Matt Taibbi posts internal Twitter documents showing the company's 2020 debate over the handling of content related to NY Post's Hunter Biden laptop story

The new disclosures, touted as “The Twitter Files,” were posted in a lengthy Twitter thread by investigative reporter and author Matt Taibbi (and retweeted by Musk).

Variety 2022-12-03 Todd Spangler

Context & Ripple Effects

The documents turn Twitter’s 2020 deliberations over the New York Post story into a public record, distributed through Matt Taibbi’s thread and amplified by Musk. Related coverage characterized the release as a rare view into moderation at scale, while finding it did not establish systemic bias.

The episode matters because the disclosures’ political interpretation quickly outpaced their evidentiary limits: Musk later amplified false claims about FBI payments and censorship.

First-order effects

Twitter’s internal handling of the New York Post story is exposed to public scrutiny, putting the company’s past moderation judgments at the center of a political dispute.
Musk’s retweet gives Taibbi’s document release a larger in-platform audience and makes the owner an active participant in framing Twitter’s prior decisions.

Second-order effects

The release pressures Twitter’s moderation critics and defenders to argue from selected internal communications, even as the related assessment says the material did not demonstrate systemic bias.
Journalists given access to company records become part of Twitter’s governance controversy; later FTC demands for information included the identities of journalists with access to internal records.

Third-order effects

If owner-directed disclosure becomes a recurring governance tool, platform-transparency debates will increasingly hinge on who selects and contextualizes internal records rather than on neutral reporting mechanisms.
The Taibbi episode and his later search-visibility restriction after a dispute with Musk illustrate the fragility of relying on a platform’s owner to both enable and distribute scrutiny of that platform.

The trend: Platform moderation is becoming a contest over selective internal transparency, with owners shaping both the release of records and the distribution of the resulting debate.

Discussion

@mtaibbi Matt Taibbi on x
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
Here we go!! 🍿🍿 https://twitter.com/...
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
Not for nothing, but so far, everything revealed is... basically exactly what has been known for nearly two years, and is basically... how these kinds of decisions always work? I mean... why the buildup to reveal... this?
@mtaibbi Matt Taibbi on x
While reviewing Gadde's emails, I saw a familiar name - my own. Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident https://twitter.com/...
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
Tune in for Episode 2 of The Twitter Files tomorrow!
@harrengwarding @harrengwarding on x
@Klonick ... All of Twitter to Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi tonight: https://twitter.com/...
@mattbinder Matt Binder on x
the Twitter Files even have Sebastian Gorka going “what? this is it?” https://twitter.com/...
@joshtpm Josh Marshall on x
basically from start to finish the only person coming through any of this looking even half way decent in yoel roth
@bborrman Brandon on x
Congratulations @mtaibbi! You shared the name of a junior employee who had no role in any decisions and now her photos are being shared and people are calling for her death. Way to stand up for the little guy.
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
Hey Elon, the Biden campaign wasn't the government in 2020. So, no, it's not a 1st Amendment violation. And highlighting people posting dick pics for Twitter's trust & safety team to see if they violate policy is... how trust & safety works? https://twitter.com/...
@biz Biz Stone on x
I don't get why naming names is necessary. Seems dangerous.
@joshtpm Josh Marshall on x
The one thing you can never do as a journalist is deceive your readers. Among all the other nonsense that went on tonight we have a great example of it here. Taibbi portentously announced that the Biden Team had sent an order to Twitter to delete Tweets and it had been “handled.”…
@goldman Jason Goldman on x
This is so dim. First it wasn't an act of transparency; it was a partisan hack job that revealed nothing new. Second if Elon believed in transparency he should leak his own correspondence about the content moderation decisions he's taken. Which electeds have written him? https://…
@brianbeutler Brian Beutler on x
Also: Musk has now seemingly leaked private third-party communications he inherited when he took control of Twitter, in order to settle a political score. I believe it's the first instance of him doing the nightmare-scenario thing his critics warned he might. https://twitter.com/…
@b_fung Brian Fung on x
Ohhh, this is Elon trying to juice engagement numbers to advertisers, isn't it https://taibbi.substack.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@mtaibbi Matt Taibbi on x
An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.
@fmanjoo Farhad Manjoo on x
The story in the twitter files is that multiple people wrestled with difficult policy decisions and took input from multiple stakeholders during a high-stakes news cycle .... Now all these decisions are being made by one meme-besotted billionaire.
@ashleyfeinberg Ashley Feinberg on x
so musk is just making him do this on twitter over multiple days to get numbers to try to convince advertisers with right https://twitter.com/...
@mehdirhasan Mehdi Hasan on x
I wonder what the “conditions” were and whether they were Musk-imposed. (The whole way it is being leaked out from Musk's Twitter onto Twitter itself, via Matt Taibbi's interminable thread, is just weird btw.) https://taibbi.substack.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@maxberger Max Berger on x
I'm old enough to remember when this guy considered himself the scourge of billionaires. He met with us at Occupy Wall Street to discuss digging up dirt on elite bankers. Now, he's helping the richest man in the world spread right-wing talking points. Sad! https://twitter.com/...
@mattbinder Matt Binder on x
congrats to Jack Dorsey who went from texting his friend Elon Musk to buy his company Twitter to being doxed by his friend Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, and being harassed for the rest of his life by QAnon because he has the word “pizza” in his email address
@alexstamos Alex Stamos on x
And... that's it. It's clearly not Twitter's responsibility to prevent the US media from publishing hacked, faked or stolen information. Had a great conversation on how platform's shouldn't overreach beyond their borders with the @TWiT team this week: https://www.youtube.com/...
@benjamingoggin Benjamin Goggin on x
This is what former Twitter Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth testified: In regular meetings with intelligence agencies and other social media companies, he learned of a general threat of “hack and leak” operations around the election, and that it was rumored to involve Hunter htt…
@katieharbath Katie Harbath on x
That's it? That's the big expose? After being utterly blasted for missing Russian interference in 2016, after the hacked materials in the French 2017 election OF COURSE a company would be a little on edge about making a wrong call.
@robsmithonline @robsmithonline on x
If you think what has been exposed of Twitter is bad, what's going on with Google and Facebook is likely to make your skin crawl. BREAK UP BIG TECH. NOW.
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
What really happened with the JFK assassination will be published on Twitter in 5 minutes!
@stevehiltonx Steve Hilton on x
Don't lose sight of the central point: Facebook, not Twitter, initiated the censorship of the Joe Biden/China corruption scandal. Facebook did this at the request of the FBI. FBI Director Christopher Wray must be the focus for accountability.
@oneunderscore__ Ben Collins on x
Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world. Humiliating shit.
@molly0xfff Molly White on x
something tells me the right wing will probably skim right past “there's no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story”
@claire Claire Díaz-Ortiz on x
How to Dox Your Own Employees: Chapter 666 in “Lead like Elon” a new management book, shipped straight from hell. https://twitter.com/...
@mehdirhasan Mehdi Hasan on x
Imagine volunteering to do online PR work for the world's richest man on a Friday night, in service of nakedly and cynically right-wing narratives, and then pretending you're speaking truth to power.
@oneunderscore__ Ben Collins on x
Elon Musk paid $44 billion to discover what we already knew: content moderation is messy and involves whole teams of people with a range of viewpoints trying to appease different political factions. He then gave “leaks” to a Substack Man to present it as a blockbuster. https://tw…
@alexeheath Alex Heath on x
@mtaibbi What “conditions” did you agree to for doing this story? Honestly curious! https://taibbi.substack.com/ ...
@alexstamos Alex Stamos on x
This thread confirms what I knew! Excellent! Twitter's reaction to 2016 included policies for both on-platform trolling and hack-and-leak. The latter lead to a big overreach that had nothing to do with the deep state or @EI_Partnership. A bunch of execs, of course, argued. https:…
@jeffbercovici Jeff Bercovici on x
Less than 24 hours after Elon pretended a swastika is an incitement to violence to make Kanye go away, Matt Taibbi is dropping the bombshell that Twitter execs make ad hoc content rulings to solve awkward political problems. Groundbreaking stuff.
@fmanjoo Farhad Manjoo on x
sir I was told this would be based on TWITTER FILES not a characterization by an unnamed former employee https://twitter.com/...
@mattbinder Matt Binder on x
the whole big reveal in the Twitter Files is based on these guys not remembering who the president was in 2020 lol https://twitter.com/...
@sebgorka Sebastian Gorka DrG on x
So far I'm deeply underwhelmed. We know the Dems in DC collude with the Dems in Palo Alto. Big Whop. Need a paper trail of felonies. Elon better have that.
@karaswisher Kara Swisher on x
What @mmasnick said. Dick pics are not a smoking gun, no matter how many times you say First Amendment. https://twitter.com/...
@tbonier Tom Bonier on x
The only thing I've learned from this thread is that Matt Taibbi isn't great at redacting email addresses. https://twitter.com/...
@pmarca Marc Andreessen on x
One of the most remarkable moments in Internet history playing out right now, in real time: https://twitter.com/...
@jenntakahashi Jenn Takahashi on x
damn @elonmusk - was that just a long ad for “the boring company” bc it worked 🥱
@reckless Nilay Patel on x
the social media laws in texas and florida are clearer violations of the first amendment lol https://twitter.com/...
@joshtpm Josh Marshall on x
So now off the grid/off the number train appreciate the congratsing that Dorsey didn't know what was happening. Even though here he clearly did know what was happening since he's talking about it. Maybe Dorsey didn't care or took too many micros of Psilocybin? https://twitter.com…
@themrc @themrc on x
Don't forget, Twitter and Facebook sabotaged the 2020 election. https://twitter.com/...
@mgsiegler M.G. Siegler on x
It might — and stick with me here — be interesting if Twitter actually surfaced the Hunter Biden laptop thread, rather than a million people screaming about the Hunter Biden laptop thread.
@dellcam Dell Cameron on x
It's almost like whoever owns twitter has some sort of right to decide what kind of content people can post here https://twitter.com/...
@tweetsbyparker @tweetsbyparker on x
good thing there hasn't been any influx of extreme people on this platform that would do something with the names and emails of people, right?
@kenklippenstein Ken Klippenstein on x
Many people think you should fact check before announcing news. Common misconception https://twitter.com/...
@shem_infinite Shem Horne on x
Elon leaking this publicly to Matt Taibbi is genius. Matt Taibbi hates Trump but still calls the corrupt media out on their lies about him. Basically one of the few people that would willingly report this that can't be accused of being a Trump stooge. I love it. https://twitter.c…
@esqueer_ Alejandra Caraballo on x
Matt Taibbi just doxed Jack Dorsey's private email address. Good going.
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
So far, we've... confirmed a bunch of things that Twitter said publicly, debunked the idea that the gov't demanded the story be removed, highlighted the challenges of content moderation... and revealed the personal email addresses of Jack and Ro Khanna (violating Twitter policy).
@capitolhunters @capitolhunters on x
People now marveling over Matt Taibbi's fall from his noble days covering Occupy Wall Street - remember that Tim Pool, who just hosted Kanye West and Nick Fuentes on his show, also got his start at Occupy. The alt-right is full of those slides from journalism to propaganda. 1/ ht…
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
So, uh, the big reveal of the gov't's involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop story... was that the gov't planned to punish tech companies for their 1st Amendment protected editorial discretion? Why isn't Matt Taibbi calling that out? https://twitter.com/...
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
Speaking of transparency... what kind of deal to @mtaibbi cut to get this nothingburger of a story, beyond having to tweet it out as if it was something “explosive”: https://twitter.com/...
@johnbiggs John Biggs on x
All I came for in this story was the reaction of former vp of global comms for Twitter, Brandon borrman. Thank god we got this enthralling thread to go with it. I'd be even more interested if they got a junior designer's take on hunters laptop. https://twitter.com/...
@jamesclayton5 James Clayton on x
Big hot GDPR mess here https://twitter.com/...
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
What happened to the Q&A?
@jessekellydc Jesse Kelly on x
As you await the Hunter Biden story to come out, remember that the FBI approached Facebook (and probably Twitter) BEFORE it was published. They knew about it because they were spying on everyone. We have a Cheka in this country that doesn't frighten you near as much as it should.
@nicoleperlroth Nicole Perlroth on x
Probably an unpopular hot take: There's nothing here we didn't already know: Platforms developed post- 2016 rules around the spread of hacked materials. Everyone involved knows this is messy business, especially when the source is not immediately clear. Twitter made a call... htt…
@fmanjoo Farhad Manjoo on x
THE TWITTER FILES: A half dozen screenshots of content moderation policy executives earnestly debating content moderation policy
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
How are the “no doxxing” folks feeling about Matt Taibbi doxxing both Jack Dorsey's and a sitting member of Congress' personal emails?

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