- Friday’s announcement by Elon Musk was that details would be made public about Twitter’s “suppression” of a story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop.
- Twitter initially withheld the story’s distribution, citing concerns it might be part of a foreign disinformation campaign.
- Musk stated that making public the company’s internal discussions is necessary to restore public trust.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk stated Friday that details would be released about the “suppression” by Twitter of a controversial story that Hunter Biden published in advance of the 2020 election.
Musk also tweeted that it would be “awesome” and there would be a “live Q&A” on the topic. However, he failed to meet his 5:59 p.m. deadline. ET publication deadline, Tweet“We are double-checking facts at 5:21 pm. We will probably start tweeting live in 40 minutes.”
As the delay wore on, “Where’s Elon?” was trending on Twitter.
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022
The New York Post story The October 2020 issue of Laptop Magazine featured information about the device.The election was less than a month away. At that time, Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate at the time was ahead of Donald Trump.
The email story claimed to be from emails taken from Hunter Biden’s laptop. According to the New York Post, it received information about the emails from Steve Bannon (ex-White House chief strategist), and was able to obtain them from Rudy Giuliani (Trump’s personal lawyer at that time).
Twitter initially restricted distribution of the story due to concerns that it might be the result of foreign disinformation campaigns. However, the social media company swiftly reopened the story. Backtracked on its response, with then-CEO Jack Dorsey calling the decision to block the link “unacceptable.”
Additional news outlets include The New York Times and The Washington Post, later confirmed the validity of several of the laptop’s contents long after the election.
Last month, Musk tweeted that releasing internal discussions about decisions regarding the story “is necessary to restore public trust.”
He later tweeted that “Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long timeAnd has interfered in elections.”
Republican Rep. James Comer from Kentucky, who is the top member of the House Oversight Committee. Musk asked for documents regarding internal Twitter deliberationsIn October, as part of their investigation on Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
It is not clear that Hunter Biden’s policies influenced the father’s decisions.
Comer said Thursday during an interview at US Capitol that Musk’s recent tweet had given Republicans hope he would provide details.
He stated, “We are hopeful.” He said that he had “almost admitted” to wrongdoing on Twitter.
The announcement is likely arouse ex-President Donald Trump. In August, he demanded the reinstatement of President Obama or “a new election immediately”.After the news that Facebook temporarily restricted the story about laptops. Trump responded to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comments that Facebook had temporarily limited the reach of the laptop story on its news feeds for five or 7 days, amid questions about the content.
Kelsey Vlamis contributed.
