Chapter 90: The Twitter Files: Twitter, December 2022

Elon Musk releases the "Twitter Files," a collection of internal documents revealing Twitter's decision-making processes around content moderation and the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. Journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss are given access to investigate and publicly report on these internal communications.

Following his acquisition of Twitter, Musk moves to increase transparency by releasing internal company documents—dubbed the "Twitter Files"—that detail how Twitter's leadership handled controversial content moderation decisions. The chapter focuses on the release of materials related to Twitter's suppression of the New York Post's story about Hunter Biden's laptop during the 2020 election. Musk grants access to journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss to examine and report on these internal communications, which reveal the reasoning, pressure, and deliberations behind Twitter's actions. The Twitter Files become a flashpoint in broader debates about free speech, content moderation, and the role of social media platforms in shaping public discourse. The documents show the chain of decision-making within Twitter's trust and safety teams and demonstrate the pressure the company faced from various stakeholders regarding the story's spread.