Tesla CEO Elon Musk is sharing his thoughts on Twitter’s temporary suspension of the New York Post after it published a story surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop.
A reporter tweeted, “Vijaya Gadde, the top censorship advocate at Twitter who famously gaslit the world on Joe Rogan’s podcast and censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, is very upset about the [Elon Musk] takeover.”
Musk responded, “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”
Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
In October 2020, both Facebook and Twitter limited the distribution of a story published by The New York Post alleging Hunter Biden attempted to introduce a top executive at a Ukrainian company to his father.
A spokeswoman for Twitter said at the time the company decided to limit the spread of the article “due to the lack of authoritative reporting around the origins of the information in it,” as CNBC reported.
Twitter found the article violated the company’s Hacked Material Policy, which does not “permit the use of our services to directly distribute content obtained through hacking that contains private information, may put people in physical harm or danger, or contains trade secrets.”
In March 2021, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the decision to block the story was a “mistake.”
He told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, “It was literally just a process error. This was not against them [the Post] in any particular way.”
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) asked Dorsey if any Twitter employee was “held accountable” for suspending the outlet’s account.
“[For] their entire account to be blocked for two weeks by a mistake seems like a really big mistake,” Scalise said.
He continued, “Was anyone held accountable in your censoring department for that mistake?”
Dorsey told him the company does not have a “censoring department.”
He added, “We required them to delete the tweet and then they could tweet it again.”
Earlier this month, House Republicans penned a letter to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal pressing him for answers over the company’s move to limit the spread of the story.