RT News - December 4th 2022 - The Weekly

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Price cap on Russian oil: The biggest profiteer from NATO's proxy war against Russia is the USA. OPEC plus member states reportedly mull further oil production cuts. That's as Russia says it won't export to those countries which observe the EU's new price cap.

Twitter's suppression of information: Lengthy report on the platform's possible violation of US 1st Amendment laws (also see 1 and 2 below)

World Cup: German team goes home, Qatar waves them goodbye, quietly.

Russia's troops gave RT an insight of "The Tornado" now in use on the front lines.

On Friday, Ukraine's indiscriminate shelling of Donetsk city centre left five dead and dozens more wounded.

The EU Commission chief deleted a post claiming 100,000 Ukrainian officers have been killed in the war. The figure is ten times higher than the one released by Ukrainian officials in August.

South Africa's president faces growing corruption allegations, with the national parliament to consider whether to begin an impeachment process against him.

Also in South Africa, the murderer of an anti-apartheid activist (Chris Hani) was due to be released. This did not sit well with many South African's and protests have been ongoing since the announcement. Janusz Walus (a Polish born male immigrant to S.A.) was stabbed in his prison cell last week and he is in hospital.

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via RT website 3 Dec, 2022 20:20

(Please visit the RT website to read this article if your country still allows access to it, where you can make comments, read other's comments and share freely to other's without such censorship. https://www.rt.com/news/567621-musk-twitter-files-biden-censorship/)

1) TWITTER: Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter files’ make it impossible for Democrats to deny their censorship practices

The platform’s new CEO has made it possible to openly discuss information suppression efforts

Elon Musk’s release of the ‘Twitter files’ on Friday night confirmed what Donald Trump and many conservatives had long suspected, but could not prove: that the Biden campaign colluded with social media companies to shut down reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, embarrassing his father, the now-president Joe Biden.

Beyond humiliating photographs and videos that detailed Hunter Biden’s cocaine binges and dalliances with prostitutes, the laptop contained emails of the younger Biden’s 2015 introduction of his then-vice president father, Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm. A year later, Joe allegedly pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who had launched a probe into the firm, though US Senate investigations ultimately failed to prove his son’s employment was the motive.

The story came to light in October 2020, during the final stages of the election campaign, when the New York Post broke the news of a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden. The laptop, which was in the possession of the owner of a repair shop in Delaware, contained emails and other documents suggesting that Hunter had engaged in influence peddling and pay-for-play schemes while his father was vice president of the United States.

Despite the potentially explosive nature of this story, Democrat-aligned media outlets largely chose to ignore it, preferring instead to focus on stories that could potentially damage President Trump’s reelection chances.

This suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story is concerning for several reasons. For one, it raises questions about media bias and the extent to which news outlets will go to protect their preferred candidate.

The refusal to report on the story was so blatant that two years since the exposé, outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post, finally admitted that the laptop and its contents are real, only to offer even more cover for Joe Biden.

Both papers had joined in the drive to suppress reporting on the laptop. One of the lines of defense was to play it up as “Russian disinformation,” citing dozens of former intel officials who cast doubt on its provenance.

This type of decision-making by the media is also concerning, as it set a dangerous precedent for future elections. If the media can decide to ignore certain stories, regardless of their potential significance or importance, then it is possible that other stories of similar magnitude could go unreported.

Enter Elon Musk. Following his takeover and new ownership of Twitter – a platform that participated in the suppression of the report – Musk publicly announced his decision to reveal what happened behind the scenes at the San Francisco-based social media company when the Hunter laptop report dropped.

A series of tweets by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, using materials provided by Elon Musk, details how the company “just freelanced” its decision to censor the bombshell New York Post report in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

The emails reveal how chaos and confusion reigned at the platform in the immediate aftermath of the report. Top-level Twitter executives discussed how to suppress the story, ultimately deciding to shut it down using policies enacted in 2018, created in response to Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016. The decision, according to Taibbi, was taken without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey.

“The policy basis is hacked materials – though, as discussed, this is an emerging situation where the facts remain unclear,” wrote Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, in private correspondence with former Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde. “Given the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016, we’re erring on the side of including a warning and preventing this content from being amplified.”

The move even faced questions from another executive, former VP of global communications Brandon Borrman, who asked if the company could “truthfully claim that this is part of the [hacked materials] policy.” As shown in the New York Post’s own reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop, there is no evidence that the materials were hacked.

The decision to suppress the story also included takedown requests by the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee to suppress contents of the laptop that were posted on Twitter.

“More to review from the Biden team” wrote one unnamed Twitter executive to another, providing links to the offending tweets. “[H]andled these,” wrote another executive.

Even celebrities such as conservative actor James Woods were reviewed by the DNC, and suppressed by Twitter at its request. In one instance, reported by the Daily Wire back in 2020, the DNC complained that Woods tweeted out a meme that it claims misrepresented their organization, and Twitter removed it after deeming it was part of a “misinformation campaign” and that it was viewed as a “targeted voter suppression initiative.”

Similar posts, published by the likes of the Democrat organization MeidasTouch and the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, have been allowed to stay on the platform, revealing Twitter’s one-sided approach to content moderation.

For now, it is unclear what kind of legal action could be taken against all of the parties involved in Big Tech’s suppression of the New York Post report. However, Musk stated that “Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is.”

Musk asked: “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?”

Even if some of the revelations were not necessarily news to anyone who’s followed the story closely, the contents of the emails prove what many have suspected but have never been able to prove.

Crucially, Twitter’s new direction under Elon Musk means that the public is now able to openly discuss information suppression and manipulation by American government-linked actors, political organizations, and the media without fear of censorship.
https://www.rt.com/news/567621-musk-twitter-files-biden-censorship/
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2) TWITTER - continued

What is known so far: Musk’s Twitter files: What have we learned from the Hunter Biden laptop story?

Leaked files outlined a company-wide effort to suppress a damaging report about Joe Biden’s family

Some of Twitter’s highest-ranking staff blocked the spread of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, even as they struggled to explain why, documents released on Friday by new CEO Elon Musk and journalist Matt Taibbi reveal. RT examines what’s in these files, as well how the scanned unfolded.

What happened to Hunter Biden’s laptop?

On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published the first in a series of articles based on information obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop. These articles implicated Joe Biden in numerous pay-to-play schemes involving his son’s foreign business contacts – and coming weeks before the presidential election, threatened to sink Biden’s campaign against then-President Donald Trump.

Twitter immediately manipulated its algorithm to suppress the story, before banning links to it entirely, citing its “hacked materials” policy. Users were even forbidden from sharing the article via direct message, a move that Taibbi noted is usually reserved for “extreme cases” like child pornography. The New York Post had its account suspended for two weeks, and Trump’s account was temporarily locked for sharing a video that referenced the story.

The Biden campaign claimed that the laptop’s contents were fabricated by Russia, while most mainstream media outlets refused to cover the story. The contents of the laptop were subsequently declared authentic by the New York Times, Washington Post, and Daily Mail, long after Biden defeated Trump.

**** How was the story suppressed? ****

The decision to bury the story was spearheaded by Twitter’s former head of Legal, Policy and Trust, Vijaya Gadde, Taibbi reported.

Some staff were uncomfortable labeling the story as ‘hacked’, with communications official Trenton Kennedy writing “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe,” and former Vice President of Global Communications Brandon Borrman wondering: “can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” (here there is a link to a tweet https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598834882414727168)
“Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold,” one former employee told Taibbi. “But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

Former trust and safety chief Yoel Roth explained that “given the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016, we’re erring on the side of including a warning and preventing this content from being amplified,” apparently referring to unproven claims of outside meddling in the 2016 election.

***** Did Twitter’s CEO know? *****

According to Taibbi, the decision to censor the story was made without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey, who would later tell Republican lawmakers that he thought it was “wrong” to block links to the Post’s story.

Taibbi wrote that “there are multiple instances in the files” of Dorsey questioning the suspension of accounts from across the political spectrum.

***** Was the Biden campaign involved?

Despite “general” warnings from law enforcement about “possible foreign hacks” during the summer of 2020, Taibbi stated that the files show no evidence of any government involvement in the censorship of the laptop story.

It is unclear whether the Biden campaign highlighted the story for suppression, but the campaign did maintain contact with Twitter’s content moderators, who often deleted tweets at its request, internal communications posted by Taibbi show. “By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine,” he explained. “One executive would write to another: ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled.’”

***** Why is this coming to light now? *****

Since purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk has fired more than half of the platform’s staff, including Gadde, and set about rolling back some of the platform’s more odious speech restrictions. Musk reinstated the account of Trump, lifted Twitter’s ban on the sharing of ‘misinformation’ about Covid-19, and announced a “general amnesty” for previously suspended accounts

Musk began the process of buying Twitter in April. In a response to reporter Saagar Enjeti that month, he said that “suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” referring to the New York Post’s reporting. In November, he wrote that releasing the files explaining the decision would be “necessary to restore public trust” in Twitter.

Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” and said that he acquired Twitter because “it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.”
https://www.rt.com/news/567614-musk-twitter-hunter-biden/
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