What’s the price that one must pay for exposing America’s public-private censorship regime?
Evidently, it’s not just tens of billions of dollars.
Nor is it the scorn and derision of Congress and corporate media, let alone Silicon Valley, one’s employees, and customers.
According to the committee, in less than three months following Musk’s acquisition, Twitter received more than a dozen letters from the FTC containing more than 350 specific demands—all under the pretext of a consent decree totally unrelated to those demands, concerning user privacy.
- Demands about the Twitter Files and the company’s interactions with journalists in relation thereto.
- Demands that Twitter “produce every internal Twitter communication ... ’relating to Elon Musk,'” including those sent or received by Musk himself.
- And demands for an explanation about why Twitter terminated former Twitter employee and FBI general counsel James Baker.
The first three sets of demands, however, are the most disturbing—and instructive.
As the committee reported, “the FTC’s demand represents a government inquiry into First Amendment-protected activity.” And it’s not just an inquiry into any First Amendment-protected activity—it’s an inquiry into First Amendment-protected activity concerning the government’s brazen and rampant violations of First Amendment-protected activity.
Those violations are reflected in federal authorities’ directing of Twitter to stifle, censor, and chill the speech of users on a whole slew of issues that the government and its private sector auxiliaries disapproved of—speech that challenged its favored narratives on everything from the Chinese coronavirus to election integrity to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
This demand goes hand in hand with the one for all the communications about Musk—including those to and from him.
Demanding these communications obviously provides the FTC an opportunity to dig for derogatory information—dirt—that could be weaponized in any number of ways, including leaks, to harm Musk and the platform, in Twitter, that he says he wishes to make freer and better.
The less punitive aspect of this seeming fishing expedition is that it wastes company time and resources trying to comply.
As for Baker—who is the FTC to ask Musk to justify why Twitter fired him?
The real story here should be obvious: Baker was the Deep State’s man inside Twitter, seemingly coordinating with his old government colleagues as they sought to bury the Hunter Biden laptop internally and reportage about it externally while spreading disinformation claiming that the laptop itself was disinformation—all in a bid to topple the hated Donald Trump.
Those efforts seemed to persist when Baker apparently involved himself in “vetting” materials being produced in connection with the Twitter Files. It created at minimum the appearance that the Deep State was controlling that process and therefore seeking to control the output of the reporting—no doubt to the Deep State’s benefit and our detriment—since we wouldn’t get the whole truth about its corruption.
“The FTC wields enormous authority to regulate large swaths of the modern American economy. The information presented in this ... report demonstrates the threat posed by wildly inappropriate use of this power. ... These demands should be exposed for what they are: pure and absolute attempts to harass, intimidate, and target an American business.
“The strong inference is that Twitter’s rediscovered focus on free speech is being met with politically motivated attempts to thwart Elon Musk’s goals.”