With the “Twitter Files”, Elon Musk has become an egregious example of what he wanted to expose: managers leveraging their social platforms for partisan ends
But it is actually a tool of progressive power. While you were hypnotized by viral memes, a cabal …
New York MagazineEric Levitz
Context & Ripple Effects
The related coverage treated the Twitter Files as a useful but opaque window into moderation at scale: they exposed internal deliberation without establishing systemic political bias. This article shifts the focus from the former platform managers to Musk’s own ability to shape political discourse through the release and framing of internal materials.
That tension sharpened when reports described Musk seeking full access for Bari Weiss, a request Twitter staff declined. The dispute is therefore not only about past moderation choices, but about who controls access to a platform’s records and audience.
First-order effects
Musk’s release strategy makes him the immediate gatekeeper of which internal Twitter materials receive public attention, placing the platform owner at the center of the partisan controversy the files were meant to examine.
Twitter employees face intensified pressure around access to internal systems and records after the reported request for Bari Weiss to receive full access.
Second-order effects
Journalists and political commentators using the files must distinguish the underlying moderation evidence from the owner-controlled process through which it was selected and published.
The competing accounts—difficult moderation deliberations versus claims of politically motivated suppression—turn platform governance into a credibility contest over process as much as outcomes.
Third-order effects
If platform owners increasingly use internal records to contest political narratives, control of a major social platform becomes a form of editorial and institutional leverage, not merely a moderation function.
The episode points toward platform gatekeeper leverage: legitimacy will depend increasingly on whether access, disclosure, and moderation procedures are credible independently of an owner’s political alignment.
The trend: Major social-platform owners are becoming politically consequential gatekeepers by controlling both public discourse and the disclosure of the systems that govern it.
Yoel Roth was talking with @karaswisher about how unpleasant it was to be personally targeted by the RW outrage machine. He also demurred from painting Elon as a villain. Here is Elon helping to spread the idea that Yoel is pro-child sexualisation. Elon's cosying up to QAnon. htt…
OK, @elonmusk, leave @yoyoel alone The man's life is upended by your trolling followers. He's a good person, who did the most difficult gruesome work to make this platform safer & freer To the last he's given you nothing but kindness & benefit of the doubt Call off your goons
I don't have it in me to comment much on this Twitter Files farce - but it's really striking how all these supposedly scandalous “revelations” have either been public knowledge - or make the old Twitter regime look eminently reasonable: People trying, in difficult circumstances. …
of the many striking things about musk's twitter behavior is how allegiances appear to mean little to him Roth was someone who stayed and Musk touted out as proof of the company doing well in the beginning that lasted all of a few weeks; now Musk openly going after roth https://t…
“Exposing political/business scandals on the left is bad and partisan, actually, because it could help out the right.” Interesting piece: tend to disagree. https://twitter.com/...
There's a serious security question here, too. What happens when the CEO of a major social media company uses that platform to target and endanger the lives of former employees who didn't fall in line? Who stops Elon Musk from getting people killed for defying him?
“The Twitter Files are 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.” https://nymag.com/...
Obviously Twitter wasn't trying to help the Trump campaign by blocking the New York Post article for 24 hours and then reversing course with its tail between its legs, but in practice wasn't that the outcome? https://nymag.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Good piece on the Twitter Files by @EricLevitz. (He catches @bariweiss in an act of either dishonesty or extreme sloppiness—and he favors the dishonesty interpretation.) https://nymag.com/...
Imagine being an advertiser, considering whether or not to buy ad space on Twitter, and seeing the company's new CEO join the pizzagate brigade to falsely smear a former company executive as a groomer/pedophile. This is unprecedented.
The purported exposé “offers overwhelming evidence that Twitter's current management is using the platform to promote tendentious, partisan narratives and conservative misinformation,” argues @EricLevitz https://nymag.com/...
Again: if Twitter was really a Democratic party mouthpiece hellbent on silencing major conservative voices, it *sucked* at it. From @EricLevitz: https://nymag.com/... https://twitter.com/...
(even in Roth's post-twitter interviews he has not railed against Musk like many are now. doesn't matter. i wonder how twitter folks who are currently on top feel about the tenuousness of their position...)
Three of us resigned from Twitter's Trust & Safety Council today: @eirliani @podesta_lesley and me. Here's why https://www.netfamilynews.org/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Some background on what's happening with Twitter's Trust & Safety team can be found here: https://mastodon.social/... Not only is Musk not clamping down on hateful speech and abuse, but he's actually leading the charge in many cases. And he's surprised advertisers are fleeing. lo…
@jack ... No, it is not. When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety. She raised this with Ned & Parag, but they rejected her staffing request. I made it top priority immediately. @ellagirwin
Spoke with @eirliani about quitting Twitter's Trust and Safety Board in protest after serving for nearly seven years, and the drastic ways company leadership has changed under Elon Musk: https://slate.com/...
Courageous @eirliani @podesta_lesley +@annecollier resigned in protest from Twitter trust&safety council, which has been ignored by @elonmusk even as hate speech on platform has doubled under his ownership https://slate.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Three members of Twitter's Trust & Safety Council are resigning, protesting Elon Musk's persistent attacks against - wait for it - the trust and safety of Twitter users. https://slate.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@elonmusk @eltonofficial John, like many of us, knows this place isn't protecting users any more, particularly those from vulnerable groups. But if he engages with you, you'll just use your hundreds of millions of followers to attack him. https://slate.com/...