The Twitter Files are a series of releases of select internal Twitter, Inc. documents published from December 2022 through March 2023 on Twitter. CEO Elon Musk gave the documents to journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and authors Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig and Alex Berenson shortly after he acquired Twitter on October 27, 2022. Taibbi and Weiss coordinated the publication of the documents with Musk, releasing details of the files as a series of Twitter threads.
The releases have prompted debate over the nature of blacklisting, vows for congressional investigation, calls for the full release of all documents for the sake of transparency, and calls to improve content moderation processes at Twitter.
After the first set of files was published, many technology journalists said 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, while right-wing voices said the documents confirmed Twitter's liberal bias. In a June 2023 court filing, Twitter attorneys strongly rejected any suggestion that the Files showed what Musk and many Republicans claimed.
Background
The inner workings of content moderation systems are not well known to the public, as knowledge of the details could enable manipulation. But American conservatives had long contended that Twitter used its moderation policies to muzzle conservative views. On November 28, 2022, a month after Musk officially acquired Twitter, Musk announced that he planned to release a portion of Twitter's internal documents related to "free speech suppression", adding, "The public deserves to know what really happened" under Twitter's prior leadership.
Musk subsequently gave a series of internal Twitter documents—including 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 before their release to Taibbi and Weiss.
On December 6, Musk fired James Baker, deputy general counsel at Twitter, for allegedly vetting the information before it was passed on to Taibbi and Weiss and providing an explanation that Musk found "unconvincing." Taibbi said that the planned publication of Twitter's internal documents related to its handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story had been delayed because of Baker's vetting. Baker had previously been general counsel for the FBI and investigated Russian interference into the 2016 election.
Topics
In his prelude, Taibbi stated that the files told 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 wrote 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 bias.
The first installment included content related to Twitter's moderation process regarding a New York Post article on the Hunter Biden laptop story. The second installment addressed what Musk and others have described as the shadow banning of some users. The third installment highlighted events within Twitter leading to President Donald Trump's suspension from Twitter. The fourth installment covered how Twitter employees reacted to the January 6 United States Capitol attack and the conflict within Twitter on how to moderate tweets and users supporting the attack. The fifth installment covered how Twitter employees influenced the decision to ban Trump from the platform. The sixth installment described how the FBI contacted Twitter to suggest that action be taken against several accounts for allegedly spreading election disinformation. The seventh installment showed Twitter's interaction with the intelligence community around the New York Post story on Hunter Biden's laptop. The eighth installment showed the Twitter Site Integrity Team whitelisted accounts from United States Central Command (CENTCOM) used to run online influence campaigns in other countries.