Twitter granted requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign to remove content in 2020, report says

According to a thread published Friday by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, President Donald Trump's White House and Joe Biden's campaign both requested to have their content removed from the social media platform in 2020.

Musk, the social media platform's billionaire owner and self-styled "free speech absolutist," made a big deal out of the lengthy thread. The thread contained internal communications about the New York Post's report on the laptop of Biden's son, Hunter.

By 2020 Taibbi wrote that it was "routine" for Twitter to get requests to remove content from third-party actors.

Both parties were able to use these tools. He said that requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored.

One example of a request was shared by Taibbi, who shared an email between the staff of the social media site. An employee of the micro-messaging service said that the account had been mishandled.

Taibbi didn't give any details about what the message was about. The images of Hunter Biden that were included in the Wayback Machine were potentially in violation of the terms of service.

—Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022

If this isn't a violation of the constitution's first amendment, what is it?

He said that acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech is a violation of the first amendment.

At the time of the request, the Biden campaign was a private organization. Musk didn't address the reports that said they also made and were granted requests.

The White House or the Biden campaign did not order or coerced the removal of content. The government asking a private company to do something is not a violation of the First Amendment according to David French.

An example of a request from the White House was not included.

The request and removal of the system favored Democrats, according to Taibbi. He didn't give any evidence that the system favored Democrats or that the removal of tweets did not violate the terms of service.

The main focus of Taibbi's thread was the Post's story on Hunter Biden, which caused the White House press secretary to be locked out of her personal account. The initial decision to block the story was wrong, as evidenced by the reversal of the initial response.

The three companies did not respond to Insider's requests for comment.