On December 2, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi shared the “Twitter Files”: emails from Twitter execs discussing the choice to suppress a 2020 NY Post story about files on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Elon hinted he released them to Taibbi -- Gizmodo
Read the complete Twitter Files thread for yourself here
Tucker Carlson called the Twitter files “one of the most extraordinary moments in the history of social media”. He says the files expose Twitter’s “illegal” and unfair censorship. Watch a clip here
The Atlantic: Twitter made the wrong decision, but Twitter’s a private company. It can do what it wants without worrying about 1st Amendment rights. There’s nothing “illegal” going on here
Rolling Stone Magazine called the files a “snoozefest”: They simply didn’t reveal anything new -- no smoking gun here
An Atlantic article said the hype is the point: Elon wants to spark outrage -- the actual contents of the Twitter files don’t matter so much
Reason Magazine agreed the findings weren’t earth-shattering: We all already knew Twitter execs are biased and incompetent -- Elon shouldn’t have hyped this up
Yes, says National Review. Elon & Taibbi shared the obvious. But it’s still a valuable piece of journalism. It’s disappointing that mainstream media doesn’t get that
The Federalist: The Twitter files prove there’s no such thing as a free press. If the media had done its job, people would know the Hunter Biden story wasn’t a fake
The WSJ Ed Board also thinks the Twitter files are evidence of a serious problem: Politicians have an unfair influence over what lands on people’s feeds and what doesn’t
Tech Crunch has a different, empathetic take: The Twitter files are a glimpse into just how complicated monitoring content is for social media giants