Interesting how those calling targeting conservatives on Twitter a “conspiracy” were the beneficiaries of the company.

It was with heavy mirth that we saw MSNBC’s Ari Melber make declarations about the behaviors he feared Elon Musk could bring to Twitter after his purchase. Amusingly, his phobia matched the exact behavior many on the right have been experiencing on the site for years. Obliviously, Melber intoned warnings of targeted suspensions, limited exposure, shadow bans, and even public officials possibly removed entirely. 

I wonder if the New York Post was able to report on this development, Ari?

With all of the hysteria pouring out of the media complex about the impending sale to Musk going through, it is rather obvious the press in general fears that their control over the platform’s narrative is threatened. The very idea of more people having more of a say is somehow being positioned as a threat to our nation, and the long-alluded-to fix in place on this platform is tipped off by the journalists only seeing a problem on The Right with a more open Twitter.

But we can see more than allusions – we have proof. There exists direct evidence pointing to a bias operating within the operation.

According to the donation records at Open Secrets, in 2020, employees from the two largest social media platforms donated to the Democratic Party at a rate of 90 percent. This measure of the internal activity at those outlets was just ahead of the Presidential election, which would certainly be seen as a driving force behind some of the decision-making at the sites.

Open Secrets records revealed that for “all federal candidates,” both Facebook and Twitter gave over 90 percent of their political contributions to Democrats for the 2020 cycle so far. The combined multi-million-dollar total of both platforms was split among individual employee donations and PAC money. The top recipient for both organizations was none other than Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. 

Absorb this reality, and then let us look back at the decision made at Twitter to have the New York Post de-platformed in the Fall of that year. The newspaper was reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop at the time, and on the basis of nothing more than the story might have derived from a Russian disinformation campaign, The Post had its entire Twitter account hauled down. As we all know now, the story was completely accurate, and the de-platforming was a blatant move to sway the election.

Now consider this: Since then, things at the tech giant actually became worse. Last year, that wildly imbalanced political financial support actually grew, to a near consummate level of 99 percent. And in the first quarter of 2022, that figure held, as the first months of this year saw that same percentile in place for Twitter’s political donations, ahead of this year’s midterm election. 

The likelihood of skewed priorities with the operational mindset within a company that displays this kind of lack of viewpoint diversity is stratospheric. When a GOP donor is harder to find on the payroll than a vegan cannibal, you have to expect that a uniform level of thinking would become entrenched. When every single person in the offices sits in the same bubble, those overseeing the enforcement of the terms of service will not question things when questionable decisions are made.

There is little mystery as to why Elon Musk has indicated he will be placing certain executives in his crosshairs, and why the ruling legal counsel at the company was witnessed having an emotional break as a result of Musk taking the helm of their operations. There is no confusion why these infantile reactions have been on display: The company is set up like a sophomoric private club. Twitter has operated like the Mean Girls table in a school cafeteria, or a treehouse with a “No Cons Allowed” sign crookedly nailed to the trunk.

For years, they have behaved as a dysfunctional partisan outfit, never being challenged from within because they worked in a fully insulated environment. Therefore, when inane decisions were made and the fluid enforcement of their standards was employed, no one was present to call the contradictions into question. 

When Twitter decided to banish the sitting President of the United States, we can easily picture the office cubicles with high fives bursting forth like incendiaries during a finale on The Fourth. No one questioned the folly of banning the same President who had been sued in court to unblock citizens because his tweets were deemed to be the public record. The hive mind prevented those from pointing out the paradox of more inciteful accounts from the Ayatollah of Iran, and the spokesperson of the Taliban remaining active on Twitter to this day.

It is entirely clear why so many within the offices of Twitter are so fearful of the arrival of a differing voice – it is because they have never heard a differing voice prior to this day.