Since Musk bought Twitter a number of researchers and advocacy groups have pointed to an increase in posts containing racial epithets or attacks on Jewish people, gays, lesbians and transgender peo…
By Matt O’Brien, Barbara Ortutay and David Klepper | Associated Press
What you’re seeing in your feed on Twitter is changing. But how?
The social media platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, has been trying to prove through giving selected journalists access to some of the company’s internal communications dubbed “The Twitter Files” that officials from the previous leadership team allegedly suppressed right-wing voices.
This week, Musk disbanded a key advisory group, the Trust and Safety Council, made up of dozens of independent civil, human rights and other organizations. The company formed the council in 2016 to address hate speech, harassment, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.
What do the developments mean for what shows up in your feed every day? For one, the moves show that Musk is prioritizing improving Twitter’s perception on the U.S. political right. He’s not promising unfettered free speech as much as a shift in what messages get amplified or hidden.
WHAT ARE THE TWITTER FILES?
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and since then has partnered with a group of handpicked journalists including former Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi and opinion columnist Bari Weiss. Earlier this month, they began publishing — in the form of a series of tweets — about actions that Twitter previously took against accounts thought to have violated its content rules. They’ve included screenshots of emails and messaging board comments reflecting internal conversations within Twitter about those decisions.
Weiss wrote on Dec. 8 that the “authors have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.”
Weiss published the fifth and most recent installment Monday about the conversations leading up to Twitter’s Jan. 8, 2021 decision to permanently suspend then-President Donald Trump’s account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” following the deadly U.S. Capitol insurrection two days earlier. The internal communications show at least one unnamed staffer doubting that one of the tweets was an incitement of violence; it also reveals executives’ reaction to an advocacy campaign from some employees pushing for tougher action on Trump.
WHAT’S MISSING?
Musk’s Twitter Files reveal some of the internal decision-making process affecting mostly right-wing Twitter accounts that the company decided broke its rules against hateful conduct, as well as those that violated the platform’s rules against spreading harmful misinformation about COVID-19.
