Elon Musk is stoking controversy on a new front, this time by revealing sensitive internal discussions on Twitter surrounding Hunter Biden’s personal computer files in the fall of 2020.
On Friday evening, Twitter’s new owner promoted a leak of documents on his personal account, just the latest sign that the tech billionaire continues to steer the platform in one direction. conservative friendly and liberals. Ahead of the midterm elections, Musk urged his followers to vote Republican. Last month, he reinstated former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account after taking an informal online poll.
The internal company discussions, which predate Musk’s ownership, offer insight into the discontent and confusion inside Twitter as it responded to the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s files in the closing weeks of the last presidential campaign.
Politico has not independently verified the communications that were attributed to Substack writer Matt Tabby, a longtime critic of online censorship and mainstream media outlets. Taybi unspooled parts of the leak in A long twitter thread Friday night.
Musk teased the event a few hours before it spread in tweets from Taibi, promising, “It’s going to be awesome,” and suggesting that he was personally involved in its preparation.
“We’re double checking some facts so maybe start live tweeting in about 40 minutes,” Musk tweeted As users were waiting for the promised revelations. His latest controversial move comes before the dust settles from his previous one, which saw musk block The account followed the rapper tweeting, “I like Hitler.”
Within the current context of the culture wars, the right wing has taken up the mantle of free speech, while the center and left have cited concerns about disinformation and hate speech to argue for greater limits in online expression. Since taking the reins of Twitter in October, Musk has reinvented himself angry on the left With his laissez-faire approach towards moderation.
Last week, Mughal pointed out that he would release information about Twitter’s role in suppressing the New York Post’s reports, tweeting, “It is essential to restore public trust.”
Hunter Biden’s leaked computer files — which shed light on his messy personal life and foreign business dealings — as well as Twitter’s handling of the leak have been the subject of ongoing controversy for the past two years.
Twitter initially blocked links to the New York Post’s reporting, going so far as to prevent users from sharing them in private messages, initially citing its policy on hacked and stolen content. but later reversed itself.
When the Post refused to delete a tweet about the story, Twitter suspended the outlet’s account for more than two weeks withdraw suspension on October 30, 2020, long after other restrictions on the story were lifted.
Subsequently, Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey stated that he regretted the platform’s decision to censor the story.
In a debate following the Post’s initial publication, then-candidate Joe Biden called the reporting a “Russian plant”, citing a letter from former intelligence officials that “has all the classic signs of a Russian information operation.”
Trump’s then-director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, said there was no evidence to suggest these stories were the result of a Russian disinformation campaign.
In a post-campaign interview with ABC News, Hunter Biden said don’t know whether the instrument was his, but it “certainly” could have been.
In the two years since the New York Post stories, journalists relying on both traditional reporting techniques and technical analysis have verified large portions of the cache, although it is possible that it contained forged or tampered material.
a september 2021 book It was concluded by a Politico reporter that the cache of files was “at least substantially genuine”.
In March, The New York Times reported that Cash’s emails related to Hunter Biden’s foreign trade deals were certified by people known to him. Later that month, The Washington Post reported that two computer security experts commissioned to examine the files had concluded that 22,000 emails The contents of the cache were authentic.
CBS News reported last month that forensic analysis of the found files had been no proof tampered with.
Hunter Biden remains the subject of a Justice Department criminal investigation that has focused on his tax affairs. He has denied wrongdoing.
House Republican, who tweeted tribute In October, Musk plans to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings when he takes over the chamber next month.