Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk and independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday unveiled what drove former Twitter executives to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
Dubbed “The Twitter Files,” Taibbi published his reporting in a thread on his Twitter account, which he said was based on “thousands of internal documents obtained by sources” from the social media platform.
The tweets contained communications amongst Twitter employees as they grappled with how to excuse their decision to censor the Hunter Biden report.
Musk, who has championed transparency at the company he took over in October, retweeted Taibbi’s thread, and questioned whether some of the revelations indicated potential violations of the First Amendment.
Twitter’s Censorship Tools
Taibbi said “The Twitter Files” tell an “incredible story” about how one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms used its powerful tools to delete tweets at the request of “connected actors.”
The tools Twitter employees used for “controlling speech” were originally designed to combat spam and financial fraudsters, Taibbi said. But over time, staff began “to find more and more uses for these tools.”
Soon, and at a growing rate, “outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech,” he wrote.
Twitter’s censorship system was well established by 2020, an election year, and while both sides of U.S. politics had access, the political bias of the majority of the platform’s employees meant Democrats had more avenues to “complain” about tweets, according to Taibbi.
“For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored,” Taibbi wrote.
“However,” he added. “This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.”
Here we go!! 🍿🍿 https://t.co/eILK9f3bAm
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022
Twitter’s Censorship Tools
Taibbi said “The Twitter Files” tell an “incredible story” about how one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms used its powerful tools to delete tweets at the request of “connected actors.”
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