Elon Musk Speaks Out On ‘Twitter Files’

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05 Dec 2022
min read

News Synopsis

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, commented on the so-called "Twitter Files" on Saturday night. Journalist Matt Taibbi had posted a long tweet thread detailing discussions about Twitter's content moderation decisions that took place behind closed doors, including the decision to suppress a 2020 New York Post article about Hunter Biden and his laptop.

Musk mentioned Taibbi and journalist Bari Weiss in a second "Twitter Files" drop during a two-hour Twitter Spaces session, although he did not provide a specific release date. Musk marketed his initial release as a bombshell and "awesome," yet it was mostly regarded as average.

The session was plagued by technological issues, and Musk claimed to have joined from his private jet.

The original Twitter thread, according to Musk, was inspired by what happened in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election and The original Twitter thread, according to Musk, was inspired by what happened in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election and "how much government influence there was there." Musk maintains he hasn't examined the publicly available documents himself.

In Taibbi's first thread, he reiterated how Twitter employees struggled with fears that the Post story regarding Hunter Biden might be the result of a Russian hacking operation in the early hours after it went live. Weeks before the 2020 election, it showed staff members on several Twitter teams debating whether to restrict the article in accordance with the company's policy on hacked materials.

According to screenshots of internal messages obtained by Taibbi, several employees within the company questioned the reasoning for the choice, while others advised caution because the facts around the story were unclear.

According to the emails, Taibbi was able to get, Yoel Roth, the former head of site integrity for Twitter, told journalist Kara Swisher in an on-stage interview last week. Democrats made touch with political parties more regularly, according to Taibbi, who did not present any internal documents to back up his assertion. He made no mention of whether Democrats asked Twitter to censor the Post piece, and neither did his story suggest that the  United States government had exerted pressure on Twitter to do so.

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