Twitter’s former “safety chief,” Trump-hating leftist Yoel Roth, recently admitted that censoring the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story — which was published just weeks before the 2020 presidential election — was a “mistake.”
Yoel Roth, the rabid anti-Trumper and former Twitter employee who briefly served as the site’s top censor as head of “Trust and Safety,” has admitted the company made a “mistake” by censoring the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story, according to a report by Daily Mail.
Jack Dorsey at Bitcoin conference ( Joe Raedle /Getty)
The social media company made the executive decision to censor the story because Twitter staff “did not know what was true” — despite the story being published by New York Post, a verifiable news outlet — Roth claimed.
“We didn’t know what to believe, we didn’t know what was true, there was smoke — and ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter,” Roth said.
The ex-Twitter executive— who resigned earlier this month after Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover was completed — added that the bombshell news story “set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack and leak campaign alarm bells.”
“Everything about it looked like a hack and leak,” Roth claimed.
After being asked if censoring the story “was a mistake,” the former Twitter chief replied: “In my opinion, yes.”
Roth’s comments come after Musk vowed to release files detailing Twitter’s “free speech suppression,” which is expected to include information on the censorship of the laptop story. Musk also admitted that the company has “interfered in elections.”
The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022
Exactly. The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections.
Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2022
Roth is not the only ex-Twitter employee to admit the company was wrong in censoring the New York Post story.
Last year, during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), “We made a total mistake with the New York Post.”
“We corrected it within 24 hours,” Dorsey added. “It was not to do with the content. It was to do with the Hacked Materials Policy.”
Facebook also suppressed the bombshell story in the midst of the 2020 election cycle.
In August, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the FBI had warned the company of an imminent “dump” of “Russian propaganda” shortly before the laptop story broke. The FBI did not deny it.
The infamous “laptop from hell” story provided evidence involving Hunter Biden’s shady foreign business dealings, as well as his involvement in illegal activities, such as serious drug use and evenings with prostitutes.
At the time the story was published, Hunter Biden’s scandals were widely dismissed by the establishment press. But now, after election season is no more and Joe Biden has taken office, multiple mainstream media news outlets have verified the laptop and its contents.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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