World
Twitter's Pro-Left Bias, Key Role Of Vijaya Gadde In Biden Laptop Story: All That Is Revealed In Elon Musk's 'Twitter Files'
Twitter's owner and CEO Elon Musk
Elon Musk has unveiled the 'Twitter Files' on the microblogging site on Saturday (3 December).
Musk tweeted a link to the account of independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who began posting a series of what appeared to be redacted emails from Twitter employees.
The 'Twitter Files' contains internal communications among Twitter officials, and with few outsiders including US Congress representative Ro Khanna and others.
According to journalist Matt Taibbi, the company "was and is overwhelmingly staffed" by people of one political orientation, hinting at the mostly left-leaning employees of the social media website.
"Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right," Taibbi said.
In one such instance, Twitter took "extraordinary steps" to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop expose by the New York Post that had the potential to shape the 2020 election.
"Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography," Taibbi said.
Taibbi said that Twitter's former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde played a key role in the decision and company CEO Jack Dorsey had no information about it.
"The decision was 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," he said.
According to Taibbi, the documents he perused suggest that Democratic congressman Ro Khanna was the "only Democratic official" that he could find in the files who expressed concern on suppression of the story.
Khanna told Gadde that suppression of Hunter Biden story "seems a violation" of free speech rights.
The files also reveal that other Democratic lawmakers wanted "more" moderation on social media, and, according to them, the Bill of Rights - the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution including pertaining to protection of free speech and freedom of Press - were "not absolute".
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