zlacker

>>GavCo+(OP)
The wildest part of the Twitter files is the unhinged framing that they are presented under.

1. Anyone who has been in a tech company knows that there is internal lingo that refers to features we devs make. But it's presented as being an "Orwellian language"

2. Based on the emails he posts, the agencies give links to review based on tips they receive or their own intel and twitter then decides if it violates ToS or not (and they sometimes did not act or simply temporarily suspended). But it's presented as a "deep state"-like collusion where the agencies control if twitter act on them or not.

3. The people in the company discuss internal matters and are sometimes critical of potential decisions. But they are presented mostly stripped of context and the focus is on anonymized employees snarky comments to make it seem like decisions were arbitrary, partisan, and without any regard to logic or context.

I could go for hours listing these.

Most quote tweets are people thinking this confirms a suspected malicious intent from twitter and that they intentionally dramatically shifted the outcomes while colluding with one side.

If anything, this confirms that Twitter acted (outside of a couple isolated occurences) in a way tamer way than I ever imagined them acting while handling the issues at hand.

EDIT: Formatting

>>angelb+S61
I’ve never been a big fan of Taibbi. But all the things you’re mentioning are characteristic of his journalistic style, which made him famous in his coverage of Wall Street back in 2008. It’s uncharitable and filtered through a fundamental distrust of moneyed corporations, but I’ve never heard it described as “unhinged.”

And I’m not sure “unhinged” is an appropriate description. For example, while “internal lingo” may be common, isn’t it also fair to observe that much corporate internal lingo is pretty Orwellian? Similarly, as to your second point, is it unreasonable to draw an inference that Twitter is doing what some agency wants it to do, when the agency asks Twitter to do something and then Twitter does it?

>>rayine+bb1
I think the biggest thing that chafes at people is that Taibbi is meant to be uncharitable and distrustful of big corporations. But he's not. He's charitable and trustful of the current management of Twitter. It's the exact opposite of speaking truth to power. The old twitter was a set of weak, fragmented, individuals doing their best and getting absolutely excoriated for it constantly. Now the company is run by the richest man on earth beholden to no one, and he faces literally no skepticism from Taibbi (although it looks like Weiss is about to break).

>>Silver+1R1
Musk has been at the helm of Twitter for five minutes and has done nothing of consequence. The previous management played a major role in US politics for years. It had a major impact on a U.S. presidency and suppressed true information that could have significantly impacted a Presidential information. Taibbi is entirely correct to focus on what happened before and not on Musk’s mean tweets.