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twitter files
April 7, 2023 | 8:43 p.m
Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi, who was given access to the company’s internal communications by CEO Elon Musk, said he will leave Twitter on Friday.
“Twitter Files” journalist Matt Taibbi announced Friday that he is begging to leave the social media platform after CEO Elon Musk’s latest changes made it “unusable” for him.
Taibbi was one of a handful of reporters Musk gave access to Twitter’s internal communications last year after he bought the social media giant, revealing how the company worked with government agencies to censor and suppress information and news — including The Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden laptop scoop in the run-up to the 2020 election.
As a condition of his insider access, Taibbi agreed to air his reporting live via lengthy Twitter threads. However, Taibbi and fellow reporter Bari Weiss both post their reports on Substack, which allows writers to share their stories with paid subscribers, Reported by mediaite.
After Substack announced Notes, a new competitive feature that allowed short-form posts similar to a tweet, Twitter responded by banning the ability to share links or even embed tweets on Substack posts, according to the outlet.
In a post titled “The Craziest Friday Ever,” Taibbi explained why he was leaving Twitter and wrote that Musk’s platform sees Substack Notes as “a hostile rival.”
He said the move will likely “come at a price as far as any future Twitter Files reports are concerned.”
“This afternoon, I found out that Substack links are being blocked on Twitter. Since being able to share my articles is a major reason I use Twitter, I was alarmed and asked what was going on,” Taibbi tweeted.
“It appears that Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival. When I asked how I should market my work, I was given the option to post my articles on Twitter instead of Substack,” continued the former Rolling Stone journalist.
“There’s not a lot of suspense there; I live in Substack. You all have been great to me, as has the management of this company. Starting early next week, I’ll be using the new Substack Notes feature (which you’ll have access to) instead of Twitter, a decision that seems to have value with regards to any future Twitter Files reports,” Taibbi wrote.
“It was totally worth it and I’m forever grateful to those who gave me the opportunity to work on that story, but man is it a crazy planet,” he concluded.
Taibbi released the first of several “Twitter Files” reports in December 2022, revealing chaos and confusion behind closed doors after a small group of top-level executives decided to label the story by The Post’s Hunter Biden as “hacked material,” despite any evidence.
The decision to censor The Post’s story was made “at the highest level of the company,” according to Taibbi, but without the involvement of then-CEO Jack Dorsey. Email and comments from former Twitter employees reviewed by the journalist showed that “everyone knew” the social media giant’s crackdown on the story was “f-ked.”
While still CEO, Dorsey admitted in a March 2021 congressional hearing on misinformation and social media that blocking The Post’s report was a “total mistake.”
The second round of Twitter Files, published in a thread days later by fellow reporter Bari Weiss, detailed how the social media company secretly “shadow banned” a number of far-right users.
Taibbi then reported how Twitter decided to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform following the disturbance at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, while senior officials maintained contact with multiple government agencies regarding the decision.
Information later revealed that staffers and top executives pushed for former Trump’s removal from the site despite company monitors that found no violations of the former president’s tweets.
In another bombshell report, Taibbi also revealed that the CIA has been involved in moderating Twitter content for years.
Internal communications revealed that the FBI’s Elvis Chan, highlighted in other “Twitter Files” releases, asked company executives to “invite an OGA” – or Other Agency of the Government, which usually means the CIA – at an upcoming conference.
Taibbi reported that “regular meetings[s] of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF)” — attended by Twitter and “virtually every major tech firm [including] Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others” — with “FBI personnel, and — almost always — one or two attendees marked ‘OGA’” to discuss foreign affairs.
Through the FITF, US intelligence tasked Twitter analysts with a laborious investigation into domestic Twitter accounts that allegedly had nefarious foreign connections, the documents reveal – intensifying as the 2020 presidential election approaches but continuing until 2022.
Twitter’s content monitors check users’ IP data, phone numbers and even weigh whether usernames “sound Russian” to confirm the government’s accusations — but often fail to do so .
Taibbi testified before the House Judiciary Committee last month and accused the mainstream media of being “an arm of a state-sponsored system of thought-policing,” creating “a form of Digital McCarthyism.”
“We’ve learned Twitter, Facebook, Google and other companies have developed a formal system for accepting modest ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center in the State, even the CIA,” he said.
The same day he testified, an IRS agent visited Taibbi’s home in New Jersey.
Taibbi said the agent who visited left a note instructing him to call the tax office four days later. When he did, an IRS agent told him that his returns for 2018 and 2021 had been rejected because of identity theft concerns.
Taibbi reportedly provided the House Judiciary Committee with documents showing his 2018 tax return was accepted electronically and said the March intervention was the first time in more than four years he was told it had been rejected.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday requested that the IRS turn over all documents related to the visit by April 10with the “[a]all documents and communications between or between the IRS, the Treasury Department, and any other Executive Branch entity that refer to or relate to Matthew Taibbi.”
It is unclear whether Taibbi will continue to publish “Twitter Files” reports after his departure from the platform, where he has 1.8 million followers.
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