Daniel Friedman writes today about whether Twitter blew it by suppressing tweets about Hunter Biden prior to the election:
[Steve] Bannon in October 2020 gave data from Hunter’s laptop to Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese mogul. Guo then oversaw an effort by his own subordinates to post that material, much which consisted of explicit material—like dick pics and videos and pictures showing Hunter engaged in sexual encounters and using drugs.
....In his reporting, Taibbi noted that Joe Biden’s campaign had successfully asked Twitter to take down a number of tweets related to Hunter. But as I explained in December, Taibbi failed to note that the requests from the Biden campaign that he highlighted did not relate to reporting by the New York Post. The tweets that the Biden campaign asked to have removed—at least the ones that Taibbi shared—contained explicit images of Hunter. That was the material that Guo’s followers distributed at Bannon’s behest.
Twitter, to be sure, did suppress reporting on Biden’s business entanglements that was based on laptop material....Subsequent reporting has indicated the material the Post cited did indeed come from Hunter’s hard drive and was not the result of a hack, all of which suggests Twitter’s decision was a poor one.
Twitter may have done the wrong thing, but I'd like to take a broader view. This isn't just about Twitter and one specific decision they made. Pretty much everyone made the decision not to write about Hunter's laptop, and they did it for a few simple reasons: The provenance of the laptop was fishy in the extreme; everyone knew it was part of a deliberately timed ratfuck that had been shopped around forever; reporters were unable to confirm the Post story; and the folks involved refused to make the laptop hard drive available to anyone.
So the decision to hold off on reporting about the laptop was perfectly sensible. Any decent editor would have made the same call until the facts could be independently confirmed.
That's the real story, not the fact that Twitter made a mistake that it corrected 24 hours later.
I really haven't tracked the details of the hunter nonsense because it is obviously nonsense and the details don't matter to me. But based on what I do know and what Kevin said in this post, I don't understand his conclusion Twitter made a mistake at all.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO only the heckin Republicarinos are allowed to work the refs!!!
Like +30! I can hear their wails of lost privilege -- which is one of their main standbys now.
I see Hunter Biden the same way I see Billy Carter, Neil Bush, the Reagan clan and so forth. The media feels they need to cover the presidential family like the Royal family, and sure there is fodder and there is print, but all these stories amount to hill of beans and have nothing to do with the actual presidency.
I agree with you, but the right wing-o-sphere makes the claim that Hunter working with Burisma in Ukraine involves some unspecified corruption perpetuated by Joe.
Amen to that. Why do they not understand that so long as the President hasn't committed a crime in benefiting in any nerfarious "deals" (which I guess is what they're alleging but never have come with any evidence even with the "laptop") nobody gives a shit.
+1
Please wake me when there is some evidence of material wrongdoing by a currently serving high ranking politician. I am certainly not fussed about a business introduction or a meeting taken by someone to help their son or daughter. Besides that, this is embarrassing private information about someone who never worked for in any administration, or is associated with any campaign. Hunter may a fucked up embarrassment to his family, but besides the GOP, who gives a shit.
Maybe people should care about the $2B investment by the Saudi's to Jared Kushner, 6 months after leaving office. Jared was one of highest ranking WH advisors with the middle east (and almost everything else) as part of his portfolio.
Also please let me know when they find that Joe Biden also set up a fake university to scam tens of thousands $$ from ordinary people.
As far as I can tell from the information that has been published, the laptop doesn't even contain evidence of significant wrongdoing by Hunter, much less by anyone else.
Twitter "suppressed" links to the Post article for what, a day? In that time they discussed it and let it through.
As for explicit material, that does violate terms of service.
Ok, it was a few days...
There's an "exiled Chinese mogul" who is allied with Bannon and the other crazies? And Biden hasn't had him abducted in a bag and sent back to Xi's loving embrace?
What kind of pansy-ass phony FBI Dictatorship is Biden running anyway? Real dictators kidnap their enemies; Joe, you're falling down on the job!
/snark
No, real dictators cause their enemies to have "accidents". Like falling through locked windows, drinking "bad tea".........
I wrote a little ditty after last night's "SOTU Response". For your poetic enjoyment:
Born on a mountain top in Ark-in-saw
The fattest state in the land of Hee-Haw
Raised by her Dad; a Guv'nor to be
But lying for Trump showed her vac-u-i-ty.
Sairy, Sairy Huckett
The Queen of the mild frontier.
Nice!
You know, it's not as severe, but mocking someone for being a hillbilly belongs to the same category as mocking them for being gay, or black, or Jewish. People generally do not choose where they are born, or who raised them.
Feel free to mock on other aspects, there are plenty of things to choose from.
It is possible to stop being a hillbilly. Some hillbillies have even morphed into fast talkin' city slickers.
I heard about it. Anyone paying attention to politics heard about it. I don’t even use twitter!
As far as I understand it nothing on Hunter Biden’s laptop indicated any wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
Meanwhile Trump directly suppressed stories of his marital infidelities with direct payments to a porn celebrity. It seems to me that every time this laptop story is brought up Democrats should redirect to the porn payoff story. And also the Saudi $2 billion payoff to Kushner (and that’s exactly how I would frame the so called investment).
Also, has anyone ever investigated Madison Cawthorn’s claims that Republicans regularly hold cocaine fueled sex orgies. Why is that story being suppressed?
Because Democrats are part of the alleged parties. Silly. Otherwise, it would be the front page. If such cocaine-fueled sex orgies are indeed happening - you better believe it they are bipartisan.
"As far as I understand it nothing on Hunter Biden’s laptop indicated any wrongdoing by Joe Biden."
That usually doesn't stop the NYT. I never heard anyone explain actual wrongdoing on the part of the Clintons in the Whitewater thing, but it became a major media industry & a career ladder for right-wing lawyers.
The 'BOMBSHELL' reported by the New York Post in its first laptop story was an email from a Burisma executive thanking Hunter for the opportunity to meet his father while the executive was visiting America. "OMG THIS PROVES JOE LIED ABOUT NEVER DISCUSSING HUNTER'S BUSINESS AFFAIRS!!!" screamed the right.
Needless to say it proved no such thing. Given Trump was meeting virtually every day with the sons running his global business empire, it's little wonder sane journalists/editors didn't see anything worth reporting.
"Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese mogul"
He's a damn sight more than that.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/24/how-a-tycoon-linked-to-chinese-intelligence-became-a-darling-of-trump-republicans
"...they did it for a few simple reasons: The provenance of the laptop was fishy in the extreme; everyone knew it was part of a deliberately timed ratfuck..."
All the facts that matter in just 28 words.
I scanned Daniel Friedman's article waiting for him to point out that Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok ("Kwok" is the southern Chinese -- think the Hong Kong area -- pronunciation of "Guo") is a very fishy character who might be working for Chinese intelligence as a disinformation agent gathering info on Chinese dissidents in the US, or just generally intended to plug into the right-wing and gain influence by funding it.
(Read the long Evan Osnos New Yorker profile of him which someone posted above if you're really interested in the details.)
Thinking about that made me think again about Trump holding back secret documents and I realized how Trump surely knew some of what he (Trump) had access to was super valuable to someone like Guo, who could easily be interested in buying it for the Chinese government. Hoo boy.
"the folks involved refused to make the laptop hard drive available to anyone."
This seems like such a key point which should be in any story about this. The people pushing the story didn't want to show their "proof". And am I wrong that this is still the case? I vaguely remember reading in the W Post stories which said some parts of the laptop data had been "verified" that they got a copy of the laptop data from some Republican operative... the W Post article certainly didn't say their reporters and researchers had seen the laptop itself.
A Republican operative who got it from Rudy Giuliani, and which maneuver had been, in some fashion, 'navigated' by this guy,
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/vish-burra-george-santos
Good observation! I would have stopped at "a Republican operative". But adding Rudes into the "chain of custody" makes it even hinkier.
Maybe it's just me, but if a customer drops off a laptop and fails to pick it up, I would not assume that their data is mine to use however I see fit.
I would wipe the drive and sell it. That would be the ethical thing to do.
As a customer, I would absolutely avoid a shop that sought to take advantage of my data. For one, there's no way I can trust this shop to not steal my data even if I did pick it up promptly and paid for it.