Elon Musk Making Former Top Secret Twitter Files Public
If you’ve not yet heard about the Twitter Files, you’re not alone. Although some mainstream news sources, including CNN and FoxNews, have covered them, most have remained quiet about Elon Musk’s release of behind-the-scenes information on Twitter’s content moderation. The information he and journalist Matt Taibbi dropped centers around Twitter’s decision to suppress revelations concerning Hunter Biden and his laptop.
However, the Twitter Files also deal with a much larger issue, which is the lengths to which social media platforms go to suppress free speech. Musk, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” promised greater transparency when he made his $44 billion Twitter purchase. Critics, especially those on the political right, have long blamed the platform for unfair, one-sided and often obscure standards for deciding which speech is silenced.
“The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened…” Musk tweeted prior to the Twitter Files drop. “This is necessary to restore public trust,” he said in another tweet.
Taibbi’s long and often choppy Twitter Files thread started by sharing how Twitter employees reacted to the New York Post’s bombshell report released just prior to the 2020 election. Insider emails revealed that top-level Twitter employees decided to label the Post’s story as “hacked material” despite having no evidence to back the assertion. The communications also revealed that then-CEO Jack Dorsey was unaware of the executive decision that led to “extraordinary steps” to keep the platform free of links to—and discussions about—the Post’s Biden laptop story.
Much has been said about the laptop revealing details of Hunter Biden’s drug and sex addi ctions. However, those aren’t the focus of the Twitter Files. Instead, Musk’s info drop concerns how the Post’s story revealed President Biden’s alleged involvement in his family’s influence-peddling business relationships in Russia, China, Mexico, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
President Biden has claimed that he had “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” but the laptop and the Twitter Files tell another story. In one instance, a Ukrainian energy executive thanked Hunter for arranging a meeting with his father. In another, the elder Biden was described as “the big guy” who would receive 10% from a multi-million dollar deal with a Chinese energy conglomerate.
The Twitter Files did not mention whether the Bidens or other Democrats asked Twitter to suppress the Post’s laptop story. Taibbi’s thread also did not suggest that any U.S. government agency had pressured Twitter to censor the potentially harmful allegations. Even so, one portion of the Twitter Files indicates the platform “handled” requests from the Biden team to delete certain tweets.
Taibbi’s thread says that Twitter resorted to blocking the sharing of links via direct message, a tool usually reserved only for extreme cases such as the distribution of child pornography. Many, including CNN, call Musk’s and Taibbi’s thread “lackluster” and say that it revealed nothing that wasn’t already known. Others eagerly await the second promised Twitter Files drop, which Musk only says is “happening soon.”
Jack Dorsey admitted during a congressional hearing that blocking the New York Post’s story was a “total mistake” but failed to reveal who was behind the censorship. Mainstream media newsrooms overwhelmingly joined Twitter in ignoring or undermining the Post’s revelations prior to the election. Earlier this year, the New York Times and the Washington Post finally authenticated the laptop’s contents—a full 18 months after the New York Post’s story first broke.
