Censorship: Twitter Takeover Totally Panics Political Regime of LeftLibDemSocMediaTechPol

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Twitter Files
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The Twitter FilesTwitter-logo.svg
The logo of Twitter
Date	December 2, 2022–ongoing
Participants	

    Elon Musk
    Matt Taibbi
    Bari Weiss
    Michael Shellenberger

Website	

    Part 1, December 2, 2022
    Part 2, December 8, 2022
    Part 3, December 9, 2022
    Part 4, December 10, 2022
    Part 5, December 12, 2022
    Part 6, December 16, 2022
    Part 6.5, December 18, 2022
    Part 7, December 19, 2022

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The Twitter Files are a set of internal Twitter, Inc. documents shared
by owner Elon Musk with independent journalists Matt Taibbi and 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.[1][2][3]

The first installment, presented by Taibbi on December 2, 2022,
described what Taibbi said were 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.[4] Taibbi tweeted that the FBI gave
Twitter a "general" warning about foreign hacks and leaks but that the
Twitter files contained "no evidence ... of any government involvement
in the laptop story". Taibbi also did not say any Democrats had asked
Twitter to suppress the story.[5][4][6] 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.[7] 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".[8][9]

The third installment, released by Taibbi on December 9, highlighted
events within Twitter leading to Trump's suspension. The fourth
installment, released on December 10 by Shellenberger, 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 who were supporting the attack. The fifth installment, released
on December 12 by Weiss, covered how Twitter employees influenced the
decision to ban Trump from the platform. The sixth installment,
released on December 16 by Taibbi, described how the FBI contacted
Twitter to suggest that action be taken against a number of accounts
for allegedly spreading misinformation.[10]

The releases have prompted debate over the nature of blacklisting,[11]
vows for congressional investigation, calls for the full release of
all documents for the sake of transparency, calls to improve content
moderation processes, criticism over alleged shortcomings in the
releases including exaggerating the contents' significance, partial
reporting, conclusions reached in the reporting with counterclaims
against, failure to redact private information, and causing hatred and
potential harm against those involved in content moderation.
Contents

    1 Background
    2 Content
        2.1 Content moderation of New York Post story
        2.2 Visibility filtering
        2.3 Attack on the Capitol and suspension of Donald Trump
        2.4 FBI communications with Twitter Trust and Safety Team
    3 Reactions
        3.1 Politicians
        3.2 Legal scholars
        3.3 Privacy and security
        3.4 Former Twitter employees
        3.5 Journalists
        3.6 Commentators
    4 References

Background

Twitter went live in 2006, reaching over 100 million users in
2012.[12] 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.[13] Content moderation is
generally challenging, balancing the desire for an open platform with
the removal of problematic content and users,[13] and at Twitter's
scale the issue became especially difficult.[14] The inner workings of
content moderation systems are also not well-known to the public, as
knowledge of the details could enable manipulation.[15] Content like
hate speech and misinformation/disinformation tend to spike during
major events such as elections,[16] and Twitter and other social media
sites were exploited by Russian operatives to boost the candidacy of
Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.[17][18] 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.[14]

Social media networks sought to prevent such exploitation in the
future by taking moderation action.[19] Among Twitter's politically
contentious decisions 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 Donald Trump, citing a risk of violence in the January 6
Capitol attack in 2021.[19][20] American conservatives contended that
Twitter was biased against them and saw such moderation actions as
evidence,[21] though a 2021 study using Twitter data found that its
algorithms favored the political right over the political left in most
countries examined, including the United States.[22][23]

Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion and became its CEO
on October 27, after which he cut much of the staff and unbanning
prominent users, including Trump, as part of being a self-described
"free speech absolutist."[24][25][26] Musk's approach raised concerns
among some experts,[27] and over 70 civil society organizations called
on him to tackle the subsequent rise in hate speech.[28] 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."[29] 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..."[30] He gave a series of internal Twitter documents, such
as screenshots, emails, and chat logs, to freelance journalists Matt
Taibbi and Bari Weiss.[15][31][32] 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.[33][34] Weiss stated
that the only condition she and her reporting team agreed to was that
the material would be first published on Twitter.[9] Musk later stated
he had not read the documents prior to their release to Taibbi and
Weiss.[35]

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,[36] 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.[37][38][39][40]
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".[41] 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
bias.[42]

According to Taibbi, the Twitter Files number in the thousands.[1][32]
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 United States Capitol attack and
the COVID-19 pandemic.[43]
Content moderation 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, son of
then-presidential candidate Joe 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.[19][44] The Washington Post
added that this was a result of the company's scenario-planning
exercises to combat disinformation campaigns, which included potential
"hack and leak" situations in the nature of what had transpired during
the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. The
decision generated an outcry from then-President Trump and
conservatives who saw it as politically motivated.[44] Then-Head of
Trust and Safety Yoel Roth later acknowleged that it was a “mistake”
to censor the New York Post’s story.[6]

On December 2, 2022, Taibbi published a Twitter thread on the subject,
with internal Twitter emails interspersed with his own
reporting.[45][1] Elon Musk's build-up prior to the release was
disproportionate with the overall lower level of significance of the
revelations; nevertheless, Taibbi's thread attracted thousands of
retweets.[46][47] Some documents described Twitter's internal
deliberations regarding the decision to censor the reporting of the
story,[1][33] 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.[48] 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.[49]

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.[50]
According to Taibbi, then-CEO Jack Dorsey was unaware of the decision
to suppress the content when it was made.[51] Days later, he reversed
the decision, calling it a "mistake,"[52] and Twitter updated its
hacked materials policy to state that news stories about hacked
materials would be permitted, but with a contextual warning.[53][33]
Taibbi also shared a screenshot of a what seemed to be a request from
the Biden campaign to review five tweets, and the reply "Handled
these". Taibbi did not disclose the content of those tweets,[54] but
four were later found from internet archives to contain nude photos
and videos, purportedly of Hunter Biden, which violate Twitter policy
and California law as revenge porn; the content of the fifth deleted
tweet is unknown.[39][47]

House Republicans have vowed to investigate the internal
communications of the handling of this story, with Rep. James Comer
stating that every Twitter employee who was involved will have the
opportunity to explain their actions before Congress.[55]

Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter had acted "under orders from the
government," though Taibbi reported that he found no evidence of
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."[47][48] 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.[47][56] 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.[57] 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.[49]
Visibility filtering

Twitter ranks tweets and limits the reach of some accounts through a
practice internally referred to as "visibility filtering". This is
done to accounts that violate Twitter rules but do not necessarily
merit suspension.[58] The approach was announced in 2018 by then-CEO
Jack Dorsey in order to preserve the "health" of conversations by
identifying accounts more likely to disrupt conversations rather than
contribute to them.[58] The practice is part of the site's terms of
service,[59] and is the subject of a Frequently Asked Questions page
written in 2018.[60] Twitter distinguishes this from shadow banning,
which it defines as making "content undiscoverable to everyone except
the person who posted it."[61][62][63]

Bari Weiss published a thread on the topic on December 8, posting
screenshots of employee views of user accounts with tags indicating
visibility filtering, and wrote that politically sensitive decisions
were made by the Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support
(SIP-PES) team, which included the chief legal officer, head of trust
and safety, and CEO.[64][7] She posted screenshots of the accounts of
Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya, conservative radio host Dan
Bongino, and conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which were
respectively tagged with "Trends Blacklist", "Search Blacklist", and
"Do Not Amplify".[63] She also said that the SIP-PES team was
responsible for the multiple suspensions of the anti-LGBT account Libs
of TikTok, which had been tagged with "Do Not Take Action on User
Without Consulting With SIP-PES". She noted that Twitter had not taken
down a tweet containing the address of the account's owner, Chaya
Raichik.[63]

Weiss characterized these practices as censorship and as evidence of
shadow banning, which Twitter disputed, largely on the basis of its
different definition of "shadow ban".[61] The documents she discussed
focused on individuals popular with the right-wing and suggested the
moderation practices were politically motivated[60][63]—a
long-standing claim among American conservatives,[61] which Twitter
has denied,[58] and is contrary to internal studies that suggest its
algorithms favored the political right instead.[63][65][66] 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",[59][67] since this
effectively limited Twitter's enforcement of their content policies on
these accounts.[68] Weiss did not reveal how many accounts overall
were de-amplified nor the politics of those who were,[25] and this
lack of context made it difficult to glean any conclusions on the
matter.[63] Kayvon Beykpour, the former head of product at Twitter,
called the thread "deliberately misleading"; in the interest of
transparency, Dorsey called for all of the Twitter Files to be
released, tweeting to Musk, "Make everything public now."[61]
Attack on the Capitol and suspension of Donald Trump

The third installment was released by Matt Taibbi on December 9,
highlighting the events within the company that led up to Trump's
suspension from Twitter.[69] Taibbi reported that on October 8, 2020,
Twitter executives created a channel entitled "us2020_xfn_enforcement"
as a hub to discuss content removal that pertained to the
then-upcoming 2020 United States presidential election. Twitter's
moderation process was, according to Taibbi, based on guesswork, "gut
calls", and Google searches, including moderation of then-President
Trump's tweets. As previously reported by The New York Times in
2020,[70] Taibbi said that then-head of Trust and Safety for Twitter,
Yoel Roth, met on a regular basis with agencies such as the FBI to
discuss potential attempts by foreign and domestic actors to
manipulate the 2020 election. Following the suspension of Trump's
Twitter account, Taibbi reports that it set a precedent for the
suspension of future presidents' accounts, which he said was in
violation of Twitter's own policies. Taibbi wrote that he was told
that the Trump administration and Republicans had made requests to
moderate tweets, but did not find any evidence of these requests in
the election enforcement Slack chat.[71][72]

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 attack 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 attack. 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. Shellenberger's thread also
provided screenshots suggesting that there were instances when
employees flagged tweets and applied strikes at their own discretion
without specific policy guidance, which according to Shellenberger are
examples of a frequent occurrence.[73]

The fifth installment was released on December 12, by Bari Weiss. It
covered the conflict between Twitter employees and how it influenced
the decision regarding Trump's ban from the platform. Those
communications include requests from the FBI and other agencies to
determine if a particular tweet violated policies against election
manipulation.[56] Weiss reported that two tweets Trump made in the
morning of January 8, 2021, were used as a foundation for his
suspension: the first one praised his supporters at the ballot box
while the second announced he would not attend Joe Biden's
inauguration. She said that the two tweets were initially cleared as
no indication of incitement of violence, to the agreement of multiple
employees. Former head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde
dissented, according to Weiss, suggesting that the tweets were dog
whistles for future political violence. Weiss reported that Twitter's
"scaled enforcement" team engaged and agreed with Gadde, suggesting
that the tweets violated the "glorification of violence" policy and
that the term "American Patriots" Trump used in a tweet was code for
the Capitol rioters. She also said that one team member referred to
Trump as a "leader of a terrorist group responsible for
violence/deaths comparable to the Christchurch shooter or Hitler".
Weiss reported that after a 30 minute all-staffer meeting, Dorsey
asked Roth to simplify the language of the document for Trump's
suspension. One hour later, Trump's account was suspended "due to the
risk of further incitement of violence".[74]
FBI communications with Twitter Trust and Safety Team

The sixth installment was released by Matt Taibbi on December 16,
which described how the FBI reported a number of accounts to Twitter's
Trust and Safety Team for allegedly spreading election misinformation.
According to Taibbi, many of the accounts reported had small amounts
of followers and were making tweets seemingly satirical in nature,
such as user Claire Foster who had tweeted "I'm a ballot counter in my
state. If you're not wearing a mask, I'm not counting your vote.
#safetyfirst" and "For every negative comment on this post I'm adding
another vote for the democrats". Taibbi reported that a top member of
staff referred to the relationship between the company and the FBI as
"government-industry sync" due to the frequency of emails and meetings
with the agency.[10]
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.[75] 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."[76]

Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado said, "We thought Twitter
was a corrupt cesspool. We never knew it was this bad."[77]

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.[5] 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.[78]

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".[79] Musk also condemned Trump by tweeting: "The Constitution
is greater than any President. End of story."[2]
Legal scholars

David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said
Twitter was 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.[80]

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".[81]
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.[1] 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, which Donie O'Sullivan of CNN said
is a "common trope used by conspiracy theorists to attack people
online", resulting in a wave of threats of violence serious enough to
force him to flee his home.[82][83]

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.[84] 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.[84] 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, with Twitter employees given a pledge to
sign indicating that they understood.[85][86]
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.[87] 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 was "no ill intent or hidden agendas" in the
company. He also condemned the harassment campaigns waged against
former Twitter employees, saying that it is "dangerous" and "doesn't
solve anything".[88]

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."[63]
Journalists

After the first set of Files were 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.[32][36]

Forbes reported on Taibbi's posts regarding the New York Post story
that they contained "no bombshells," and appeared to indicate "no
government involvement in the laptop story," contradicting a
conspiracy theory that claimed the FBI was involved.[46] 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."[1]

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."[89]

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 demonstrated 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.[90]

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.[91][92]

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".[59]

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."[93]

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." However, he noted news outlets not
covering the Files allows for "dishonest actors in right-wing media"
to hijack the narrative with "warped interpretation[s]", thus creating
complications for laypeople trying to research the Files.[94]

Following the sixth release of Files, Robby Soave of the libertarian
magazine Reason wrote that "social media companies have every right to
moderate jokes" but called the FBI's communications with the company
"inappropriate" and a "free speech violation". He commented that it
was "frankly disturbing" for tech companies and the federal government
to be "working in tandem to crack down on dissent, contrarianism, and
even humor".[10]
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.[75] 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.[95] 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."[96]

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.[97]

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.[98][99]
References

    Grynbaum, Michael M. (December 4, 2022). "Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi,
and a Very Modern Media Maelstrom". The New York Times.
    ""End of story": Elon Musk responds to Trump's "Twitter Files"
reaction". Axios. December 4, 2022.
    Frankel, Alison (December 5, 2022). "Musk is entitled to order
disclosures like 'The Twitter Files.' Are states?". Reuters. Archived
from the original on December 6, 2022. Retrieved December 10, 2022.
    Fung, Brian (December 4, 2022). "Released Twitter emails show how
employees debated how to handle 2020 New York Post Hunter Biden
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