Elon Musk slammed Twitter demotion of Hunter laptop story – now he’s suppressed JD Vance dossier

Twitter/X, while under the ownership of billionaire Elon Musk, reportedly suppressed circulation of a JD Vance vetting dossier at the request of the Trump campaign – despite Musk previously criticising the social media platform’s demotion of the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

In an article published on Friday, the newspaper said the Trump campaign “connected with X to prevent the circulation of links” to the material about JD Vance on the platform, blocking links and suspending the Twitter account of the reporter in question.

That journalist, Ken Klippenstein, wrote on his Substack that the “collusion scandal” targets American voters’ “right to know”, adding: “X’s decision to remove my article and permanently suspend my account demonstrates the awesome power concentrated in these platforms and their billionaire owners.

“The Trump campaign claims that my publication of the Vance dossier constitutes election interference. The real election interference here is that a social media corporation can decree certain information unfit for the American electorate.”

The New York Times’ report undermines Musk’s past attacks on Twitter before he took over in October 2022, when he said the publication of all internal conversations around the ‘censorship’ of the Biden laptop story – something subject to right-wing conspiracy theories – was “necessary to restore public trust”.

Indeed, in December of that year, Musk amplified reporting from journalist Matt Taibbi dubbed “The Twitter Files” which apparently claimed to show “how and why Twitter blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story”.

He shared one revelation and wrote: “If this isn’t a violation of the constitution’s first amendment, what is?”

Except, it wasn’t, and instead of sharing information about the limiting of the Post story people didn’t know already, it turned out to be a total non-story.

Now, people are pointing out the “shameful” actions of Musk:

Awkward.

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.