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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

I'm on the same page. Frankly I was actually wiling to buy the argument that Twitter suppressed the story on direct orders from Biden himself, or whatever, and that such a level of coordination continued once he took office. It's... not unreasonable. Certainly Musk sold that as what the story was about.

But it's not there! All Taibbi has is some bland emails pointing out that the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets. That's it! Were they bad tweets? Was there salacious content censored? Did Twitter even remove them? We don't know! But Taibbi and Musk clearly want us to think this is bad, and most of the posters here seem to be on board.

Someone point me to the smoking gun here? Where's the actual censorship? Who said what that Biden managed to suppress? Where was the unfair moderation by Twitter?

I'm... a little stunned actually. This isn't just a non-story, it's almost a smear job.

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It’s the very type of behavior they claim the MSM engages in. And it’s not even well done.

Snippets of email conversations with the context removed. Why not share the whole email? If it’s this weak with this much context removal, the context must be pretty detrimental to the smear job.

The smoking gun is "the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets." I don't think that is something the government, outside of maybe a court order through the judicial branch should be doing. Ever. It doesn't matter what is in the tweets it whether or not they were taken down.

> The smoking gun is "the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets."

What Biden administration? What government? This was in the summer of 2020.

I repeat: if that happened, it would be bad. The government, indeed, shouldn't be doing that. But Taibbi doesn't have the story! The evidence doesn't exist. He pushed this thing out, with Musk's backing, implying strongly (strongly enough to fool you) that he had evidence for this. But he doesn't.

You get that, right? It really feels like we're being played. They have Twitter emails from two years back but nothing incriminating from a month ago? That argues strongly that they don't have it.

lol. the speed with which this silly argument is spreading. "well actually, he wasnt in office yet, so its technically OK!". come on, man.

He had zero government-granted powers to abuse at the time. Whether it's morally ok is a different question, but you can't deny that.

How is it not OK, exactly? I mean, Twitter has a "report" button. I can report a tweet right now. Is that not OK? Clearly it's OK. I can likewise send an email to report tweets. Twitter doesn't have to read it, but I can send it. That's OK too. What exactly not OK about someone else doing the same thing that's OK for me?

I suspect your answer is going to rely, as I point out, on facts not in evidence. You are just assuming that (1) Twitter did as the Biden campaign demanded for political reasons and (2) the tweets were valid and should have been left up. And if those facts are true, you're right! That's not OK.

So now let's go back to the Taibbi article and see if you're right. And... you're not. He doesn't have that evidence. He just wants you to believe it, so he (and Musk) are pretending that the article says things it doesn't.

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