1. THREAD: The Twitter Files ~ Matt Taibbi

THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP
Part One: October 2020-January 6th

2. The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th…

3. We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies.

4. This first installment covers the period before the election through January 6th. Tomorrow, @ShellenbergerMD will detail the chaos inside Twitter on January 7th. On Sunday, @bariweiss will reveal the secret internal communications from the key date of January 8th.

5. Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech.

6. As soon as they finished banning Trump, Twitter execs started processing new power. They prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses – perhaps even Joe Biden. The “new administration,” says one exec, “will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.”

Continue reading “1. THREAD: The Twitter Files ~ Matt Taibbi”

‘The inmates were running the asylum’: Elon Musk calls out former safety czar Yoel Roth and confirms right-wing accounts were suspended when ‘NO rules were broken’ after bombshell Twitter Files exposed ‘Soviet-level’ censorship

  • Elon Musk on Thursday revealed that multiple Twitter accounts run by conservatives were censored despite not breaking any of their rules
  • Musk, who bought site in October,  vowed to make the social media company more transparent after the release of the second tranche of Twitter Files
  • He said they were ‘working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadow banned’ and why
  • Musk pointed to the reporting of Bari Weiss, who on Thursday released internal documents and Slack messages showing the scale of censorship
  • Weiss reported that conservative commentators such as Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk had their accounts deliberately downplayed
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Elon, this is what happens when you limit reach. Also, there is no reason to limit reach because Twitter users will sift wheat from chaff better than any administrator or any algorithm. Limiting reach is just another word for censorship. ABN

THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART TWO

TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS.

1. 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.

2. Twitter once had a mission “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.

3. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending.

Continue reading “THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART TWO”

Twitter kept ‘secret blacklist to stop accounts and topics trending’: Second tranche of internal files reveal conservatives were marked ‘do not amplify’ and COVID lockdown skeptics ‘shadow banned’ in a move staff called ‘visibility filtering’

  • Journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss have been handed a trove of documents from Twitter, detailing why they censored the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop
  • Taibbi released the first tranche of the documents on Friday, and Weiss on Thursday followed up with a second series
  • Weiss revealed that conservatives and lockdown skeptics were deliberately down-ranked by Twitter, to stop their accounts gaining prominence 
  • Among those blacklisted were Fox News regular Dan Bongino and youth activist Charlie Kirk, plus Stanford CDC critic Dr Jay Bhattacharya
  • Jack Dorsey and his head of legal, Vijaya Gadde, both denied that Twitter ever deliberately downgraded or ‘shadow banned’ any accounts 
  • The documents from Taibbi showed panic among senior Twitter staff in October 2020 when The New Post reported on the contents of Hunter’s computer
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VAERS is screaming safety signals but has no REACH because it is being deliberately ignored

VAERS is an example of free speech with no reach. VAERS was made to be an early warning system. It is screaming vaccine injury but the-powers-that-be are entirely ignoring it. Elon, do you see the danger of using word games to limit free speech?

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A note to the mentally challenged: yes, you can’t yell fire or threaten people. What needs to be free is topics. Science, virology, history, religion, culture, race, psychology, AGW, socialism, etc—no topic can be excluded from our God-given right, or natural right if you prefer, to speak our minds. And no opinion on any topic can be excluded. Wrong views and stupid ideas will fall away on their own. We saw that happen beautifully within the banned and censored covid-science community, which has been a million times better than the official pure shit pseudoscience spewed by CDC, FDA, NIAID, NIH, and all of MSM. Their “curated” garbage had all the reach in the world and produced an unmitigated disaster. ABN

The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want

“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” -Elon Musk 11-18-22

Musk is wrong about this. An easy way to see this is consider a same or similar message sent by thousands of people. If this message is made “unreachable,” no one will see it. Making a message unreachable is censorship.

A very serious example of this kind of censorship is the “unreachable science” of covid. Hundreds of doctors and scientists and tens of thousands of others have been doing everything they can to make the voice of real science be heard. The have met with some success but not nearly enough.

Until Musk took over, in addition to outright bans, Twitter shadow banned, demoted, delisted, and otherwise hid the “reach” of real science as millions died. What’s worse, not only Twitter did this but also virtually all social media, all MSM, all academia, and all government agencies did it too. For three years all of the top official speakers in the West have concertedly and deliberately gaslit the world with the help of demonic algorithms and misguided intentions.

If real science had not been censored by government, social media, Twitter, and MSM, we would probably not even remember covid today.

Real uncurated science—which was difficult for most to reach—found effective early treatments for covid within months, thus precluding any need for a vaccine. Real uncurated science also identified the danger of Remdesivir, ventilators, and the experimental vaccines.

I congratulate Musk on removing all bans on covid-related speech from Twitter. By doing this, he is proving the point: The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want.

Consider again the banned and “unreachable” real science of covid. During these years, bad theories and evidence have appeared and been quickly exposed as such, just as they should be. As a “free speech absolutist,” which he claims to be, Musk should realize that all subjects will follow a similar evolution. Basing speech proscriptions on feelings, vague ideas, or lousy moral philosophies only opens the door to censorship by other names.

Top Republican senator says there’s a ‘much larger story’ behind Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ on suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop: Ron Johnson teases possible report on social media ‘collusion’ in 2020

  • Top Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson suggested his office could release a timeline detailing alleged social media censorship efforts
  • House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, meanwhile, said investigations could be on the table for Google and Facebook as well  
  • The GOP’s leader on the House Oversight Committee James Comer has demanded Twitter appear before Congress for breaching the First Amendment 
  • It came after Elon Musk said that Twitter was acting on the orders of the federal government when it allegedly censored stories on Hunter Biden’s laptop 
  • Journalist Matt Taibbi Friday began publishing the damning internal documents
  • Taibbi conducted his probe with the cooperation of new Twitter chief Elon Musk
  • Emails showed staffers censoring tweets at the behest of the Joe Biden’s team
  • His campaign made requests for tweets to be taken down – and Twitter complied
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It’s obvious Twitter was just one of many media outlets that suppressed and censored news that was crucial to the election and also many other issues. ABN

New Zealand govt confirms direct access to Facebook takedown portal to flag content for censorship

New Zealand’s government has officially admitted that it has partner access to Facebook’s controversial content takedown portal.

This portal is designed specifically for government agencies to flag content to Facebook for censorship. According to The Intercept, which reported on the portal in October, government partners can also use the portal to “report disinformation directly” to Facebook.

And in a recent response to a New Zealand Official Information Act (OIA) request, which asked whether the government has partner access to Facebook’s takedown portal, the New Zealand government confirmed that the Department of Internal Affairs has access.

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