New incoming Twitter boss Elon Musk responded to one of the most controversial aspects of the 2020 presidential election on Tuesday after the company unanimously approved his offer to acquire the social media platform for $44 billion.
Musk weighed in on Twitter’s decision to censor an explosive story that was published by the New York Post about then-Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and a laptop that purportedly belongs to Hunter that is filled with content that was problematic for his father’s campaign.
“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 @elonmusk takeover,” political commentator Saagar Enjeti wrote on Twitter.
Musk responded a short time later, writing: “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
The head of Twitter’s Site Integrity Team told the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that the company censored the story because U.S. intelligence officials shared “rumors” that Biden would be the target of a hack, despite no evidence emerging that the information in the New York Post’s reporting came from a hack.
Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told the House Energy and Commerce Committee during a hearing last year that the company made a “mistake” by censoring the story.
“We recognize it as a mistake that we made, both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately,” Dorsey said. “We made a quick interpretation, using no other evidence, that the materials in the article were obtained through hacking and, according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread.”