Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi announced on Friday that he was reluctant to go away the social media platform after CEO Elon Musk’s recent changes made it “useless” for him.
Taibbi was one among the few reporters Musk granted access to Twitter’s internal communications last 12 months after he bought the social media giant, revealing how the corporate was working with government agencies to censor and suppress information and news – including a bomb laptop Hunter Biden at The Post. before the 2020 elections.
As a condition of his internal access, Taibbi agreed to publish his coverage live via long Twitter threads. However, Taibbi and fellow reporter Bari Weiss posted their reports on Substack, which allows writers to share their stories with paid subscribers, Mediaite reported.
After Substack announced Notes, a latest competing feature that permits short tweet-like posts, Twitter retaliated by blocking the flexibility to share links and even embed tweets in Substack posts, in response to the slot.
In a post titled “Craziest Friday everTaibbi explained why he was leaving Twitter and wrote that Musk’s platform sees Substack Notes as a “hostile competitor.”
He said the move would likely “come at a price when it comes to any future Twitter file reports.”
“Earlier this afternoon, I came upon that links to Substack are being blocked on Twitter. Since with the ability to share my articles is the fundamental reason I exploit Twitter, I used to be concerned and asked what was happening,” Taibbi wrote on Twitter.
“It seems that Twitter is nervous concerning the latest Substack Notes feature, which it sees as a hostile rival. When I asked methods to promote my work, I used to be given the choice to post my articles on Twitter as a substitute of Substack.
“There’s not much tension about it; I’m staying at Substack. You have all been wonderful to me, as has the management of this company. Starting early next week, I might be using the brand new Substack Notes feature (which you all may have access to) as a substitute of Twitter, a call that can apparently come at a price in the case of future Twitter file reporting,” Taibbi wrote.
“It was absolutely value it and I’ll all the time be grateful to those that gave me the possibility to work on this story, but man is a crazy planet,” he concluded.
Taibbi published the primary of several “Twitter Files” reports in December 2022, which revealed the chaos and commotion behind closed doors after a small group of top executives decided to label the Hunter Biden story in The Post as “hacked material”, despite any evidence.
According to Taibbie, the choice to censor The Post’s story was made “at the very best levels of the corporate” but without input from then-CEO Jack Dorsey. Emails and comments from former Twitter employees checked by the journalist showed that “everyone knew” that the social media giant’s suppression of the story “was fucked up”.
While still CEO, Dorsey admitted during a March 2021 congressional hearing on disinformation and social media that blocking The Post’s report was “a whole mistake.”
A second round of Twitter files, posted in a thread just a few days later by fellow reporter Bari Weiss, detailed how the social media company secretly “banned” various far-right users.
Taibbi then reported how Twitter decided to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, while senior officials were in touch with multiple government agencies concerning the decision.
Later information revealed that employees and top executives pushed for the ex-Trump to be faraway from the positioning, although the corporate’s monitors found no violations in the previous president’s tweets.
In one other bombshell report, Taibbi also revealed that the CIA had been involved in content moderation on Twitter for years.
Internal communications revealed that the FBI’s Elvis Chan, who was singled out in other Twitter Files communications, asked company executives to “invite the OGA” – or one other government agency, often meaning the CIA – to an upcoming conference.
Taibbi reported that “an everyday meeting[s] Multi-Agency Task Force on Foreign Influences (FITF)” – involving Twitter and “virtually every major tech company [including] Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest and lots of more” – had “FBI personnel and – almost all the time – one or two participants labeled “OGA”” to debate foreign affairs.
Documents reveal that U.S. intelligence has tasked Twitter analysts with a painstaking investigation into domestic Twitter accounts alleged to have nefarious ties to foreign countries – escalating because the 2020 presidential election approaches, but continuing into 2022.
Twitter’s content monitors analyzed users’ IP address data, phone numbers, and even weighed whether usernames sounded “Russian” with the intention to corroborate the federal government’s accusations – but they often did not accomplish that.
Taibbi testified before the House Judiciary Committee last month and accused the mainstream media of being “an arm of a state-sponsored thought control system” by creating “a type of digital McCarthyism.”
“We’ve learned that Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other firms have developed a formalized system for moderating ‘requests’ from every corner of presidency: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the State’s Global Engagement Center, and even the CIA,” he said.
The same day he testified, an IRS agent visited his home in New Jersey.
Taibbi said the agent who visited him left a note instructing him to contact the tax office 4 days later. When he did, an IRS agent reportedly 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 proving that his 2018 tax return was electronically accepted, and said the March intervention was the primary rejection in greater than 4 years.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday requested that the IRS turn over all documents related to the visit until April 10including “[a]all documents and communications between or between the IRS, the Treasury Department and other entities of the Executive Branch regarding Matthew Taibbi.”
It’s unclear if Taibbi will proceed to post “Twitter Files” reports after leaving the platform where he has 1.8 million followers.
