According to recently released internal Twitter communications, the platform used every technique in its arsenal to censor news articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop, including measures allegedly only used on the most serious problems like child porn — however, Twitter has repeatedly failed to remove child porn from the platform even as it worked overtime to suppress the “laptop from hell” story.
Breitbart News recently reported on the “Twitter Files,” internal discussions about the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story by Twitter executives. Breitbart News reporter Allum Bokhari wrote:
Elon Musk’s Twitter released internal discussions about censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story Friday night via journalist Matt Taibbi.
The documents reveal widespread internal and external concern at the suppression of the story, a decision made without CEO Jack Dorsey’s knowledge and spearheaded by Vijaya Gadde, then the head of Trust & Safety — Twitter’s top censor…
The documents, mostly internal communications from Twitter and emails with external parties, showed widespread unease with the decision and concerns about how it could be explained to lawmakers and the public.
One of the key points revealed was that Twitter executives used measures to censor of the Hunter Biden laptop. Taibbi indicates that these measures are only used in “extreme” situations, and gives the example of Twitter suppressing and removing child pornography from the platform.
Taibbi explains the extreme measures used to shut down access to the story, which include: removing links from posts, adding warnings that it may be “unsafe” and even blocking the story from being shared via direct message.
18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Despite this claim, Twitter was far more effective at suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story than it has ever been at removing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from the platform. The issue of child pornography on the platform is so widespread that the company was forced to derail its OnlyFans competitor feature due to the widespread issue of CSAM on the platform.
Twitter was reportedly unable to allow porn performers to sell subscriptions as the company is still unable to effectively police harmful sexual content, including child sexual abuse material, on its platform.
In April 2022, an internal team at Twitter concluded: “Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale.” The company also did not have the tools to verify that creators and consumers of adult content were of legal age. As a result, in May the company delayed the project indefinitely.
Sadly, if the Hunter Biden laptop story had been treated the same way Twitter has treated child pornography in recent years, it would have been easy to find on the platform.
Since his takeover, Musk has claimed that removing child porn on the platform is his number one priority, however, reports claim that he also gutted the team responsible for removing child sexual abuse material leaving less than 10 employees to attempt to remove all of the child pornography on Twitter worldwide.
While Musk did delete three hashtags used to share child pornography, this did not affect many of the tweets on the platform and just made them slightly harder to find. Pedophiles using the hashtags can simply use new hashtags to share illegal material.
Read more about the Twitter Files at Breitbart News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
