Twitter lawyers contradict Musk: No evidence of government interference
Aaah, the Twitter files. The proof that the American government intervenes with a heavy hand online to keep its own course clear. A number of journalists were given access to a series of reports that would prove that the US government pressured Twitter to remove a New York Post article about Hunter Biden, Joe’s son. In addition to the fact that Elon himself has now admitted that the Twitter Files make no sense, the company’s lawyers now also say that there was no government censorship.
Let’s put everything together
In December 2022, Twitter CEO Elon Musk will give a number of journalists access to Twitter internal documents. The aim was to prove that American political parties (the emphasis was mainly on the Democrats) use platforms such as Twitter to promote their politics, and that platforms such as Twitter therefore have a predominantly left-wing sound.
The focal point of the discussion was the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop. Hunter, often a block to his father’s leg, had left a laptop lying around and data on this laptop ended up in the hands of the New York Post who published about it. Trump used the controversy to engage in politics, and the whole thing became a big issue among Republican voters. When Musk started claiming that Joe Biden’s campaign team had tried to censor Twitter, plenty were interested.
The complete Twitter Files cover more than just the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop. Shadow banning, by which we mean limiting the reach of certain users, the attack on the Capitol on January 6, and Trump’s ban from Twitter, to name a few. However, the claims surrounding Hunter Biden are particularly important for the current statements. Specifically, the view that the FBI has been deployed to pressure Twitter to moderate the story surrounding Hunter.
The evidence that wasn’t evidence
The Twitter lawyers’ ruling stems from an ongoing lawsuit in which they directly contradict what many Republicans, and Musk, have been claiming all along. Namely, that communication between Twitter and the FBI proves that there was government interference prior to the last presidential election. In fact, Twitter would be nothing short of an arm of the US government.
Communications between the FBI and Twitter mainly centered on a series of updates from the FBI suggesting that tweets that the agency said violated Twitter Rules be removed. It’s basically the same story as with the Hunter Biden laptop. That too mainly involved a series of requests by the Biden campaign to have Tweets removed that they said violated Twitter’s own rules, including photos of a drunk, naked Hunter Biden shared by third parties. So requests, not orders. Requests that also regularly came from the other side of the political spectrum, something Musk is completely silent about.
Musk even claimed that the government paid Twitter millions to censor certain information. It turned out to be routine payments of a legal nature, not content moderation payments. “Nothing in the material indicates action by any government or even discussing content moderation actions with Trump or anyone else.” According to Twitter. “It is not evidence of government interference, as none of the documents contain a specific government’s requirement to have content removed, let alone one supported by the threat of government sanctions.”
A well-known story
The attentive reader may have put a question mark on the above by now. How can a request from the Biden campaign or requests from the FBI during the Trump administration even be viewed as “left-wing” government interference? That’s because the entire story ties in seamlessly with the ongoing narrative of the nebulous “deep state,” fervent leader of antifa, left america, and drag queens, and her crusade to overthrow white, straight, and especially Christian America. The worst variant of this phenomenon is known as QAnon and is nothing but 1930s rhetoric in a modern guise.
American right-wing politics has long flirted with such currents. Biden is the enemy, and therefore part of the “deep state” that secretly controls everything. Musk may say he is liberal, but his expressions invariably place him in this camp. It is not for nothing that he has become the henchman of wokeism fighter Ron “Puddin’ Fingers” DeSantis. As is often the case with right-wing America, they mainly accuse their political opponents of what they themselves are guilty of. Musk says he is a “free speech absolutist”, but for example immediately removes statements that wannabe dictator Erdogan does not want to remove when he threatens to block all of Twitter in his country.
What exactly moved Musk to throw the bat in the coop with the Twitter Files, we will never know. In any case, looking ahead to the future, it seems sensible to me not to believe the word of a well-documented liar when there is reasonable doubt.
