook social media platform, the company owns four of the world’s largest social media / messaging services.

Facebook and WhatsApp alone are used by a combined 4.5 billion people per month, eclipsing their closest competitor, YouTube.

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For a company that began in a college dorm as a way to connect college students with one another, Facebook, for example, has grown to leviathan proportions.

4. Social Media Giants Are Hurting Local Media

This dominance extends well beyond social media and now permeates local communities as evidenced by the advertising market. With hundreds of millions of users, Facebook (and others) have reaped enormous profit from social media advertising – a global market expected to surpass $98 billion in 2020 alone.

We know that Facebook and Google have contributed to the decline of local newspaper and television journalism. A recent report notes that “Google and Facebook together account for 60% of digital ad revenue and Amazon and a few other companies account for 15%. This leaves only 25% of available ad revenue for the [local] news outlets.

In fact, a recent Senate report led by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., concluded that: “Local news has been hijacked by a few large news aggregation platforms, most notably Google and Facebook, which have become the dominant players in online advertising. These trillion-dollar companies scrape local news content and data for their own sites and leverage their market dominance to force local news to accept little to no compensation for their intellectual property.”

5. Section 230 Needs to be Reformed

Both Facebook and Twitter CEOs have acknowledged the need for the reform of Section 230 of the Communications Act in one form or another.

Simply put, 47 U.S. Code Section 230 states: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” And “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”

The law was Congress’ response to two separate cases in the 1990s that reached conflicting decisions—one holding the Internet service harmless for libelous content, and the other holding the Internet service liable for content that it moderated.

Section 230 was intended to “encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet” according to one judge and to allow Internet services to develop their own standards for enforcing content moderation—all aimed at thwarting frivolous litigation.

6. Self-Regulation is Necessary but Not Sufficient

Dorsey and Zuckerberg similarly agree with the sentiments of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ranking Democrat Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., that government should not be in the business of regulating content.

Graham, in fact, is pushing the industry to promote its own best business practices and perhaps implement a self-regulatory mechanism.

That, of course, would be a starting point for the necessary dialogue that must take place between the tech industry and Congress. But the process has to go beyond words. With the prospect of a divided Congress, Big Tech firms can skillfully move around the margins, making few concessions and leaving little progress.

7. Transparency and a Level Playing Field Are Badly Needed

There is a uniform call for transparency on how these powerful social media companies make important decisions to permit or deny content on their platforms, especially when it comes to algorithms, artificial intelligence, and human interactions as well.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers further expect Facebook and Twitter to disclose the internal corporate dynamics that impinge on elections and political speech.

Beyond that, other business sectors demand and deserve a level regulatory playing field. Local news outlets, newspapers, broadcasters and other content providers are subject to robust federal regulation. But Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon and other tech firms face no such regulation, and worse, have a free pass under current law. It is a pass that allows Big Tech firms to get bigger, richer and more powerful and thereby dissolve the revenue base for smaller legacy competitors.

So far, Congress and the Executive Branch have made limited progress in resolving these problems.

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The new expectation is that a Biden administration will somehow fare better, which may be wishful thinking.

Although Big Tech has been facile in avoiding regulation for many years, its days of avoiding the Congressional spotlight are clearly over. And, as one expert pointed out, the bloom is off the rose.

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Dan Gainor: Twitter, Facebook were a big part of takedown efforts against Trump in 2020 election

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 19:58:58 -0500

Twitter might have finally won its war against its archenemy — President Donald Trump.

Tuesday in the U.S. Senate, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey once again admitted, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election,” that censoring the New York Post scoop about the Hunter Biden scandal “was wrong.”

Except it appears to have worked.

At least, as of right now, Biden has been declared the winner by news outlets. And he remains ahead in the race, pending Trump’s court challenge. Unless Trump can pull off enough last-minute court victories, Twitter and Facebook cost Trump the election.

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They did it by hiding the Hunter Biden story. A post-election poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates showed more than a third (36 percent) of Biden voters didn’t even know about the scandal. The Media Research Center poll said his voters were unaware of allegations that Biden and his son had financial ties to communist China.

Thirteen percent of those voters were enough to turn the election for Trump. That works out to 4.6 percent of the total vote for the former vice president. They said they wouldn’t have voted for Biden if they had known. That would likely have shifted enough votes to cost Biden the Electoral College.

The original New York Post story was headlined: “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.” It created an enormous bad news narrative for Biden weeks before the election. So the two biggest social media sites in the world censored it and stopped the story dead in its tracks.

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Facebook announced it would restrict access to the story, pending action by its fact-checkers. Except even the fact-checkers admitted that wasn’t the typical policy. The International Fact-Checking Network, which handles Facebook fact-checking, criticized the company. “The decision to reduce or prevent the distribution of @nypost 's article based on some mysterious, non-transparent criteria and an unknown methodology is a serious mistake,” the organization tweeted.

Twitter suspended links to the story and those who linked to it. That included numerous prominent people on Twitter such as White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

Traditional news outlets were largely silent about the censorship, happy to see a bad Biden story killed before it could truly harm their candidate.

Trump has been the enemy of leftist Twitter for his entire presidency, despite having nearly 89 million followers on the site. While the site refused to shut him down, it has censored him and his campaign nearly 200 times. Most of those have come this month.

But this incident was appalling. The social media site committed one of the greatest acts of censorship in American history when it shut down the Hunter Biden scandal.

Here’s Dorsey’s latest explanation for that censorship, where he told the Senate Judiciary Committee: “Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours.” Except Twitter still demanded the Post take down its original tweet, which it refused to do.

It took 17 days for Twitter to admit it was wrong in this way, as well. Seventeen days -- right before an election.

This wasn’t the first time Dorsey admitted that Twitter messed up. Back on Oct. 14, he tweeted: “Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”

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Except it wasn’t so unacceptable that Twitter was willing to fix the problem right away.

Who said cheaters never prosper?

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Deroy Murdock: Twitter, Facebook, Google and Big Tech's big choice

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 15:18:24 -0500

In a hybrid in-person/virtual hearing, the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday asked urgent questions of Big Tech moguls Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

Under scrutiny: Are these tech giants muting conservative voices just before the November 3 election?

The Media Research Center confirms this problem: Between May 31, 2018, and October 16, 2020, Facebook and Twitter censored President Donald J. Trump’s accounts 65 times. And Joe Biden? Zero.

Central to this discussion is Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. Big Tech is eager to keep this measure’s protections against litigation. If so, they need to behave like platforms, much as AT&T evenhandedly carries phone calls from liberals, Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, and even monarchists.

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Under this approach, Big Tech account holders would enjoy full free speech, unless they advocate violence, plot to maim innocent people, peddle child pornography, or otherwise promote lawlessness. If Big Tech so acted, they could keep their anti-lawsuit immunity, and deservedly so.

Alternatively, Big Tech could decide to be publishers — think Mother Jones on the Left and National Review on the Right. Then they could proliferate ideas with which they agree and block those with which they differ. As private entities, this would be perfectly appropriate, as the First Amendment applies only to government.

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But if Big Tech firms pick this latter path, then they must surrender Section 230’s protections and face serious consequences when they injure organizations and individuals, as the Cable News Network (CNN) did when it defamed Nick Sandmann and his fellow students in the Covington High School fiasco.

CNN, and others, falsely called them a pack of teen racists who mocked and physically intimidated an American Indian elder at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019.

They did no such thing. In fact, Omaha tribe activist Nathan Phillips (AKA Sky Man) approached Sandmann and then banged a drum slowly in his face.

After facing severe, media-fueled character assaults, for no reason whatsoever, Sandmann sued several major news outlets. Among others, CNN paid him an undisclosed settlement — as it should have.

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At the hearing, Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, addressed Twitter’s clampdown on the account of the New York Post — America’s oldest and fourth most-widely circulated newspaper, founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801.

Twitter blocked posts from the Post after its game-changing October 15 expose on Hunter Biden, the contents of his highly incriminating laptop, and disturbing details about Joe Biden and his family’s apparent global, pay-to-play empire.

Committee Democrats uniformly dismissed the Post’s exclusive as “Russian disinformation.”

If it is, then Democrats should explain why Hunter Biden’s attorney George Mesires contacted a Wilmington, Delaware computer-repair shop and inquired about his client’s laptop.

If you were innocent of homicide, would you dispatch your lawyer to a crime scene to seek a murder weapon you never wielded?

On this matter, Cruz subjected Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to a Weber-like grilling: “Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear, and why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?”

“We’re not doing that,” Dorsey meekly replied, his listless voice muffled by a beard that far exceeded any standard of human decency. Dorsey conceded: “We realize, we need to earn trust more.”

Like Cruz, Senator Josh Hawley, R - Mo., has provided thoughtful, energetic leadership on this matter. He has sponsored S. 3983, the Limiting Section 230 Immunity to Good Samaritans Act.

His bill would expose Big Tech companies to lawsuits filed by those whom they have harmed, as the New York Post’s legal department easily could prove that it was. While Hawley’s instincts are correct, he proposes a fine of just $5,000 or actual damages, if higher, plus attorney’s fees.

Alas, $5,000 is probably a fraction of the daily sashimi budget in Twitter’s commissary.

Big Tech will not change its evil ways until they feel far more pain than biting into a little too much wasabi. Hawley should boost his paltry fine to a number that would pry open the eyes of even mega-billionaires like Zuckerberg: $1 million per offense.

Much like President Trump’s tariffs against China, such blunt-instrument trauma might seize Big Tech’s attention and teach them some manners.

There is a less-intrusive remedy. Washington simply should require Big Tech to make a Big Choice.

Each company that Section 230 now shields must decide: Are you a platform or a publisher?

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Platforms would continue to enjoy the safe harbor of Section 230. Publishers would ride the high seas without it.

The choice should be free and open to these techno-behemoths. But they need to make it, and they need to make it now.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM DEROY MURDOCK

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