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Matt Taibbi, the Substack journalist and longtime Rolling Stone contributor, recently published a lengthy thread called the “Twitter Files.” He did so after receiving Elon Musk’s outsourced findings about Twitter’s decision to block the New York Post's coverage of Hunter Biden's infamous laptop in 2020.
Weeks before the 2020 US presidential election, Twitter froze the New York Post’s account for 16 days. This happened after the publication reported that Joe Biden and his son Hunter were allegedly involved in corrupt business dealings in Ukraine and China.
Twitter initially said that the Post violated its “hacked materials” policy, and that it had blocked the posting of URLs to the articles as the information on the Biden expose was allegedly provided by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Rudy had said that the information was obtained from a MacBook Pro belonging to Hunter Biden.
Matt Taibbi mentioned that “there’s no evidence” that he has seen about the federal government being involved in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
He alleged that the decision was, in fact, made at “the highest levels of the company,” without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey. The journalist also claimed that Twitter’s former head of legal, policy and trust, Vijaya Gadde, played a “key role" in making the decision.
The journalist alleged that Twitter’s former head of legal, policy, and trust, Vijaya Gadde, played a “key role" in making the decision. Matt Taibbi also said that a former employee mentioned that hacking was used as an “excuse” but within a few hours everyone realized that the reason would not be enough to hold the online outrage.
The latest revelation came after Elon Musk teased the release of the “Twitter Files” saying that the “public deserves to know what really happened."
Everything to know about Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi is an American journalist, author and podcaster who has covered stories across a variety of genres including politics, sports, finance, and media. He has written for the New York Sports Express and served as a reporter and contributing editor for Rolling Stone.
He has authored several books, including The Exile, Spanking the Donkey, I Can’t Breathe, Hate Inc. and Insane Clown President, among others. Taibbi is also the publisher of a newsletter on Substack.
The media personality was born on March 2, 1970, and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Concord Academy before briefly joining New York University.
However, he transferred to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson after his freshman year and graduated in 1992. He also went abroad to study at Leningrad State Polytechnic Institute in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Matt Taibbi started his career as a freelance reporter and moved to Uzbekistan from Saint Petersburg. He was deported in 1992 for writing an Associated Press article criticizing President Islam Karimov.
He moved to Mongolia in the mid-1990s and started playing professional basketball in the Mongolian Basketball Association (MBA). Taibbi returned to Russia in 1992 and began co-editing the Moscow-based English-language bi-weekly newspaper The eXile.
Taibbi returned to the United States in 2002 and founded the Buffalo-based satirical bi-weekly newspaper The Beast. Meanwhile, he continued to contribute stories to The Nation and Playboy and later served as the editor-at-large of New York Sports Express.
The author started working as a columnist for the New York Press in 2003 before beginning to cover politics for the Rolling Stones in 2004. He also won a National Magazine Award in 2008 for his columns in the latter.
Matt Taibbi has also covered the 2008 presidential campaign for Real Time with Bill Maher and invited on shows like MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and other programs like Democracy Now! and Chapo Trap House.
He also contributed to the Countdown with Keith Olbermann and appeared on Thom Hartmann's radio and TV shows, as well as the Imus in the Morning Show on the Fox Business network. Taibbi launched his own podcast Useful Idiots alongside Katie Halper in 2019.
In 2021, the media personality announced that his podcast would no longer be released through Rolling Stone but would move to Substack. On the personal front, Matt Taibbi is married to a physician named Jeanne and shares three children with his wife.
A look into Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” released by Matt Taibbi
Following days of consistent hints, journalist Matt Taibbi, with the help of Elon Musk’s outsourced findingsfinally released a lengthy Twitter thread. The thread documented the reason behind the platform’s decision to block the New York Post’s 2020 coverage of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story.
Taibbi claimed that the decision to block the story was made at the “highest level” without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey, and that the initial reasoning of the Post violating the “hacking policy” was used as an excuse.
The author said that Twitter executives even had a debate about their reasoning behind the removal of the story. Twitter’s U.S. policy communications manager, Trenton Kennedy, reportedly wrote an internal email that read:
“I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe.”
Twitter’s the-then head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth, then allegedly responded by saying:
“The policy is based on hacked materials — though, as discussed, this is an emerging situation where the facts remain unclear.”
He further alleged that Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker said that although Twitter needed more information on the situation, it was “reasonable” to assume” that the materials that contributed to the Post’s reporting were hacked.
Matt Taibbi also cited anonymous sources and said Twitter’s “hacked materials” policy usually required an authority or law enforcement official to find that the hacking was committed at some point, but alleged that nothing of a similar nature was evident in Biden's stories.
Matt Taibbi further revealed that Democratic Representative Ro Khanna contacted Vijay Gadde about the "backlash re speech,” He also noted that Khanna was the “only Democratic official” who expressed concern over the files.
Gadde reportedly responded to the California lawmaker by clarifying that the move was based around Twitter’s policy of “posting of private information and linking directly to hacked materials.” However, the former quickly pointed out that it was “a violation of the 1st Amendment principles.”
Khanna also allegedly wrote that as a “total Biden partisan” he is convinced that “he didn't do anything wrong” but is concerned that the story now has become “more about censorship than relatively innocuous emails.”
Taibbi's thread also highlighted a report sent to Twitter by the research firm NetChoice “within a day” after they allegedly polled at least “12 members of Congress- 9 Rs and 3 Democrats” about the backlash Twitter was receiving on Capitol Hill at the time.
NetChoice warned the platform that a “blood bath” awaiting them in D.C. A letter from the firm’s associate also revealed that Democratic lawmakers allegedly expressed that “social media needed more moderation” and allegedly said that “the First Amendment isn't absolute.”
Matt Taibbi concluded his viral thread by saying it was a “whirlwind 96 hours” for him and that he will reveal much more in Part II of the “Twitter Files,” including questions about shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, and “the fate of various individual accounts.”
