The Twitter Files: the extent of current censorship
The Twitter Files are a series of Twitter (now called “X“) threads published from December 2022 through March 2023, discussing internal documents between Twitter and the FBI that reveal government involvement and left-leaning bias in content moderation, information on the suspension of Donald Trump, and censorship of COVID-19 vaccine information. The actual files that the name refers to are a series of internal Twitter documents given to certain journalists (Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang) and authors (Michael Shellenberg, David Zweig, Alex Berenson), who then used these documents to create the Twitter threads. It reveals Twitter figuring out how to maintain its policies when bombshell stories go against a certain narrative, one policed and supported by actors in the federal government. One of these stories that put Twitter under scrutiny was the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, where Hunter Biden’s laptop was left at a repair shop. It was retrieved and the New York Post wrote a story on the later-verified emails that suggested corrupt activity from Joe Biden. Twitter ended up suppressing the story, justifying this as the emails were technically hacked materials. However, an invasion of privacy does not really matter when it suggests something like corruption, especially on the eve of a national presidential election.
On the topic of moderation, Twitter can moderate anything covered by Section 230(c)(2), where the “good faith” removal of anything deemed to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable” is stated to be completely legal. The problem is that “otherwise objectionable” is vague. It’s essentially a blank check, with courts having to either look at the provider’s policies or assume what Congress initially meant. In other words, the wording makes dealing with Section 230 incredibly messy. However, it begs the question: what has Twitter deemed “otherwise objectionable”? Of course, there is the Hunter Biden laptop story, but there was also the moderation of COVID-19 vaccine information that went against the Biden administration’s narrative. This is where government involvement came into play, which recently came up with Missouri v. Biden, where the judge issued a preliminary injunction (a temporary fix essentially) stopping Biden and certain agencies from requesting takedowns from Twitter and other Section 230-protected publishers.
However, it is not like Twitter has to comply with these requests from the federal government, and Matt Taibbi wrote that Twitter ignored some of them, showing that they were attempting to act independently. So why would Twitter follow through on these requests? Perhaps it is because these requests align with their policies, but it does not excuse the FBI and Twitter from violating the First Amendment, silencing people who are perceived as simply out of line or in utter disagreement with a preset narrative. What is interesting is that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey seemed fairly confident that there was nothing nefarious going on, as he “urged Elon Musk to release ‘without filter’ Twitter’s internal communications about moderation decisions” (Forbes). Perhaps Twitter is innocent, but the government is not, which is where the case currently stands with Missouri v. Biden, with evidence of coercion towards Big Tech companies. Unfortunately, unless there is nothing else of importance in the thousands of documents that are still being kept under lock and key, a proper judgment of the Twitter Files cannot be made until all context is given.
Either this context will defend the actions of the government, or it will prove even more scandalous. Also, due to the strong response by the Weaponization of Federal Government Committee during Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberg’s testimonies, one might ask: what does the government have to hide? Must the federal agencies involved in these meetings with Twitter release their own internal documents? Even with these questions answered, the overarching question is, who was at fault? In other words, should companies like Twitter that are integral to our society have this much influence and power, so that when the government waltzes up to their front door, they can control the flow of information?