Elon Musk is hyped to see how the public will accept the revelation of the Twitter files about Hunter Biden laptop story. He decided to shed some light on the suppression of the story before the elections and reveal the influence that the political names had over Twitter.
The billionaire decided to release the emails between the executives of the company and US political figures. Elon Musk gave the honor of sharing this information to the writer Matt Taibbi.
Here We Go! – Elon Musk Happy About The Release Of Twitter Emails About Hunter Biden Files
Matt Taibbi posted a series of tweets including screenshots of ‘sensitive’ emails revealing the dirt behind the past executives in the company. At the same time, Elon Musk teased the public by announcing this. He even came up with a name for it calling the publication of the emails ‘the Twitter Files’. The background behind the decision to share this information is free speech – according to Musk.
In 2020, while the battle for the presidency of the United States was at full speed, Twitter decided to ban an article that had unverified claims about Hunter Biden’s laptop which contained information on his ‘illegal’ activities in Ukraine.
At the time, following a request by some of the sounding names in the United States’ political scene, the article was blocked on Twitter. You were unable to send it in DMs, you were unable to share it, or open it through the application.
According to Twitter, the reason behind the ban is because the article contained images and texts from hacked material. Twitter created a policy called “Hacked Material Policy” which forbids users from sharing images/stories, that had any kind of hacked material in them. Furthermore, Twitter put a ban on the link to the article.
Jack Dorsey, who ran Twitter at the time, allegedly didn’t agree with what was happening. He even condemned the move as ‘unacceptable’. Allegedly, the remaining executive staff did all of this without his knowledge.
Jack Dorsey did not go untouched by the media about this incident. He answered questions about it before Congress in November 2020, accompanied by the Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
As it happens, the reasons behind the ban on the story are unknown to many Twitter executives. Trenton Kennedy, a member of the communication team, wrote to a broader group of executives asking about the story. He was unaware of why Twitter blocked it. In the email, he allegedly included Vijaya Gadde, the legal and policy head, and Yoel Roth, the site integrity leader.
“I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe. However, I think the best explainability argument for this externally would be that we’re waiting to understand if this story is the result of hacked materials.” – Kennedy wrote in the email. “We’ll face hard questions on this if we don’t have some kind of solid reasoning for marking the link unsafe.”
The Hunter Biden laptop story made a division in Twitter. Seems like the decision to ban the story happened overnight. Furthermore, it happened to the knowledge of just a few people in the company.
Because of the situation, Elon Musk knew the magnitude of impact that the Twitter files will have on the public. That’s why he announced the revelation of the files with such enthusiasm.
“We’re double-checking facts. So probably start live tweeting in about 40 minutes.” – Musk wrote just before the start of the series of tweets from Mark Taibbi.
“Here we go!” – he shared the first from the series of Matt Taibbi’s tweets.
Elon Musk is an experienced promoter and businessman. With the release of the documents, he pursues a goal for more users to join Twitter. He saw this as an opportunity to boost the activity on the platform. And most probably he achieved it to an extent. However, subjectively, the Twitter files story did not make the expected ‘boom’. Even though the interest in the story is big, the numbers on Twitter paint a different picture.
At the moment, there is no information whatsoever on who released the materials from Twitter. However, Elon Musk is in control and he fired most of the top executives. Taking this into consideration, we may be able to take a guess. Furthermore, he is actively promoting Matt Taibbi’s tweets, thus taking part in spreading the information.
Back in 2020, the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop filled the outlets. The stories mentioned his alleged involvement in overseas businesses and shed light on his drug abuse. The story broke after Hunter Biden had his laptop taken to a repair shop in Delaware. He never came back to pick it up. The emails and the information that leaked from the laptop allegedly shed light on President Joe Biden discussing abroad businesses with his son, Hunter Biden.
The republican political wing in the USA is convinced that Twitter endorsed President Biden at the elections. According to them, Twitter helped Biden keep many votes by suppressing the laptop story. However, the Federal Election Commission denies this, as Twitter did not brake any election law.
In the beginning, Elon Musk tried to approach the story carefully and attempted to please both sides. During his first weeks at Twitter, he tried to please both sides of the online debate. However, as expected, he failed. The public sees him as inclined to the right wing.
According to Musk, he will stand only behind the side of free speech. He won’t endorse or suppress any of the political parties on Twitter. He pledges to allow everybody to express themselves freely and debate.
“You know Twitter is being fair when we simultaneously upset both extremists on the far right and far left!” – Elon Musk wrote after upsetting the right wing by banning Kanye West. “Twitter aims to serve center 80% of people, who wish to learn, laugh & engage in reasoned debate.”
