Twitter Files

The Twitter Files

The logo of Twitter
Date	December 2, 2022 (2022-12-02)–ongoing
Participants	Elon Musk Matt Taibbi Bari Weiss Michael Shellenberger
Website	Part 1, Dec. 2, 2022 Part 2, Dec. 8, 2022 Part 3, Dec. 9, 2022 Part 4, Dec. 10, 2022 Part 5, Dec. 12, 2022

The Twitter Files are a set of internal Twitter, Inc. documents shared by owner Elon Musk with freelance journalist Matt Taibbi, opinion writer Bari Weiss, and author Michael Shellenberger in December 2022. Taibbi and Weiss coordinated the release of the documents with Twitter management, releasing the details of the files as a part of a series of Twitter threads.

In his opening tweets, Taibbi sought to demonstrate that Twitter's employee base was overwhelmingly left-leaning politically. He argued the Twitter organization grew too large to control its own processes, and that its content moderation developed a politically left-leaning bias.

The first installment, presented by Taibbi on December 2, 2022, showed elements of the deliberation process Twitter took regarding content moderation related to a New York Post article on the Hunter Biden laptop controversy in October 2020, as well as some other content. Taibbi tweeted that federal law enforcement gave Twitter a "general" warning about foreign hacks and leaks but that the Twitter files showed "no evidence ... of any government involvement in the laptop story." Taibbi also did not say any Democrats had asked Twitter to suppress the story.

The second thread, presented by Weiss on December 8, addressed what Musk and others have described as the "shadow banning" of some users, a practice referred to as "visibility filtering" by previous Twitter management. Twitter had announced in 2018 a new policy of limiting the reach of accounts exhibiting patterns of "troll-like behaviors," which resembled Musk's newly announced "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach" policies intended to limit the spread of "negativity."

Background

Twitter went live in 2006 and experienced explosive growth, reaching over 100 million users in 2012. Like other platforms, it began to develop a content moderation system in response to issues such as trolling, online harassment, and illegal or gruesome content. Content moderation is generally challenging, balancing the desire for an open platform with the removal of problematic content and users, and at Twitter's scale the issue became especially difficult. The inner workings of content moderation systems are also not well-known to the public, as too much detail would enable abuse by bad actors. Twitter and other social media sites were exploited by Russian trolls to boost the candidacy of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Twitter was looking to be acquired in 2016, but could not find a buyer—some in the financial press speculated that the site's insufficient content moderation had turned its environment toxic. Content like hate speech and misinformation/disinformation tend to spike during major events such as elections. Among its contentious moderation actions were the suppression of a story by the New York Post about the laptop of Hunter Biden during the 2020 election, under its policy of not distributing hacked materials, and its permanent suspension of the account of Donald Trump, citing a risk of violence in the January 6 Capitol attack in 2021. An internal statistical study performed by Twitter, released in October 2021, found that Twitter's algorithms favored a conservative bias.

Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion and became its CEO on October 27. He took a drastically different approach to content moderation, cutting much of the staff and unbanning prominent users, including Trump, as part of being a self-described "free speech absolutist." Musk's approach raised concerns among some experts, and over 70 civil society organizations called on him to tackle the subsequent rise in hate speech. Musk partially reversed his position on November 18 and announced a "freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach" policy of "negative/hate tweets" being "deboosted." On November 28, Musk tweeted "The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened..." He gave a series of internal Twitter documents, such as screenshots, emails, and chat logs, to freelance journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss. Taibbi noted that "in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions" that he did not disclose. Weiss stated that the only condition she and her reporting team agreed to was that the material would be first published on Twitter. Musk later stated he had not read the documents prior to their release to Taibbi and Weiss.

On December 6, Musk fired James Baker, deputy general counsel at Twitter, for allegedly vetting information before it was passed on to Taibbi and Weiss, and providing an explanation that Musk found "unconvincing." Baker had been involved in the decision to withhold the laptop story, and had previously been general counsel for the FBI when he was a witness for, but not implicated in, the failed John Durham prosecution of Michael Sussmann on allegations that Sussmann worked with the 2016 Clinton campaign to advance a Russian collusion narrative against Trump.

Content

In his prelude, Taibbi asserts that the Files tell a "Frankenstein tale of a human-built mechanism" - "one of the world's largest and most influential social media platforms" - "grown out [of] the control of its designer". Taibbi posits that these documents as well as the assessment of "multiple current and former high-level executives" demonstrate how although external requests for moderation from both political parties were received and honored, an overwhelmingly left-wing employee base at Twitter facilitated a left-leaning slant in content moderation.

According to Taibbi, the Twitter Files number in the thousands. According to CNBC's December 7 publication, Musk said that the future "Twitter Files" releases would include how Twitter handled the 2020 presidential election, the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Suppression of New York Post story

Journalist Matt Taibbi, who published the first installment of the documents

During the 2020 American presidential election, the New York Post published a story about the laptop of Hunter Biden. Twitter, along with Facebook, implemented measures to block the sharing of the story, and Twitter further imposed a temporary lock on the accounts of the New York Post and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, citing violations of its rules against posting hacked content. The decision to take action on the content came in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and generated an outcry from then-President Trump and conservatives who saw it as politically motivated.

On December 2, 2022, Taibbi published a Twitter thread on the subject, with internal Twitter emails interspersed with his own reporting. Some documents described Twitter's internal deliberations regarding the decision to censor the reporting of the story, while others contained information on how Twitter treated tweets that were flagged for removal at the request of the 2020 Biden campaign team and the Trump White House. He also shared communications between California Democrat Ro Khanna and then-Twitter head of legal Vijaya Gadde, in which Khanna warned about the free-speech implications and possible political backlash that would result from censorship. Taibbi's thread generated considerable interest but did not contain any significant new revelations.

The thread shed light on an internal debate on whether Twitter should prevent the story from being shared, with leadership arguing that it fell under the company's prohibition on hacked materials. According to Taibbi, then-CEO Jack Dorsey was unaware of the decision to suppress the content when it was made; days later, he reversed the decision, calling it a "mistake," and Twitter updated its hacked materials policy to state that news stories about hacked materials would be permitted, but with a contextual warning.

Taibbi reported Twitter had "received and honored" deletion requests from both the Biden campaign and the Trump White House; he presented examples of the former but not of the latter. The Biden campaign asked Twitter to review five tweets, which were later deleted. Taibbi did not disclose the content of the tweets, but four were later found from internet archives to contain nude photos and videos of Hunter Biden, which violate Twitter policy and California law as revenge porn; the content of the fifth deleted tweet is unknown.

Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter had acted "under orders from the government," though Taibbi reported no government involvement in the laptop story, tweeting, "Although several sources recalled hearing about a 'general' warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence—that I've seen—of any government involvement in the laptop story." His reporting undermined a key narrative promoted by Musk and Republicans that the FBI pressured social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop stories. Musk further claimed that this content moderation violated the First Amendment. However, legal experts refuted the idea that content moderation by a private company violates the First Amendment, as it only restricts government actors. David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said that Twitter is legally able to choose what speech is allowed on their site, noting that both the Biden campaign, which was not part of government, and the Trump White House could request specific content moderation actions.

Visibility filtering

On December 8, Bari Weiss released the second installment of the "Twitter Files", addressing a practice referred to as "visibility filtering" by the previous Twitter management. Weiss said a high-level team known as Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support (SIP-PES)—which included Twitter's chief legal officer, head of trust and safety, and the CEO—was in charge of making decisions about accounts that were "politically sensitive." She shared images of the internal Twitter system with accounts—including of Jay Bhattacharya, Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, and Libs of TikTok—variously tagged under "Trends Blacklist," "Search Blacklist," "Do Not Amplify," and "Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES." Weiss said that SIP-PES was responsible for suspending the Libs of TikTok account multiple times on the grounds that the account was encouraging online harassment of hospitals and health care providers offering transgender health care. Weiss contrasted this with a decision by Twitter not to delete a tweet containing the address of Chaya Raichik, the account owner. Weiss characterized the practice as an act of censorship. Twitter was transparent about this practice, announcing in 2018 that certain content would be suppressed if it was deemed "detracting," and accounts' past behaviors would determine the content's visibility. Kayvon Beykpour, the former head of product, stated in a July 2018 blogpost that "We certainly don't shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology. We do rank tweets and search results."

After Weiss' presentation, Musk tweeted that former CEO Jack Dorsey "had a pure heart" and was "unaware of systemic bias" at Twitter, saying that the controversial decisions made by the company were done without Dorsey's approval; no evidence for this claim was provided. Twitter internal analysis of its algorithms in 2021 pointed in the opposite direction of Musk's and Weiss' claims of left-wing bias, reporting a "statistically significant difference favoring the political right wing" in every country except Germany.

Journalists note that the old system of downranking is similar to Musk's current policy about "freedom of speech, doesn't mean freedom of reach." Musk has since stated that an upcoming update to Twitter will show to the user whether they have been "shadowbanned," the reason why, and how to appeal.

Wired and Slate described the policy by which moderators were unable to act on high-profile conservative accounts without first escalating to high-level management as "preferential treatment", since this effectively limited Twitter's enforcement of their content policies on these accounts.

Attack on the Capitol and suspension of Donald Trump

The third installment was released by Matt Taibbi on December 9 and highlights issues regarding the application of standards and policies at Twitter. Taibbi reported that then-head of Trust and Safety for Twitter, Yoel Roth, met on a regular basis with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

The fourth installment was released on December 10 by Michael Shellenberger. It covered how Twitter employees reacted to the January 6 United States Capitol attack and the conflict within the company about how to take action against tweets and Twitter users who were supporting the insurrection without a specific policy as backing, due to the unprecedented nature of Trump's false claims of winning the 2020 United States presidential election. Shellenberger shared screenshots of Roth asking a coworker to blacklist the terms "stopthesteal" and "kraken", both of which were associated with supporters of the January 6 insurrection. He also said that pressure from the company's employees appeared to influence former CEO Jack Dorsey to approve a "repeat offender" policy for permanent suspension. After receiving five strikes as per the new policy, Trump's personal Twitter account was permanently suspended on January 8. According to Shellenberger, employees frequently flagged tweets and applied strikes on their own discretion, without specific policy guidance.

The fifth installment was released on December 12, by Bari Weiss. It covered how Twitter employees influenced the decision regarding Trump's ban from the platform.

Reactions

Politicians

After the first Taibbi thread, former Trump White House official and radio host Seb Gorka said, "so far, I’m deeply underwhelmed." He rejected statements made by posters on Truth Social that the First Amendment had been violated. In a Fox News interview, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy defended Taibbi's reporting and said of Elon Musk that his critics are "trying to discredit a person for telling the truth."

Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado said, "We thought Twitter was a corrupt cesspool. We never knew it was this bad."

Democratic House Representative Ro Khanna confirmed the authenticity of his email to Twitter where he criticized the suppression of the New York Post's story as a violation of First Amendment principles. He also said that Twitter should implement "clear and public criteria" of removal or non-promotion of content, make such decisions in a transparent way, and give users a way to appeal the decisions.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump referred to the first release of Twitter Files as proof of "Big Tech companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party" rigging the 2020 United States presidential election against him, declaring that "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" was necessary. He asked whether the "rightful winner" should be declared or a new election should be held. White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates condemned Trump's comments, writing that the U.S. Constitution is a "sacrosanct document" that unites the country "regardless of party" and that calling for its termination is an attack against "the soul of our nation". Musk also condemned Trump by tweeting: "The Constitution is greater than any President. End of story."

Legal scholars

David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said Twitter is free to decide what content to allow on its platform, and both the Biden campaign and the Trump White House were free to make content suggestions.

Jonathan Turley, an attorney, legal scholar and analyst, described the Twitter Files as proof of "shadow banning" and revealing "an insatiable appetite for more censorship, where even jokes become intolerable". He suggested that legal consequences may emerge for Dorsey and other executives, who denied having shadow banned users under oath publicly and before the U.S. Congress. Turley commented that free speech is being threatened because "the media voluntarily maintains official narratives and suppresses dissenting views".

Privacy and security

Taibbi was criticized for his failure to redact email addresses from the published screenshots; Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of Trust and Safety, called it "fundamentally unacceptable", and Musk conceded that the email addresses should have been redacted. Though Musk was supportive of Roth, who is gay, while he was employed by Twitter, after his resignation, he began publicly criticizing him and endorsing tweets making false accusations against Roth — including an accusation that he was sexualizing children, resulting in a wave of threats of violence serious enough to force him to flee his home.

Musk directed his new head of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin, to give screenshots of internal views of users' accounts to Weiss, which she posted online. The publication of the screenshots, and a statement by Musk that writers working on the files would have unfettered access, raised concerns that people could access sensitive user data in violation of a 2022 privacy agreement between Twitter and the Federal Trade Commission. On December 10, 2022, Musk threatened to sue any Twitter employee who leaked information to the press, despite his claims to be a "free speech absolutist," and having released internal messages and emails to selected journalists. This threat was expressed in an all-hands email to Twitter employees with employees being given a pledge to sign indicating that they understood him.

Former Twitter employees

Twitter's former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey urged Musk to release all the internal documents "without filter" at once, including all of Twitter's discussions around current and future actions on content moderation. Dorsey later criticized Musk for only allowing the internal documents to be accessed by select people, suggesting that the files should have been made publicly available "Wikileaks-style" so that there were "many more eyes and interpretations to consider". Dorsey conceded that "mistakes were made" at Twitter, but stated his belief that there were "no ill intent or hidden agendas" from the company. He also condemned the harassment campaigns waged against former Twitter employees, saying that it is "dangerous" and "doesn't solve anything".

Former head of product Kayvon Beykour said that Weiss' framing of the account blacklists as shadow banning was "either a lazy interpretation or deliberately misleading," stating that they never denied "de-amplifying" content, and that Weiss was "characterizing any de-amplification as equating to shadow banning."

Journalists

After the first File was published, many technology journalists wrote that the reported evidence did not demonstrate much more than Twitter's policy team having a difficult time making a tough call, but resolving the matter swiftly.

Forbes reported on Taibbi's posts regarding the New York Post story that they contained "no bombshells," and showed "no government involvement in the laptop story," contradicting a conspiracy theory that claimed the FBI was involved. Taibbi received criticism from MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan for the appearance of performing public relations for Musk; Taibbi responded by asking how many of his critics "have run stories for anonymous sources at the FBI, CIA, the Pentagon, [and] White House."

Intelligencer of New York magazine reacted to the Twitter Files installments one and two, calling them "saturated in hyperbole, marred by omissions of context, and discredited by instances of outright mendacity" and thus "best understood as an egregious example of the very phenomenon it purports to condemn — that of social-media managers leveraging their platforms for partisan ends."

Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic characterized the initial two Twitter Files as "sloppy, anecdotal, devoid of context, and...old news" but acknowledged that the files demonstrate the "immense power" possessed by Big Tech platforms as a result of "[outsourcing] broad swaths of our political discourse and news consumption to corporate platforms." Warzel also insinuated that Musk's core goal is to "anger liberals" and appeal to the political right, citing him allowing the documents to only be accessed by select people "who've expressed alignment with his pet issues" and telling his followers to vote Republican in the 2022 midterm elections.

After the first Weiss presentation, Caleb Ecarma of Vanity Fair wrote it was still unknown how many accounts had been "shadow banned," how they had been selected and what their political persuasions were, noting that several prominent leftist and anti-fascist users had been banned under Musk; he reinstated several banned prominent right-leaning users.

Katherine Cross of Wired portrayed Weiss' and Taibbi's presentation of the first two Files as "theatrical transparency that occludes the lack of a real thing under Musk's leadership", insinuating that Musk's ulterior motive is to achieve "freedom from any accountability" and "a world where no one tells him 'no'". Cross said that the word "shadowban" has become "whatever people want it to mean", comparing it to the use of the word "woke" by the political right. She also asked why Musk had not been transparent about his own decision-making, suggesting that "everything they have falsely accused Twitter of doing is what they seek to do to their many ideological enemies".

Conservative columnist Gerard Baker of The Wall Street Journal wrote that the Twitter Files "tell us nothing new", and that it does not contain any "shocking revelation[s]" regarding government censorship or manipulation by political campaigns. Baker added that the Files only reveal "the internal deliberations of a company dealing with complex issues in ways consistent with its values."

Oliver Darcy of CNN commented on the fact multiple news organizations were not reporting on the Twitter Files, saying that this is because "the releases have largely not contained any revelatory information", for the Files only demonstrate "how messy content moderation can be—especially when under immense pressure and dealing with the former President of the United States."

Commentators

Miranda Devine, a columnist with the New York Post who was among the first to write about the laptop, told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the presentation regarding the story wasn't the "smoking gun we’d hoped for," adding, "I feel that Elon Musk has held back some material," alluding to a meeting he had with Apple CEO Tim Cook days earlier, amid speculation Apple might remove the Twitter app from its App Store. Devine later criticized ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News for not covering the Files, calling it "shameful", as well as The New York Times' and the Washington Post's coverage of Musk—who she called "Twitter's freedom-minded new owner"—for being "the same ignore-and-smear game across the leftie media sphere". She also characterized the Anti-Defamation League as "propagandists" after reporting a stark increase in hate speech on the platform in the wake of Musk's acquisition. Jim Geraghty of National Review wrote that "the files paint an ugly portrait of a social-media company’s management unilaterally deciding that its role was to keep breaking news away from the public instead of letting people see the reporting and drawing their own conclusions."

The Editorial Board at The Wall Street Journal praised the release for exposing "a form of political corruption" where current and former U.S. intelligence officials have an influence on elections.

Musk accused Wikipedia of "non-trivial left-wing bias" after the Twitter Files article was considered for deletion, replying to screenshots of select users referring to it as "not notable" and a "nothing burger"; however the final decision was to keep the article.