Days after the first set of files published by journalist Matt Taibbi failed to yield any unexpected new information, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey urged Elon Musk to release “without filter” Twitter’s internal communications about moderation choices related to a report about President Joe Biden’s son Hunter. These communications are known as the “Twitter files.”
HIGHLIGHTS
- Musk has been hyping the release of internal Twitter correspondence, which he has dubbed the “Twitter Files,” for the past week, saying they will reveal the platform’s prior attempts to stifle free expression, particularly from conservative voices. Dorsey tweeted Musk on Wednesday in his first response to the disclosure, asking, “Why not just reveal everything without filter and let people evaluate for themselves?” if Musk’s purpose was to build transparency and trust.
- Musk was subsequently pressed by Dorsey to make “everything public now,” including all of Twitter’s talks regarding the company’s present and upcoming content moderation activities.
- The co-founder of Twitter had previously remained silent in response to Musk’s accusations that the social media site had unfairly censored free speech by removing a New York Post article from its archives from October 2020 about then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s alleged connections to a Ukrainian energy company that paid payments to his son Hunter.
- While the first batch of documents released by journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday did not contain any stunning information, it did not withdraw Dorsey’s and Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) personal email addresses either.
IMPORTANT HORIZONS
After Musk gave Taibbi access to internal discussions at Twitter, the first batch of Twitter Files were made public. According to the records, Twitter executives deliberated whether or not to bury the New York Post report, which was based on information retrieved from Hunter Biden’s personal laptop. After some consideration, it was decided to remove the story from the site due to potential policy violations with regard to the publication of hacked materials. Within a few days, the ban was lifted, and Dorsey acknowledged his error.
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
In refuting a well-known Republican conspiracy theory that the FBI was engaged in the choice, Taibbi claimed that he had uncovered “no evidence, that I’ve seen, of any government participation in the laptop tale.” The report also highlighted requests to remove specific information from Twitter from the Biden and Trump teams. In one of his tweets, Taibbi mentioned that Twitter had removed five posts as a result of a request from the “Biden team,” but he omitted to specify that the offending tweets were nude pictures of Hunter Biden that were published without his permission. Despite the fact that the Trump administration was in office at the time, conservatives seemed to seize upon this tweet by alleging it was an instance of government censorship.
Earlier, Musk himself tweeted without evidence that Twitter had acted “under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review.”
