Matty Taibbi’s Dick Pics

Apparently, Elon Musk decided that the best person to disclose what he promised would show, “what really happened with the Hunter Biden story suppression by Twitter” was Matt Taibbi, someone who — by his own admission (an admission on which he has apparently flip-flopped) — apologized for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because he was, “so fixated on Western misbehavior that I didn’t bother to take [the] possibility [of Russian invasion] seriously enough.”

Reverse chauvinism, Taibbi called it.

Taibbi’s own apologies for Russia didn’t just start with the Russian imperialism and war crimes, however.

He was long a critic of what he called “RussiaGate” based on the tried and true tactic of treating the Steele dossier and Alfa Bank allegations — and not the legal verdicts that confirmed Trump’s National Security Advisor, campaign manager, Coffee Boy, personal lawyer, and rat-fucker all lied to hide the true nature of their Russian ties — as the primary substance of the case. Taibbi scolded others about shoddy reporting even while he adhered to the Single Server fallacy that not only assumed all the hacked material came from just one server, but ignored the hack of Amazon Web Services content and abundant other evidence attributing the hacks to Russia from other cloud companies. Then there was the time Taibbi tried to smack down on claims that Maria Butina used sex to entice targets, in which he made error after error, all without allowing his false claims to be disrupted by consulting the actual primary sources.

That’s the guy Elmo decided would be a credible voice to tell us what happened with the “Hunter Biden” “laptop” story.

That matters because, as Andy Stepanian explained last night, Twitter had advance warning of a Russian information operation targeting Hunter Biden during the summer of 2020, months before the release of the “Hunter Biden” “laptop.”

Matt Taibbi is either woefully misinformed about this or cynically lying. How do I know? Because I attended two meetings with Twitter representatives in July and August 2020 wherein the Hunter Biden story was discussed within the larger framework of election integrity.

Matt Taibbi’s analysis has myriad problems but the biggest problem is his failure to underscore what initially prompted twitter staff to designate the content in the Post story as “stolen” or “hacked” material. This came from conversations with law enforcement in summer of 2020.

During the election integrity meetings I was present for little was known about how the material would eventually be published. I recall one spokesperson suggesting the Hunter Biden content may publish via “something like wordpress” or “wikileaks-styled” website.

This is the contact with FBI that Twitter and Facebook had about Hunter Biden in 2020, not any immediate response to the Post story. It’s almost certainly what Mark Zuckerberg was referring to in a Joe Rogan interview that has been misrepresented in the aftermath.

Taibbi, the self-described reverse chauvinist, describes any Hunter Biden-specific warnings as general — mentioning neither Hunter Biden nor Russia — and omits the timing.

Perhaps Elmo didn’t give Taibbi this important earlier context. Perhaps it’s Elmo’s fault that his hand-picked Russian apologist left out the specific details of the warning — that they included Hunter Biden and preceded the NYPost story by months — that are necessary context to the stupid decisions Twitter made. But the silence about those details is anything but “what really happened.”

And note Taibbi’s conclusion: There was no government involvement in the laptop story.

Assuming Taibbi were a credible reporter, that should end it. Game over.

Stupid moderation decisions, but not stupid moderation decisions done as a result of pressure from the government.

Taibbi has debunked the conspiracy theory the frothy right has been chasing for months.

Curiously, Taibbi concludes there was no government interference in the story even while he showed proof of a government surrogate pressuring Twitter about its (stupid) moderation decisions on the laptop story.

Taibbi was so deep in his conspiracy theories he didn’t realize that that — a surrogate of the sitting President demanding that Twitter give his campaign advance notice of their content moderation decisions — is closer to a First Amendment violation than suppressing the Post story, no matter how stupid Twitter’s decision was. To be clear: it’s not a First Amendment violation, but kudos to Taibbi for getting closer than all the frothy Republicans have to finding proof of inappropriate pressure.

It came from Trump.

In fact, Taibbi admits that Twitter was honoring requests from the White House, as well as the private entity of the Joe Biden campaign, for takedowns using the content moderation tools.

Taibbi claims that he’s concerned about First Amendment implications of the government pressuring Twitter about content. And then … he ignores the evidence he presents about (what is probably shorthand for) the Trump White House pressuring Twitter about content. Let’s see those specifics, Matty!

Or rather he excuses it, using the old charade of campaign donations which show what a small portion of Twitter employees spend.

And Taibbi’s other claims of bias are just as problematic. In one Tweet, Tweet 30, Taibbi claims that Ro Khanna was the only Democratic official he could find that expressed concern about the Post takedown.

Three Tweets later, Tweet 33, Taibbi describes an emailed report from a research firm polling the response of congressional offices, including Democrat Judy Chu’s, describing that both Democrats, plural, and Republicans “were angry,” which sure seems like Taibbi missed at least one Democrat besides Khanna expressing concern.

Ro Khanna, incidentally, was the leading recipient of donations from Twitter employees in 2022, almost 10% of the total, so to the extent Twitter employees disproportionately donate to Democrats, they’re funding Taibbi’s chosen voice of the First Amendment problems with Twitter’s decision.

The most telling part of Taibbi’s screed, however, is his complaint that when private entity “the Biden team” asked for some take-downs, Twitter obliged.

What Taibbi is complaining about is the way in which Twitter, the entity, always proved most responsive to high level requests.

He seems to think that damns pre-Elmo Twitter, when if anything, Elmo’s moderation decisions have far more dramatically reflected the whims of those with personal access, starting with Andy Ngo, who has personally gotten a bunch of anti-fascists banned from Twitter. If you have a problem with arbitrary, personalized moderation decisions, Elmo is the last guy you should be fronting for.

But there’s an even bigger problem with Taibbi’s smoking gun, the primary evidence he presents that the Biden crowd got special treatment of any kind.

As numerous people have laid out — most notably Free Beacon reporter Andrew Kerr — a number of these takedown requests were of dick pics and other personal porn, a celebrity kind of revenge porn. Others were of Hunter Biden smoking crack — at least a violation of law. But none so far identified pertain to allegations of influence peddling.

Tabbi’s smoking gun amounts to takedown requests of stolen dick pics, precisely the kind of thing that content moderation should be responsive to.

“Handled,” Elmo responded with glee about proof that his predecessors had seen fit to remove leaked porn and dick pics.

That Matty Taibbi, of all people!, would shift subjects, after debunking the conspiracy theory of government pressure that started all this, to dick pics is fairly stunning. That’s because Taibbi is famously thin-skinned when people on Twitter talk about his own — unlike the Hunter Biden pictures, voluntarily exposed — dick exploits from when he lived in Russia. Every time someone on Twitter discusses what a misogynist slime Taibbi was in his Moscow days, he, suspected sock-puppets, and a few persistent Taibbi defenders show up to complain that people on Twitter are talking about what Taibbi did with his dick while under the influence overseas (or to claim it was all, even the misogynistic language, make-believe).

Taibbi was always a poor choice for an exposé based on primary sources.

But Taibbi is a particularly bad surrogate for Elmo to pick to complain about the takedowns of stolen dick pics.

Yet that, in episode one of what Elmo and Taibbi promise will be a series, is the best they’ve got.

“Handled.”

Update: Matty Dick Pics wouldn’t tell his subscribers what conditions he had to agree to to peddle Elmo’s complaints about dick pics.

What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions.

Update: Tim Miller shreds the whole fiasco.

While normal humans who denied Republicans their red wave were enjoying an epic sports weekend, an insular community of MAGA activists and online contrarians led by the world’s richest man (for now) were getting riled up about a cache of leaked emails revealing that the former actor James Woods and Chinese troll accounts were not allowed to post ill-gotten photos of Hunter Biden’s hog on a private company’s microblogging platform 25 months ago.

Now if you are one of the normals—someone who would never think about posting another person’s penis on your social media account; has no desire to see politicians’ kids’ penises when scrolling social media; doesn’t understand why there are other people out there who care one way or another about the moderation policies surrounding stolen penis photos; or can’t even figure out what it is that I’m talking about—then this might seem like a gratuitous matter for an article. Sadly, it is not.

Because among Republican members of Congress, leading conservative media commentators, contrarian substackers, conservative tech bros, and friends of Donald Trump, the ability to post Hunter Biden’s cock shots on Twitter is the number-one issue in America this weekend. They believe that if they are not allowed to post porno, our constitutional republic may be in jeopardy.

I truly, truly wish I were joking.

[snip]

Right-wing commentator Buck Sexton (real name), said this was a “bright red line violation” and that Biden should be IMPEACHED for it. Rep. James Comer (R-TN) was on Fox promising that everyone at Twitter involved with this would be brought before the House Oversight committee. Rep. Billy Long retweeted several MAGA influencers praising Elon for, among other things, “exposing corruption at the highest levels of society” (Projection Alert). Meanwhile Kari Lake hype man Pizzagate Jack Posobiec declared this the “biggest story in modern presidential election history,” claimed that “we can never go back to the country we were before this moment,” and donned this “a digital insurrection.”

In reality, all they really had was a digital erection.

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104 replies
  1. bmaz says:

    Have seen this post sitting there for a while this morning, and was just waiting for you to hit the publish button.

    Let’s be honest, Musk and Matt are made for each other, the coupling was almost inevitable.

        • Alfalfa Centauri says:

          First time posting but a longtime reader! Thanks to Dr. Wheeler and the crew for your wisdom and common sense.
          As a queer man, I am so ashamed of and want to apologize for the disgusting words and actions of Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald and Peter Thiel and Richard Grenell. What the hell happened to them? I do not know.

          • RJames0723 says:

            I’m old school. Just because one is homosexual does not make one part of the LGBTQ community. I feel no need to apologize for them.

  2. harpie says:

    [I linked to this on a previous post, but it belongs here, as well]

    https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1598884088617656320
    10:37 PM · Dec 2, 2022

    People now marveling over Matt Taibbi’s fall from his noble days covering Occupy Wall Street – remember that Tim Pool, who just hosted Kanye West and Nick Fuentes on his show, also got his start at Occupy. The alt-right is full of those slides from journalism to propaganda. 1/ [screenshots]

    After Occupy, Tim Pool covered Ferguson along with Russian asset Cassandra Fairbanks & future Proud Boy leader Joe Biggs, then with InfoWars. So many ‘journalists’.

    Also: so, so many trips to Russia. In 2002: Matt Taibbi, Elon Musk, Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet, & Ivan Raiklin. 2/

      • ducktree says:

        Never been a Twitter account holder (and because it’s Saturday) and I’ve got nothing better to do, I *Googled* “dick pics”:

        Results: Cheney, Clark, Cheney, Cheney, Durbin, Gregory, Van Dyke, Gregory . . .

        Obvs, I need to find a better hobby.

        • /~*skua says:

          Inspired (I think that’s the word) by your example, I searched for: Studio 54 toilets action

          But found no sign of a younger, pretty-boy DJT. Maybe it’s better that way.
          (Hey Rayne, hope these 8 characters fit the name mold.)

          [Very sorry, no — please use only a dash or underbar for characters. Asterisks in particular are no-nos as they are wildcard characters; back slash and forward slash also have applications in coding. Consider using a number if you can’t come up with four more letters. /~Rayne]

        • Theodora says:

          No Nixon? I know it’s been awhile but I will never forget all the jokes about Dick Nixon and the posters that read “Dick Nixon before Nixon Dicks You”.

          • RLHall1961 says:

            I have a card from the campaign that says, “Why switch Dicks in mid-screw? Vote for Nixon …”
            That must have been one of Roger Stone’s genius ideas.

  3. Bay State Librul says:

    The magnificent obsession?

    Tell me again why everybody in the world is fixated with this bullshit?

  4. Ken Levy says:

    @elonmusk is selectively disclosing legal though questionable policies of prior ownership. Are current policies transparent? Will there be a dramatic reveal of the new master’s policies? 0r must we infer an agenda from the reinstatements of the champions of supremacist violence?

  5. Fancy Chicken says:

    I really respected and appreciated the work Taibbi did during the Great Recession on how the banks were playing fast and loose with default credit swaps and his coverage of Occupy because I was there. The few times I had any interactions with Tim Pool, well, he was a dick then and had a reputation of being part of the “manarchy” crowd. And because I was part of Occupy Twitter was an essential tool for the work. I loved it!

    Around the time of Ferguson I got cancer and dropped off Twitter but kept my account in case I became active in that world again. I’m glad that I haven’t been on Twitter to watch the platform that means more to me than any other get destroyed from inside by people (excluding Elon) that I once had a lot of professional respect for.

    I can’t express just how very, very sad this post makes me- but thank you for it anyway. The only thing permanent is change. Sometimes that’s a very hard truth to swallow.

  6. John Paul Jones says:

    Probably OT, but in re: “handled.” Weird echo for me as a sometime Chaucer student. In the middle ages, priests with zero sexual experience were expected to deal with the confessions of parishioners about, precisely, sexual matters. So the Church came up with a solution: a user’s manual, in fact several different user’s manuals over the years. My favourite title for one of these confessional manuals? Handlinge Sinne.

    • emptywheel says:

      Thanks for sharing!

      In my first course on book history, for a group project, we worked on sex manuals, but of the Victorian era.

      Had I remained in academics I’d still be doing book history.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Was that by Dr. Syn?

      It might be more accurate to say that medieval priests were supposed to be ignorant of sexual relations. Many were not, a longstanding problem for a church built on an official aim of celibacy.

      • P J Evans says:

        Celibacy became a requirement *because* of how many clerics had families. It wasn’t a problem before then.

        • John Paul Jones says:

          Exactly so. One problem for the church was that priests might bequeath church property (including the right to various tithes and feudal levies) to their children, thus over time eroding the church’s base of wealth, thus also its power. Along with this change and (if memory serves) at about the same time, there’s also the fact of the church converting many of their physical buildings to stone, an enormous material and social investment comparable to the aristocracy’s converting castles to stone structures, and for largely the same reasons: a display of power, designed to intimidate and overawe. Shock and awe in super slow-mo, so to speak.

          • earlofhuntingdon says:

            The Church had a handy tool, in that it controlled what would now be called family and inheritance laws. But that works best before the fact: changing things afterwards can be bloody. It’s biggest tool, though, was that it inherited the role and status of the defunct (in the West) Roman empire.

        • Purple Martin says:

          Yup. It wasn’t until 1139, mostly in response to de facto creation of hereditary power structures enabled by powerful church leaders accumulating massive estates inherited by their sons, the Second Lateran Council made celibacy mandatory.

          • ernesto1581 says:

            …by which time the bird had flown, withal resultans divers.
            or as my great-grandmother used to say,
            “Gabbia aperta, morto l’uccello.”

    • Alan Charbonneau says:

      That reminds me of a Mad Magazine bit from my early teen years.

      Here is a Catholic priest. He believes in miracles. People talk to him about marriage problems even though he’s never been married. People talk to him about financial troubles even though he has no financial troubles. People talk to him about sex, even though he hasn’t had sex. No wonder he believes in miracles!

  7. Oxcart_12 says:

    Carrying out stupid, doomed operations like this one is the closest Matt will come to serving in a penal battalion.

  8. daniel says:

    musk’s tea boy david sacks has been begging up taibi as a must read for well over a year so its no surprise he was the recipient of the ‘leak’

  9. Grant G says:

    Elmo trying to mess with Georgia runoff…That’s part of what happened yesterday…Also, to deflect from his Nazi pal Kanye West..

    When they show you, or tweet who they really are, believe them.

    Pre midterms…Elon..”I’m now a Republican”

    Pre midterms…Elon “vote for GOP”

    Elon and Trump got their collective arses handed to them..

    Imagine that..spending $44 billion to try and effect an election…And it fails badly.

    :Lastly….I’ve heard nothing but Hunter Hunter Hunter for the last 2 years..GOP made Hunter a huge plank of their midterm campaign, so did Trump..
    A midterm, where the ruling party usually gets spanked…What happened, the voters chose policy and sanity over grievance and Hunter..

    So, carry on Elon….Stupid is as stupid does.

    Cheers

    • Patrick Carty says:

      So if Elon pisses off the libs, who’s left to buy his electric vehicles? Because Republicans sure aren’t going green any time soon. Did Elmo think this scenario through?

      • Rayne says:

        This I can’t quite wrap my head around and I’ve been stewing on this a while. He’s in bed with KSA/Qatar/UAE with regard to financing Twitter, and they’re not exactly plowing with all due speed toward an alternatively powered future.

        There’s a new study which showed the amount of climate denialist language has increase greatly on Twitter since Musk took over, nearly parallel with the uptick in hate speech.

        Did Elmo get promised something not on the books in exchange for upending the social media platform more likely to 1) disrupt journalism, 2) destabilize US and other countries by promulgating hate, and 3) interfering with climate change activism’s center?

        It might be worth a few shares of fossil fuel countries’ sovereign wealth funds for Elmo to do this even at the cost of Tesla’s valuation and future prospects.

        • Just Some Guy says:

          Tesla and Boring Co. aren’t about mitigating climate change, they’re pitiful ops designed to undermine public confidence in mass transit.

          • Rayne says:

            Tesla wasn’t launched by Musk; it’s not now what it may have set out to be. Its Powerwall subsidiary has had greater promise but Musk is doing everything possible to tank the brand because it’s not separable from his personal brand, which isn’t helping considering Powerwall has stiff competition.

            Boring Co. is and has been a joke, as if any boring project of scale could be successful in earthquake country. The other business associated with this, Hyperloop, has far more potential over long distances but not as long as Musk in anyway shapes its prospects.

            • bmaz says:

              Eh, I looked into it for here because, if there is one thing we have, it is a lot of sun. I liked the Generac system far better. Neither appear to be quite as self paying for as they advertise, though not a wrong alternative.

              • Rayne says:

                As I wrote, Powerwall has stiff competition. LG’s residential solar panel and battery system is supposed to be cheaper and more effective.

            • Just Some Guy says:

              “Tesla wasn’t launched by Musk; it’s not now what it may have set out to be.”

              Undoubtedly.

              Re: Boring Company, two days after the WSJ published their news article basically exposing it as a do-nothing money-sink, Ryan Quarles (Kentucky’s Agriculture Commissioner and one of a dozen 2023 GOP gubernatorial candidates) tweeted out a goofy plan to get Boring to build a tunnel here in Louisville. Which then of course led to a zillion people dunking on the tweet, complete with lots of screenshots and gifs from the classic “Monorail” episode of “The Simpsons.”

                • Just Some Guy says:

                  Reading up on how Tesla sells carbon credits to the automotive industry (which is Tesla’s only real profit center) and how GM quietly does the majority of service on Teslas doesn’t dissuade me from thinking that it’s as much of a scam as Boring is.

                  • Rayne says:

                    Scam *now* was my point. Wasn’t started as a scam; Tesla launched in 2003 under Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, and the California Carbon Credits system began in 2012.

        • theGeoguy says:

          Friends of Coal is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit trade group with headquarters in Kentucky. I see their signs and stickers on cars in coal fueled thermal power plants. In the NE where I work, those old coal burners are being dismantled or replaced with oil, gas, and solar.

          • Just Some Guy says:

            Yep, and it’s a pernicious, ubiquitous cultural and political influence in Kentucky, much to my chagrin. Coal and its wildly-duped, sycophantic supporters have far too much power for an industry that employs something like less than 1% of the population.

      • Howard Cutter says:

        He will soon demand that his Tesla engineers install a coal-rolling button and smoke stack in every Tesla to appeal to the alt-right. They’ll tell him that’s not possible and then he’ll fire half the company and make them do it anyway even if it requires installing a secondary diesel engine in the trunk. At least, based on how he’s approaching running Twitter.

  10. johno808 says:

    Matty and Musk’s infatuation with the matter reminds me of Ken Starr’s deep interest in Bill Clinton.

    • Theodora says:

      It wasn’t just Starr who was obsessed with bringing down Clinton. Jerry Falwell travelled around the country selling the video “Clinton Chronicles” which accused Clinton of running drugs and of murdering thirty or forty people.

      Brett Kavanaugh convinced Starr to let him do one more investigation of the completely bonkers, vicious and cruel accusation that the Clintons had murdered their close friend Vince Foster. That lie had already been investigated by law enforcement and Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske, a highly respected Republican prosecutor, as well as by a Senate Committee and a House Committee. Kavanaugh clearly wanted to keep that conspiracy theory alive. His memos from Starr’s investigation show he repeatedly assured his colleagues that he really believed Foster committed suicide. That didn’t stop him from tormenting the grieving Foster family.
      Luckily for Starr the media chose to bury that story when he was being vetted for the Supreme Court. I saw very little concern expressed about his judgment and ethics. Here is a rare exception:

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/why-was-kavanaugh-obsessed-with-vince-foster.html

  11. Grant G says:

    Hate to be repetitive….When they show you who they are…Believe them.

    Clay Travis tweeted to Elon Musk….

    ________

    @ClayTravis There is not one single article about @elonmusk or the @twitter email release last night on
    @nytimes app this morning.

    _______
    Elon’s response…
    ______

    Elon Musk
    @elonmusk Replying to @ClayTravis@Twitter and @nytimes That is because The New York Times has become, for all intents and purposes, an unregistered lobbying firm for far left politicians

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1599110949080039425

    [FYI — Musk’s tweet at Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20221204033428/https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1599110949080039425 /~Rayne]

    ______________

    Hmm…So Elon says NY Times is unregistered lobbyist for far left Dems…..So what does that make Fox News..

    Keep digging Twitters grave Elon…

    $44 billion to turn Twitter into GAB/Parler/Getrr

    What a shitshow.

    Elon has come out of his closet and has proclaimed to the twitter world that he is a far rightwing zealot who is going to use Twitter social media to attack Dems(with garbage and flung monkey shit)….And indirectly start a US civil war….

    Dems are a majority, Liberal minded persons are a majority.

    Elon Musk just told 100’s of millions of Dems and Liberals to eat shit..

    Wow…What a business man.

    Elon Musk..He’s South African White man….Lara Logan..South African White woman.

    Time for Elon to change the name of Twitter …..perhaps to..

    Truth Social 2.0

    • Wajim says:

      I like “Shitter,” as in I don’t give a shit about Twitter. Plus one can refer to tweets as “shits,” which is what the vast majority are

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      LOL. Elmo thinks the NYT is fronting for far left Democrats. Hard to beat that as an example of how misinformed Elmo is, or how much of a liar.

      • Matt___B says:

        Right up there with Kanye West claiming Hitler invented the microphone (which therefore makes him kind of a good person?)

        Weird to see people positively reveling in the “freedom to lie”.

    • pcpablo321 says:

      Also nothing on the Times website about a former President, and candidate for that office, demanding the destruction of the US Constitution. The Times appears not to be interested in news.

      [Thanks for updating your username to meet the 8 letter minimum. /~Rayne]

          • teno says:

            So in summary, I was engaging in good faith with Marcy Wheeler about her piece and a point I disagreed with, and a different emptywheel contributor, who I was not addressing, responds with “No.” I am honestly surprised by that, ask for elaboration, and another reader follows that with an unnecessary quip.

            • earlofhuntingdon says:

              I like my summary better. It’s fair to ask a question. Demanding an answer and whinging when it doesn’t come, or come in the form you want, is what’s unreasonable. And Wajim’s response was not a quip, it was an explanation you refuse to accept.

              The laptop story is bogus. Its provenance is suspect and 90% of its contents cannot be verified as Hunter Biden’s. That’s the story.

              It’s not about blackmail, the theme your two year-old citation claims is what’s missing from political journalism. It’s about propaganda. That is, the laptop story is not about extorting someone by threatening to reveal facts or to lie about them. It’s about pushing false information with abandon to embarrass Joe Biden. Lastly, its views about Greenwald are too credulous by half.

              • emptywheel says:

                I actually think Zeynep’s piece (the original link) is really, really important. There has been far too little attention on the willingness with which Americans are happy to cooperate in efforts to let others attempt to choose our politicians by imposing an impossibly high cost on the family of those running.

                WITHIN Russian, this would be about seizing your wealth or creating the appearance of corruption or killing your girlfriend or, in the case of Boris Nemtsov, you.

                In the US, it has become about sowing distrust of it all through hack-and-leak projects.

                But I still think the Twitter implementation was stupid. Via the Streisand effect, it focused far more attention to the leak and here we are, 2 years later, still talking about Hunter’s dick pics.

        • iamevets says:

          in summary you are being entitled and demanding and are sadly missing the point. and then projecting the blame instead of taking in what is being said to you. expecting to issue directives for someone to take their time to do something you want is met with a “no” and you blindly don’t understand. but you’ve been told. think.

          • earlofhuntingdon says:

            Yes. A shorter version that I should have used would be, “You’re entitled to ask a question. You’re not entitled to an answer.”

    • /\~*skua says:

      https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1322269784839507968
      31 October 2020, Marcy links to that article, shows an extract and writes, “Shorter Tufekci: Glenn Greenwald has been a willful participant in a blackmail campaign.”

      [Can we please try to avoid sending readers to Twitter? Marcy’s tweet was saved in the Internet Archive (which is where tweets should be sought first):
      https://web.archive.org/web/20210424063408/https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1322269784839507968

      Zeynep Tufekci’s tweet thread:
      https://web.archive.org/web/20210424063409/https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1322220430212714498

      And her piece for Insight:
      https://www.theinsight.org/p/ignoringblackmail

      /~Rayne]

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        EW was turning Tufekci’s “blackmail” meme around on her, underscoring perhaps that blackmail would be a felony. I don’t take that to mean she agrees with the framing.

        • bmaz says:

          Thank you for what? Being honest while you are bitching at us, as you seem prone to? Nobody here owes you anything.

        • bmaz says:

          By the way, you wandered into this blog and are shocked, SHOCKED, that I responded to you? That is your gripe? Lol. Get lost.

  12. rich murphy says:

    Having read through Taibbi’s whole “analysis” what struck me is his argument about dual standards boils down to (1) D’s look to have misinformation/disinformation and unfounded (or for several Biden family members, purloined) tweets taken down, while R’s seek to have those false tweets and tweeters reinstated. This does not sound like partisan favoritism but rather a successful operation to uphold a minimal degree of truthfulness. Of course Tucker, Matt and Elmo et al are enraged — but if they really want to be First Amendment absolutists then they should be willing to grin and bear whatever calumny is repeatedly heaped on them without any whining.

    • Herringbone says:

      Me, too. For a while I liked him, but then he published a weird little screed about Terry Eagleton, and I’ve never taken him seriously since.

  13. The Old Redneck says:

    This is ultimately depressing. Matt Taibbi did some excellent reporting during the financial crisis about banks and foreclosures. As with Glen Greenwald, I can only wonder: what has happened to you? Is it all just some misguided attempt to remain relevant?

  14. greenbird says:

    i shall have a slice of midnight pizza, and wonder whether this will post.
    a digital erection is likely the pinnacle of human achievement – in the opinion of some.
    tomorrow is Spoutible day and i’m excited …

  15. greengiant says:

    The ***** got a number of Twitter users who were reporting on the GOP and proud boys and such banned during the George Floyd protests.
    Elmo is turning it into 4chan. Many users not affected are not yet woke. They become supporters of Elmo’s goals and means.
    A twitter than censors observers of GOP and GRU operatives is useful for just what?
    Twitter has been so useful beyond EW during the elections, political operatives, the pandemic, the Ukranian invasion. Despite the bad faith trolls and fake reality chaos agents.
    Those days are gone.

  16. The Hang Nail says:

    I have long been irritated by Taibbi’s knee-jerk contrarianism that has recently only been tilted in one direction. How he whines about the hysterical left media while going on Fox news. For months now his whole schtick has been about how the left went all in with bombshell coverage of Russia and Trump. Now he comes out with his own bombshell coverage about Biden and it looks like a stereotype of the folks he himself has been covering. This is deeply embarrassing for Taibbi. He has three options at this point. 1) Admit his failures of judgment and hope to get his career going again; 2) Go all in as a right-wing troll journalist and shed all pretense of objectivity; or 3, just quit and get out of journalism.

  17. Grant G says:

    “As thousands of Twitter documents are released on the company’s infamous censorship program”
    https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/04/six-degrees-from-james-baker-a-familiar-figure-reemerges-with-the-release-of-the-twitter-files/
    _______________

    Where are the 1000’s of documents?….I read Turley’s article, it really doesn’t say anything….

    ________________

    Sam Gab@samgabnz 54m
    Replying to @elonmusk and @mtaibbi
    Was he asked to explain himself first?

    Elon Musk@elonmusk Replying to @samgabnz and @mtaibbi

    Yes. His explanation was …unconvincing

    Elon Musk @elonmusk Replying to @mtaibbi

    In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1600237095364096000
    ____________

    I’m not going to get into what I think about Turley’s past…A rightwing shit flinger and partisan yapper….Turley is a rightwing spinning top.

    The fact that Elon fired Baker today, adds nothing to the story, ….Elon playing head games again, …This is another nothingburger.

    But more to the point.

    Elon today doubled down on bullshit…So i’m saying it..Elon doesn’t give a fuck about optics, partisan optics, Elon has chosen the Trump side.

    Big mistake….FFS…Elon Musk is officially the John Durham of Big Tech…..And I seriously doubt Elon will be as successful as Durham(insert sarcasm here)

    Elon John Durham Musk…AKA….Rightwing Chaos Agent

    • Rayne says:

      Why are you dumping right-wing apologist Turley’s crap here? He doesn’t need amplification.

      Secondly, why is it so difficult for you to write a concise and cogent comment? Your comment could have been confined to two or three sentences.

      • Grant G says:

        Well, it was like 6 sentences…With the added Elon twitter stuff….And I agree about Turley…Feel free to delete.

        Durham reference, RWingers ate his stuff up, yet he had mere smoke, no fire….RW going ape over Turley n Baker firing, like it means anything when Elon fires at will…Kinda like a show that was on TV a while back

        If you want, delete all my comments

        [I’m not deleting anything this time. I want you to be more deliberate and effective going forward, comment at the level of this community. Remember that many community members read threads here on mobile devices with small screens. Overlong comments with too little meat discourage them from reading further, acting to DDoS threads. /~Rayne]

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