Matt Taibbi, one of the independent journalists who reported on the “Twitter Files,” said Friday he has found Elon Musk has not lived up to this promise to be a “free-speech absolutist.”
“I do believe that Elon proved to be very disappointing on the free speech issue,” Taibbi told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo. “All of us who worked on the Twitter Files felt the same way. We went in feeling tremendously optimistic that he actually meant a lot of the things that he said about being in favor of all legal speech and, being a free-speech absolutist and all these other things.”
“That proved not to be the case. He’s currently disenfranchising thousands of Substack writers, including including me. And no one seems to care in the press,” Taibbi said.
The “Twitter Files” revealed internal communications at the company that centered on issues of censorship, at times at the behest of or in collaboration with the government.
One installment of the investigation released by Taibbi found that the FBI had exchanged more than 150 emails with former Twitter Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth between January 2020 and November 2022; Roth’s team worked to censor the New York Post’s October 2020 report on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The FBI formed a task force of 80 agents to specialize in social media after the 2016 election. This team worked with Twitter to weed out alleged election meddling by foreign actors.
The emails saw the FBI asking for information about Twitter users that related to active investigations, but they also included the bureau calling on the site to crack down on vaguely defined election “misinformation,” according to Taibbi.
Taibbi’s latest comments came in response to Don Lemon’s recent interview with Musk, in which the former CNN anchor asked the Tesla CEO whether he believes that he and X should be held responsible for moderating hate speech.
“On the other hand, you know, in that interview, Don was asking Elon why he wasn’t censoring speech more,” Taibbi said. “He was asking about hate speech, which is legal in the United States. And the question, ‘Why aren’t you doing more to moderate legal speech?’ — it’s a little odd to complain about a free-speech issue when you yourself are asking to do the same thing.”
Lemon was set to premier his own show on X. However, on Wednesday, Lemon said the deal was scrapped because, he claimed, Musk disapproved of the questions Lemon asked him during their interview.
Musk hit back in a post on X, saying that the deal soured because Lemon’s “approach was basically just ‘CNN, but on social media’, which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying.” He added: “And, instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity. All this said, Lemon/Zucker are of course welcome to build their viewership on this platform along with everyone else.”
Additionally Lemon had allegedly been making lofty demands as part of his contract negotiation.
Lemon reportedly requested a free Tesla Cybertruck and an initial $5 million payment, in addition to an $8 million salary and a stake in X, according to the New York Post.
Taibbi, for his part, had his own falling out with Musk after the journalist joined Notes, a Substack platform where Taibbi posts original content. Taibbi claims that Musk has shadow-banned him on X.
Since @elonmusk published parts of these conversations, I might as well include others. I was under a “blanket search ban” at one point and a lot of my 1.9 million followers still don’t see my content. https://t.co/vFRtJFierF pic.twitter.com/k29MFxLUTC
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 15, 2024
“Elon, I’ve repeatedly declined to criticize you and have nothing to do with your beef with Substack,” Taibbi wrote in a message to Musk. “Is there a reason why I’m being put in the middle of things? This really seems crazy.”
“You are dead to me,” Musk replied. “Please get off Twitter and just stay on Substack.”