🇺🇸 The Twitter Files

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📉 President Biden Job Approval: Approve 48, Disapprove 50 (Rasmussen Reports)

📉 President Biden Job Approval: Approve 40, Disapprove 49 (IBD/TIPP)

📉 Direction of Country: Right Direction 35, Wrong Track 60 (Rasmussen Reports)

📉 President Biden Job Approval: Approve 41, Disapprove 54 (CNBC)

TRENDING

Right: Marjorie Taylor Greene Responds To Outrage Over January 6 Remarks: ‘Learn How Sarcasm Works’ (Daily Wire)

Right: ‘I’m not a Washington Democrat’: Manchin leaves door open to becoming independent (Washington Examiner)

Right: The Open Liberal Rooting for Trump Has Begun (National Review)

Left: Republicans seek to sabotage year-end spending bill (CNN)

Left: White House Slams Marjorie Taylor Greene For Saying She'd Have 'Won' Jan. 6 Riot (Huffington Post)

Left: Momentum to "replace Sinema" already building after she ditches Dems (Salon)

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QUICK CLICKS

Iranian Execution, Army of Analysts, More Migrants

World: Iran carries out second execution linked to wave of popular protests (Reuters)

US: Idaho murders: 'Army of analysts' combing through videos submitted to FBI (ABC News)

US: Supreme Court expands review of Biden’s student loan handout (Fox News)

US: Judge dismisses Trump's case challenging Mar-a-Lago document seizure after appeals court ends special master review (CNBC)

US: More than 1500 migrants wade across the Rio Grande into El Paso in one day (Texas Tribune)

Sports: Second Journalist Dies While Covering Qatar World Cup (Daily Beast)

Business: Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in The Bahamas after apparent charges filed in US (NY Post)

SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter Files

The Twitter Files have been circulating over the past week, after CEO Elon Musk shared internal documents with several outside reporters. The documents delve into censorship and decisions over banning accounts.

Reporting from the Left: Twitter Files: Who are Musk writers Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, others? (Insider)

Reporting from the Right: Elon Musk teases new Fauci revelations in future Twitter files installment (Fox News)

From The Flag: One trove of documents covered the decision to remove former President Trump from the platform following January 6, 2021, while others centered on the Hunter Biden laptop story. Here’s more from both sides.

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

“Nothing To See Here!” Says the Fake News Industry

• The legacy media being silent on this story, and Big Tech’s role in shutting down free speech is pathetic.

• People are so reliant on their own, biased sources of news that there’s no outrage over President Biden’s connections to China.

• Twitter executives were empowered to shut down certain speech by politicians and members of the punditry.

“The media’s silence on the ‘Twitter Files’ is shameful” Miranda Devine, New York Post Opinion: “Whatever happened to ‘All the news that’s fit to print,’ and ‘Democracy dies in darkness,’ the respective mottos of the two most influential newspapers in the country, The New York Times and The Washington Post? Every morning, these august organs set the narrative for newsrooms across the country, and yet, time and again, we see them ignore stories that don’t suit their own agenda as propaganda purveyors for the Democratic Party and the security state. This has been obvious in their non-coverage of Elon Musk’s Twitter Files… which have revealed a chilling censorship regime at the social media giant… If anything is an existential threat to democracy, it is Big Tech’s assault on free speech, in service to one side of politics and under the instruction of intelligence operatives.”

“Where’s the Outrage?” Roger Kimball, American Greatness: “Remember when 51 top experts from our intelligence services signed a letter denouncing the New York Post for publishing a ‘sensationalistic’ story fabricated by ‘the Russians’ about Hunter Biden’s laptop? ‘Sensationalistic’ the revelations may have been… (but) they were all true. You just couldn’t hear about it because Twitter suppressed any mention of the revelations, especially those having to do with Joe ‘Big Guy’ Biden and the Chinese lucre flowing into Hunter’s purse or crack pipe. It’s all quite extraordinary—by which, I guess, I mean it’s just business as usual in the swamp. … In any sane world, these revelations would have the public up in arms… marching against the media, the FBI, and the current administration. The anger would be acrid and ubiquitous. … In our world, alas, you can hear the carpet being pulled back so that the whole dirty mess can be swept underneath it.”

One more opinion piece from the Right: With new Twitter files, Musk forces a free-speech reckoning for politicians and pundits Jonathan Turley, The Hill Op-ed

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

If Anything, Twitter’s Bias Has Been Flipped, But More Info Is Needed

• Twitter’s detractors claim it was used to advance left-wing causes before Musk took over: now it’s being used for right-wing causes.

• While these documents are purported to contain bombshell revelations, they lack the necessary context.

• Musk is feeling the heat from advertisers after taking Twitter in a right-wing direction, and these documents provide him with cover.

“The ‘Twitter Files’ Is What It Claims to Expose” Eric Levitz, New York Magazine: “Twitter is not what it seems. The social-media platform poses as a neutral marketplace for the exchange of ideas and information… But it is actually a tool of progressive power. … This information warfare hasn’t merely cost conservative commentators followers or retweets; it cost a Republican president the White House. That’s the story that conservatives want to tell about what Twitter used to be… Fortunately, Twitter’s new CEO has a deep-seated objection to social-media companies using their power over discourse to promote partisan causes. Therefore, Musk is using his newfound power over discourse to promote the conservative movement’s demagogic narratives about Twitter and the Democratic president’s son. … For these reasons, the Twitter Files are best understood as an egregious example of the very phenomenon it purports to condemn — that of social-media managers leveraging their platforms for partisan ends.”

“What the Twitter files don’t tell us” Shirin Ghaffary, Vox: “Conservatives have long accused Big Tech of being biased against them, without much evidence. Now, the ‘Twitter files,’ a trove of internal Twitter documents, is providing new ammo for these conservatives. … But these claims and the internal documents lack crucial context. We don’t have a full explanation, for example, of why Twitter limited the reach of these accounts — i.e., whether they were violating the platform’s rules on hate speech, health misinformation, or violent content. Without this information, we don’t know whether these rules were applied fairly or not. Twitter has long acknowledged that it sometimes downranks content that is violative of its rules instead of all-out banning it. It’s a strategy that Musk himself has advocated for by arguing that people should have ‘freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach’ on the platform.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: Elon Musk’s Twitter Files Say a Lot More About Him Than Twitter Caleb Ecarma, Vanity Fair

FLAG THIS

Musk One Month In: Fewer People on the Fence

In polling conducted this month, more people said Elon Musk’s October takeover of Twitter is a “good thing” (34%) in comparison to what respondents said in April (30%).

Meanwhile, the number of people classifying it as “bad” (29%) also increased from April (24%).

Fewer people are undecided, with 21% remaining unsure about Musk’s takeover, compared to 28% who said the same this past spring (YouGov).

FLAG FINDS

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WATERCOOLER

Battle of Fredericksburg, Gas Station Heroin, Giant Fungus

On December 13, 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia repulses a series of attacks by General Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg, Virginia. The defeat was one of the most decisive losses for the Union army, and it dealt a serious blow to Northern morale in the winter of 1862-63. Above is a lithographic depiction from Kurz & Allison.

VICE: ‘Gas Station Heroin’ Is Causing Intense Withdrawals. It’s Legal in Most States.

CityLab: Against Leaf Blowers

Psyche: How to learn a language (and stick at it)

Today I Learned before trees took over the earth the land was covered with Prototaxites, a fungus that became extinct more than 350 million years ago and is believed to have reached almost 9m high and 1.37m in diameter.