Quick Let’s Watch Everyone Flip Sides On Twitter’s Handling Of The Hunter Biden Laptop vs. The JD Vance Dossier

Content Moderation

from the watch-the-rationalizations-fly dept

It’s been all of [checks calendar] one freaking day since we wrote about Elon Musk’s hypocrisy on free speech compared to the old Twitter regime, and he has to go and make another example.

Twitter, under old management: Briefly limits sharing of (at the time) unverified Hunter Biden laptop story. Elon: “Outrageous censorship!” and possibly a “First Amendment violation!”

ExTwitter, under Elon: Blocks links to leaked JD Vance dossier. Also Elon: “Most egregious doxxing ever!” Hmm…

As we’ve discussed for years now, very few people fully understand what happened four months ago with Twitter and the NY Post’s story about the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Two years ago, we pieced together what actually happened based on information from lawsuits, but also from what Elon released after taking over Twitter (though he did so misleadingly).

In short, Twitter had a very, very broad policy (too broad!) regarding “hacked materials.” We had criticized how that policy had been used to hide news reports before the whole Hunter Biden laptop story came out, warning that the policy was too broad and resulted in blocking legitimate news based on leaks.

At the same time, there were widespread (legitimate) concerns that foreign entities might engage in “hack and dump” efforts to leak critical information, as had happened in 2016. The folks who had access to the details of the laptop had shopped the contents around to multiple news sources who all refused to publish it, including Fox News. Eventually, the NY Post bit on the story, though even the main author of it was so unsure of the story he asked for his name to be taken off the byline. The actual content revealed in the story was… not really particularly interesting or revelatory.

Given the general concerns about amplifying a “hack and dump” campaign perhaps by a foreign adversary, and with no direct communication by the government, Twitter had a quick internal discussion. Then, they decided to limit access to the NY Post’s story under the “hacked materials” policy (as they had done before) until they knew more about the provenance of the laptop content. At that point, users were unable to share the link to just that story.

The internal leaks from the company showed that the decision makers inside the company struggled with how to deal with this, but politics did not come into play. Instead, they noted that given it “is an emerging situation where the facts remain unclear” and the risks, they decided to err on the side of caution and limit the distribution.

This did not actually limit interest in the article (hello Streisand Effect), which got way more traffic once Twitter made that decision.

Just one day later, Twitter admitted it had made a mistake, changed the policy, and again began allowing users to share that story.

Following that, there have been years of nonsense. This includes a firm (false) belief that Twitter actively tried to stifle the story for political reasons, that it blocked the story for months, that it knew the story was real, that the FBI and/or the non-existent Biden administration (remember Trump was the President at the time) had ordered Twitter to suppress the story.

An election interference lawsuit was filed… and rejected. There were Congressional investigations from Jim Jordan, which turned up nothing (but which he still spun as exposing conspiratorial actions).

But to many, including Elon Musk and many of his most vocal fans, it is taken as fact that old evil Twitter deliberately censored that story for political reasons, possibly changing the course of the 2020 election (even though literally none of that is accurate).

When his own company released the fact that the Biden campaign (not administration) asked Twitter if it might remove five tweets that showed Hunter Biden dick pics that were revealed as a part of the leak, Elon claimed that this story was a quintessential “violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment,” even as the tweets clearly violated Twitter’s policy against the sharing of non-consensual nude images.

Indeed, many people cite that false narrative as a reason they’re happy that “free speech absolutist” Elon took over to make sure such a thing would never happen again.

Fast forward to yesterday…

Hold onto your hats, folks. This year, there are widespread (legitimate) concerns about foreign interference in the election including “hack and dump” efforts. Over the last month, there have been tons of stories regarding how Iran had hacked Trump officials, obtained a bunch of things, and shopped them around to a variety of media sources, who all refused to publish it.

Eventually, one dipshit decided to publish at least some of it: the Trump internal dossier on JD Vance. In this case, the dipshit was Ken Klippenstein, an independent reporter, known for his terrible reporting as well as his willingness to beg for attention on social media.

The actual content revealed in the story was… not really particularly interesting or revelatory. It’s a dossier of all the reasons why Vance might be a bad VP choice. There’s little that’s surprising in there.

So, the scenario has an awful lot of similarities to the Hunter Biden laptop story, right? Almost eerily so. But this time, Elon Musk is in charge, right? And so, obviously, he left this up, right? And he let people share it, right? Free speech absolutism, right? Right? Elon?

Hahaha, of course not.

And if you try to share the link to Ken’s article? According to multiple people who have tried, it does not work. Here’s one screenshot of a few that I saw showing what happens if you try:

You also can’t share the link via DMs.

Another user on Twitter notes that their own account was temporarily suspended not even for tweeting out a link to the Vance dossier story, but for tweeting a link to Ken’s post about getting suspended!

ExTwitter Safety claims Ken’s is a “temporary” suspension (just like Twitter’s temporary limit on the NY Post — though in that case they didn’t suspend the account as they did here). And the reason given is that the dossier supposedly revealed Vance’s physical addresses and “the majority of his Social Security number.”

As opposed to, say, Hunter Biden’s dick pics.

That said, the link posted to ExTwitter did not, in fact, reveal the addresses or partial SSN. It linked to an article that Ken wrote about the dossier, which then did include a link to the file, but it’s still two clicks away from ExTwitter.

Ken points out that this particular info (Vance’s addresses and partial SSN) is widely available online or via data brokers. That still seems a bit iffy, and it feels like he could have easily redacted that info, but chose not to. There are plenty of cases that many people consider to be “doxxing” that are little more than getting info from a data broker.

Elon, though, is insisting that this was “one of the most egregious, evil doxxing actions we’ve ever seen.” Which is laughably untrue.

And, of course, unlike the old Twitter regime, which made no public displays of support for presidential candidates, Elon has publicly endorsed Donald Trump, become one of the largest donors to his campaign, and turned ExTwitter into a non-stop pro-Trump promotional media site. So, unlike the old Twitter regime, Elon has made it clear that he absolutely wants to use the site to elect his preferred candidate and would have political reasons for trying to suppress this marginally embarrassing dossier.

So… is Jim Jordan going to launch an investigation and hold hearings, like he did about Twitter and the NY Post over Hunter Biden’s laptop? Is he going to haul Elon before Congress and demand he explain what happened? Will Elon release the “X-Files” revealing the internal discussions he and his employees had over banning Ken and blocking the sharing of the link?

Or nah?

Already we’re seeing Musk’s biggest fans trying to come up with justifications for how these stories are totally different. But they’re literally not. On basically all important details they’re effectively identical.

Again, I said at the time (and even before the Biden laptop story came out) that I thought Twitter’s policy was bad and they were wrong to temporarily block the sharing of the link. I also think that Elon is wrong to suspend Ken and block the sharing of the links as well.

But watch the rank hypocrisy fly. The old Twitter regime at least struggled with this decision internally (later revealed by Elon) and recognized that they were making a quick call based on imperfect information that they quickly reversed course on and apologized.

Somehow, I doubt Elon’s going to do any of that.

Filed Under: content moderation, elon musk, hunter biden, hunter biden laptop, jd vance, ken klippenstein
Companies: twitter, x