Twitter owner Elon Musk and independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday evening unveiled internal Twitter communications about what drove the tech firm to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story on the platform in the last weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign.
Dubbed “The Twitter Files” by Musk, Taibbi published a series of tweets on his Twitter account that contains what appears to be a mix of internal emails and communications among Twitter employees as they grappled with how to excuse their decision to censor the report.
Taibbi explained that Twitter’s early tools for “controlling speech” were designed to combat spam and financial fraudsters but that 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 he wrote.
Throughout the thread, Taibbi shared screenshots of internal and external emails and communications showing executives discussing how and why they censored the New York Post’s article.
One email dated Oct. 24, 2020, appears to show a Twitter executive sharing a list of five tweets allegedly identified by people from the campaign of then-candidate Joe Biden, a Democrat.
“By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled.'”
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” pic.twitter.com/mnv0YZI4af
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
Taibbi said the information he released on Friday was the first installment of a series that would be based on “thousands of internal documents” obtained by sources at Twitter.
He 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.”
Taibbi promised that more information and communications would be revealed at a later time that goes beyond implications around elections to issues like suppressing the reach of certain accounts while amplifying others.
“It’s been a whirlwind 96 hours for me, too,” Taibbi wrote. “There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right.”
He noted that in 2020 Twitter received requests from “both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign” that were “honored.”
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Caden Pearson is a reporter based in Australia. Contact him on [email protected]
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