LIVE: Musk and Matt Taibbi are live releasing what they call “the Twitter Files”.
Context: Musk has long stated that he is in pursuit of ‘winning the public trust back’. And according to him, releasing information about the suppression of a major political development by Twitter itself is the way to do that.
“The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself,” Musk tweeted Monday, without elaborating. “The public deserves to know what really happened…”
This announcement comes just a few days after Elon Musk stated that it was ‘essential’ for Twitter to reveal information about its response to the laptop story if the social media platform wanted to grow and capture the trust of the public.
Why It Matters: In the run-up to the election between Biden’s father and Trump in 2020, Twitter prevented users from sharing links to a front-page newspaper article about Hunter Biden’s private life and his controversial business ties to Ukraine. The article was about Hunter Biden’s private life and his controversial business ties to Ukraine.
Prior to his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion, Musk referred to the choice as “clearly tremendously inappropriate.” He said that before he took control of the platform, information about the scale of censorship of this story was something he was deeply interested in.
As this information is being released, The White House is keeping a close eye on the new owner of Twitter in order to determine whether or not the platform as a whole poses a threat of becoming a new source of disinformation.
His tweet response to the White House is that: ‘This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.’
Musk, prior to the completion of the purchase, stated his reasoning for going on the $44B acquisition was that: ‘Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”
Whats Happening: And now, the “Twitter Files” are being live released.
Matt Taibbi says:
What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
In its early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.
Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly….
If you’d like to follow the entire ‘Twitter Files’ live, follow the thread below on Twitter:
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
