Free Republic

The Twitter Files show how the FBI deputized Twitter to conduct illegal censorship of American citizens and undermine the First Amendment. ... Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter last October and the subsequent reporting on the “Twitter Files” by journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and a handful of others beginning in early December is one of the most important news stories of our time. The “Twitter Files” story encompasses, and to a large extent connects, every major political scandal of the Trump-Biden era. Put simply, the “Twitter Files” reveal an unholy alliance between Big Tech and the deep state designed to...

There were a lot of dramatic moments at the House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday. Among the most informative was when Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) nailed former head of Twitter Trust and Safety Yoel Roth for Twitter’s contact with the Biden team to suppress tweets. He showed the email contact even as Roth was professing not to remember, yet showing that Roth knew enough to know what random URLs were referencing. One of the other big concerns among many conservatives over the past few years was being “shadow banned” — where you are still being allowed to tweet but your...

A left-wing think tank erroneously claiming to track Russian online activity was responsible for thousands of bogus stories asserting the nation’s influence in US politics, according to the latest batch of Twitter Files. The Hamilton 68 “dashboard” was the brainchild of former FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor Clint Watts and operated under the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank founded in 2017 — shortly after former President Trump took office. The ASD Advisory Council included such figures as top Clinton ally John Podesta, Obama-era acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, and former...

The House Oversight Committee informed former Twitter executives Wednesday that they are expected to testify at an early February hearing on the platform’s decision to censor The Post’s October 2020 reporting on documents from first son Hunter Biden’s laptop. Twitter barred distribution of articles that linked President Biden to his son’s foreign business relationships weeks ahead of the 2020 election, claiming without evidence that the articles violated a “hacked materials” policy. Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told former Twitter officials Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth and James Baker that he will hold a hearing to examine their decision. “On December 6,...

In October 2020 when news of Hunter Biden's infamous laptop broke, which contained salacious details about his close business partnership with his father Joe Biden, National Public Radio quickly worked to bury the story. In fact, the outlet issued a lengthy explanation about why the laptop was a "non-story" and "waste of time," despite receiving millions of dollars in taxpayer funding each year through as series of federal grants. https://twitter.com/NPRpubliceditor/status/1319281101223940096Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post's Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week's newsletter➡️ https://tinyurl.com/y67vlzj2 Now, thanks to Elon Musk, we know exactly why...

The latest installment of the “Twitter Files” in which Elon Musk is releasing deep-seeded documents from executives at Twitter before he accumulated the company is quite juicy. The sixth installment of the expose series reveals that between January of 2020 and November of 2022, over 150 emails were exchanged between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth. In a multi-part series of tweets, journalist Matt Taibbi goes into further detail. One tweet reads: “The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded...

Yoel Roth, Elon Musk’s former right-hand man who was instrumental to the new era of Twitter, has reportedly been forced to flee his home, likely in the Bay Area, after getting harassed by Musk and his supporters. Roth, the now-departed head of trust and safety, received increased threats after Musk promoted a baseless accusation that his former employee endorsed children accessing “adult Internet services,” CNN first reported Monday afternoon. "Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis," Musk wrote in a tweet Saturday, with a screenshot to what...

CNN fired the longtime 'New Day' producer shortly after his Dec. 2021 arrest WARNING: SOME DETAILS FROM INDICTMENT MAY BE DISTURBING John Griffin, a former senior producer for CNN who was accused of child sex crimes, pleaded guilty in federal court after being charged a year ago, according to the Associated Press. The federal government dropped two of the three charges against Griffin as part of the agreement. According to the AP, he "must pay full restitution to the victims, an amount which will be determined by the court" and "has agreed to forfeit a Tesla vehicle, and electronic items...

Twitter announced late Monday that it has disbanded the company’s Trust and Safety Council, a board of experts that advised the platform on the “safety” of certain content, following concerns over child exploitation. “As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work,” the company wrote in an email to board members. “As part of this process, we have decided that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best structure to do this.” “We are grateful for your engagement, advice and collaboration in recent years and...

Several internet safety experts said that Musk’s comments put Roth at grave risk. Roth, who is openly gay, worked past Musk’s October takeover. He then resigned and said Musk’s hands-off approach to moderation was increasing danger to users. “He’s putting Yoel’s life in danger and he knows it,” tweeted Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law School. Roth did not respond to a request for comment. In imputing nefarious motives to Twitter’s former managers and saying a crime had been committed, Musk adopted techniques used by the QAnon conspiracy movement, which falsely claims that Democrats and elites are running child...

Twitter's former censor has been forced to flee the $1.1m Bay Area mansion he shares with his boyfriend after Elon Musk shared part of his thesis which suggested letting children access gay hook-up app Grindr. Yoel Roth, 34, and his partner Nicholas Madsen, 44, moved out of their two-bed, two-bath property in El Cerrito over fears for their safety, the Washington Post reported. The tweet said to have sparked the move saw Musk write: 'Looks like Yoel is in favor of letting children being able to access adult internet services in his PhD thesis.' He shared a screenshot of part...

Twitter announced late Monday that it has disbanded the company’s Trust and Safety Council, a board of experts that advised the platform on the “safety” of certain content, following concerns over child exploitation.

Elon Musk gave us several assurances when he took over Twitter. One of them was transparency. He sought to this initially through Matt Taibbi on Twitter Files #1. It turned out that he was being hampered by James Baker, the former general counsel of the FBI who endeavored greatly to undermine President Donald Trump while at the FBI and then at Twitter. At Twitter Baker was part of the cabal to block stories of the Hunter Biden laptop and suspend those who dared even speak of it. Another of Musk's assurances was to purge it of child sexual exploitation (CSE),...

Over the past few weeks we’ve been learning a lot about how screwed up and quite frankly corrupt everything was at Twitter in the pre-Musk days. Especially when it came to their whole ‘Trust and Safety’ efforts. One name that keeps coming up is former head of Twitter Trust & Safety, Yoel Roth. Besides seeing his obvious bias against the Right … it sounds like he had a ‘secret dirty Twitter account’. He said so himself. Take a look. Apparently former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter had a “secret dirty twitter account” which has since been scrubbed. Read...

We just recently looked at the published academic works of Yoel Roth, Ph.D., Twitter’s former Head of Trust & Safety. Christopher Rufo called them “wild,” and they certainly were Grindr-intensive … not that there’s anything wrong with that. We just kind of find it hard to believe you can earn a doctorate in communications writing about a gay hook-up app. An old tweet from Roth is making the rounds today, but first, we want to highlight a complaint from California State Senator Scott Wiener: Yes we’re aware of the grift you’re running with Weiss & company to justify letting Nazis...

Yoel Roth, ex-Twitter Content Moderation Chief (left):Elon Musk today replied "This explains a lot" to a Twitter user who highlighted this tweet by ex-Twitter Content exec Yoel Roth: Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers? http://bit.ly/bbpH68 And Elon linked to Roth's PhD thesis:

Friday, Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Council” resigned in protest over Elon Musk’s opening Twitter to diverse opinions (Twitter’s ‘Trust and Safety Council’ Resigns in Protest and Elon Musk Evaluates Their Performance). While ostensibly they were supposed to guide Twitter’s fight against the platform’s use to distribute child pron and other elements of child sexual exploitation (CSE), they made no measurable progress. It took over a decade for Twitter to agree to create a tool to report CSE. Twitter refused to take down the video clips of a 13-year-old engaged in sex acts despite the pleas of the child and parents....

Yoel Roth, who no longer works at Twitter, claims that satire is dangerous and that Libs of TikTok and The Babylon Bee are dangerous. Roth was intimately involved in the effort to censor the New York Post’s exclusive stories on Hunter Biden’s shady foreign business dealings ahead of the 2020 election. Twitter prevented users from sharing the story publicly and from privately messaging the link to other users. Mainstream publications, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, later confirmed the authenticity of much of the content derived from the computer, which was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop...

Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, claimed that the social media firm made a mistake when it decided to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. Roth, who quit earlier in November after Elon Musk's $44 billion buyout, stated that the legitimacy of the New York Post's laptop report was impossible for the social media firm to verify, and it was swiftly censored in October 2020.

The former Twitter executive and safety chief who played a key role in censoring The Post’s October 2020 exposé on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop has admitted it was a mistake — more than two years later. Yoel Roth, who was Twitter’s head of trust and safety until he quit earlier this month in the wake of Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover, confessed Tuesday that the company erred in restricting people from sharing the scoop. In an interview with journalist Kara Swisher, Roth appeared to deflect the blame from himself — insisting that even though he had concerns about the authenticity...