Outstanding. I knew the broad strokes....pun intended considering the content....about what is protected free speech and what is not protected or not an infringement of free speech.
But this succinctly says it all.
To sum up what we learned: Big penis, little news, First Amendment not under threat.
Musk and Taibbi have promised more editions of the “Twitter Files” in the coming days, maybe next time they won’t come up so limp.
Musk's media renegades: The anti-establishment writers including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss chosen for the 'Twitter Files'
"No, You Do Not Have a Constitutional Right to Post Hunter Biden’s Dick Pic on Twitter"
Lindsay Dodgson Dec 13, 2022, 12:40 AM
Bari Weiss. PATRICK T. FALLON/Getty Images
* Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and others were given access to the so-called "Twitter Files" by Elon Musk.
* Weiss and Taibbi are controversial figures who struck out alone after working for major media outlets.
* They share Musk's anti-establishment outlook, and have been granted the inside track on a major story. [...] Musk handpicked the reporters to give access to internal material, and his choices were telling — all are writers who have gone against the tide on salient issues like trans rights and COVID-19, and are openly hostile to mainstream US media. [...] Taibbi left Rolling Stone and moved to Substack in April 2020, often writing posts detailing how mainstream media was "destroying itself," and taking contrarian positions like writing in defense of vaccine skeptics at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He also interviewed Tucker Carlson in a post that Ben Cohen of The Banter Newsletter .. https://thebanter.substack.com/p/matt-taibbis-puff-piece-on-tucker .. described as a "puff piece" that "paints Carlson as a victim of liberal hysteria" and "a brave truth teller railing against the establishment."
In October 2021, New York Magazine called Taibbi .. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/what-happened-to-matt-taibbi.html .. "one of the most celebrated investigative journalists of his generation" due to his fierce reporting on Wall Street and the financial crisis, but who had become a "red-pilled culture warrior" in the same bracket as Glenn Greenwald.
--- [INSERT: How We Swallowed Redpilled Whole This week’s Good Word was weathered down with irony until a new meaning emerged. By Caleb Madison [...]he red pill became synonymous with Trump supporters’ message to establishment politics. Rather than referring to a choice, like the one Morpheus offered to Neo, the phrase was recast as a verb: to redpill. This is not an option you’re given, but something done to you. The term became synonymous with the violent attitude of the alt-right movement—we’re going to make you aware of our reality, whether you like it or not. P - After Trump’s election, the term continued to evolve in curious ways. The color red fell by the wayside and the verbal suffix -pill endured. Its first evolution was blackpill—a fatalistic alternative to redpill, used in alt-right and incel communities, connoting an attitude of defeat and hopelessness. But after blackpill severed the head and repurposed the suffix, the -pilled floodgates were opened for the internet language-meme machine. [...]-pilled was ironically co-opted from the alt-right to connote a sort of forced subscription to an ideology. To be X-pilled meant to learn new information that made you an enthusiastic lover of X. The serious sense of “waking up to the truth” that alt-righters used redpilling to mean was weathered down with irony until it revealed what may be the true meaning of the term: to become a superfan of something, political or otherwise. Hence the Wednesday clue: “Suffix denoting indoctrination.” https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/12/pilled-suffix-meaning/620980/] ---
Bari Weiss focused her Twitter Files thread .. https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601007575633305600 .. on "shadowbanning" — a practice where some content is quietly suppressed. She discussed screenshots of how Twitter employees making "blacklists" and limiting certain trending topics and accounts.
Some saw a smoking gun, proof of longstanding claims by conservatives of censorship. Others argued that what Weiss described was simply what all content moderation looks like. [...] She particularly focused on issues of gender and was criticized for arguing against trans activists and in favor of traditional understandings of gender.
She resigned from The Times with a scathing attack on her then-employer, saying she had been bullied by her colleagues at the paper because of her views.
Musk may have seen in Shellenberger a similar tendency to go against the grain.
While his writing has focused on the environment and climate change, Shellenberger believes global warming is "not the end of the world," according to an interview in The Atlantic. His views have brought him backlash from the scientists where the general consensus among environmental experts is that climate change is a real and very serious problem.
Shellenberger has advocated for homelessness reform by providing mandatory treatment for people with mental illness and drug addictions.
Shellenberger also ran for governor of California in 2018, coming 9th of 27 candidates.
Supporting cast, cut from the same cloth
Taibbi, Weiss, and Shellenberger have been the main writers of "Twitter Files" post since Musk began the project, but they also credited a host of supporting writers, seeming to share a similar anti-establishment tone.
Journalist and documentary filmmaker Leighton Woodhouse has written for publications including The Intercept, Gawker, Newsweek, The New Republic, and Vice, and was credited by Shellenberg as a collaborator.
On his YouTube channel .. https://www.youtube.com/@lwoodhouse/videos , Woodhouse has posted two videos about homelessness in California, in collaboration with Shellenberger. He also has a Substack titled "Social Studies" where he writes about "the two opposite extremes of American society" — the "elite," and the homeless.
On his Substack, Woodhouse said he too became disappointed with the mainstream media since Trump's election, saying he "watched the journalism profession abandon its curiosity about the world and slide into lazy political activism and boring party line orthodoxy."
Weiss also credited a host of other writers for helping her assemble her reporting.
Abigail Shrier on The Joe Rogan Experience. The Joe Rogan Experience
Abigail Shrier is a journalist who has focused her reporting on criticisms of transgender people, including trans women's involvement in women's sports.
She is the author of "Irreversible Damage," a book that argues there has been a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls" since the 2010s, and blames gender dysphoria on mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, and anorexia. However, there is no scientific evidence that so-called "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" is a real phenomenon.
Nellie Bowles and Isaac Grafstein are two reporters who write for the independent news website The Free Press, which is edited by Weiss. Bowles used to write for The New York Times, where she covered gender equality in the tech world. Her recent work included a controversial interview with Jordan Peterson .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html .
On its welcome page .. https://www.thefp.com/p/welcome-to-the-free-press , The Free Press describes itself as "a new media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of American journalism."
It cites apparent media bias and lack of objectivity by mainstream journalists as the need for an independent publication.
Correction: December 12, 2022 — An earlier version of this story misstated details of Weiss's media activity. She hosted the writers Julie Bindel, Katie Herzog, and Jesse Singal on her podcast, they have not all contributed to her website. Helen Lewis was erroneously listed as a contributor.
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