Twitter Files Part 1: Elon Musk shares sensitive old Twitter's employees conversation revealing censorship on the platform

New Delhi: Twitter new head Elon Musk has shared ‘Twitter Files’, the top secret files of ex- Twitter employees’ conversations revealing how Twitter's former executives were being influenced by outsiders especially politican parties. Musk has shared the the thread of Tweets, originally published by an Independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who first shared on his official Twitter handle. Calling it ‘A Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out of the control of designer’, Matt Taibbi has shared internal sensitive documents revealing the conversation around the cenorship of a story published in the New York Post.

Here we go!!  https://t.co/eILK9f3bAm — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022

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‘Thread 1: Twitter Files’ was exposing how the executives had started being influenced by the political parties from outside to suppress and remove some sensitive stories on the platform. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. Morover, thread 9 mentioned that celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party.

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In further tweets, he revealed Twitter had taken steps to suppress the story from the New York Post. It involved removing links and posting warnings calling it ’Unsafe’.  “They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved to for extreme cases, e.g child pornography,” Taibbi said in the tweet thread.

Detailing about the New York published Biden Secret Emails on October 2, 2020, which was based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, Matt Taibbi called it Twitter files Part one on how and why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story.

In further tweets, he revealed Twitter had taken steps to suppress the story from the New York Post. It involved removing links and posting warnings calling it ’Unsafe’.  “They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved to for extreme cases, e.g child pornography,” Taibbi said in the tweet thread.

The thread informed that White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, Taibbi said. “It led public p policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams.”

Twitter replied Strom that the laptop story has been removed for violation of the company’s ‘Hacked materials’ policy.

The thread informed that decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.

Taibbi even quoted a former employee saying, “They just freelanced it. Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

The entire thread also reveals messages/emails from the US politicians concerned about the state of ‘free-speech’ and the kind of authority commanded by ‘big tech’ companies warning that the ‘government may need to intervene.’

Elon Musk shared the entire thread by saying ‘Handled’. He referred to the term used by Twitter employees for removing or suppressing some posts due to outside influence. He said Part 2 of Twitter files will be released tomorrow.