Elon Musk Says Twitter Suspension of NY Post Was ‘Incredibly Inappropriate’

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorElon Musk, who’s set to become Twitter’s sole owner, is prohibited from posting tweets that “disparage” the social network.But that didn’t stop Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the world’s richest person, from criticizing Twitter’s 2020 decision to freeze the account of the New York Post, after the paper published unverified stories about Hunter Biden.“Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk tweeted Tuesday evening.That was in reply to a post by Saagar Enjeti, political commentator and co-host of “Breaking Points,” which linked to a story by Politico describing how Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal, policy and trust, and safety — the exec who oversaw the company’s suspension of the New York Post — cried during a meeting with staffers discussing Musk’s takeover.

In October 2020, Twitter blocked the New York Post’s account for 16 days over the newspaper’s series of disputed stories on Hunter Biden, in what became a flashpoint for Republicans charging Twitter with censorship of conservatives.

The Post stories alleged that Joe Biden and his son Hunter engaged in corrupt business dealings in Ukraine and China.Twitter initially said the Post stories ran afoul of its “hacked materials” policy, given that the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper claimed the source for its Biden exposés was info supplied by Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who allegedly obtained it from a MacBook Pro of unknown origin that had been abandoned in computer-repair shop in Delaware.

Twitter subsequently reversed its decision, saying that it had updated its “hacked materials” policy and would not retroactively apply that.