The correspondence provided by Musk does not show the promised “exposes”, instead some participants will have to change their email addresses.

The supporter of “absolute freedom of speech” and the new CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, is dissatisfied with the long-standing decision of the former management of the social network to “suppress” the news about “Hunter Biden’s laptop”, published just before the 2020 US presidential election.

Hunter’s laptop story

An October 2020 article by The New York Post was based on files allegedly obtained from the laptop of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. But at that time he was a member of the board of directors of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, against which an investigation was launched.

The article reports that Joe Biden a year later “pressured” the authorities of Ukraine in order to stop the investigation and fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

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FINANCIAL ANALYSIS

Journalists also found media in the laptop on which Hunter has sex and uses drugs.

Twitter’s decision and Musk’s “investigation.”

Last month, Musk promised to provide internal correspondence from employees and Twitter management, which was supposed to demonstrate how the process of “blocking” the article went.

On Friday, journalist Matt Taibbi (to whom Musk provided the documents) posted a lengthy Twitter thread with screenshots of emails from Biden campaigners and outside political leaders. Among other things, a “confidential” letter from the deputy general counsel of the social network is leaked.

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022

The emails show Twitter trying to explain its decision to withhold The New York Post’s story about the leak of files from Hunter’s laptop. At the time, many doubted the authenticity of the files, and the social network decided to ban links and images related to the story, citing its policy on sharing hacked materials.

The move drew criticism from both Republicans and free speech advocates (such as Musk).

Apparently, Elon Musk was hoping to show how “sneaky” ex-employees of Twitter are helping Joe Biden, but instead showed that the team is just solving work moments and thinking about how to make a difficult decision about moderation.

“I’m trying my best to understand the political basis for marking this story. Shall we mark such situations as dangerous?” – One employee asks another.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s ex-head of trust and security, writes that the company has dared to tread carefully given the “serious lessons and risks of 2016.” The social network’s former deputy general counsel, Jim Baker, agrees with the decision, writing that “it is reasonable for us to assume that these are ‘hacked files’ and caution is warranted.”

The letters don’t show how the initial decision to block was made — executives debate whether the right choice was made at the time. Matt Tybee reports that Jack Dorsey, who ran the company at the time, was unaware of the decision.

Musk appears to view these correspondences as “government interference.”

“If this is not a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution, then what is?” – writes Elon.

Tybee himself summarizes:

“From what I’ve seen, there’s no evidence of government involvement in the laptop story.”

Disclosure of personal data

Meanwhile, while processing the files, the journalist showed the e-mail addresses of high-ranking leaders — Dorsey himself and Democratic Representative Ro Hanna. The story also revealed the names of some Twitter employees who discussed the moderation. Given the focus on Hunter Biden’s laptop story, people are open to criticism and harassment.

“I don’t understand why to name names. It’s dangerous,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote.

I don’t get why naming names is necessary. It seems dangerous.

— Biz Stone (@biz) December 3, 2022

Tybee later deleted the tweet with Dorsey’s email address. The other, with the data of Ro Hanna, is also not shown in the thread yet.

Jack Dorsey did not comment on the situation, and there was no response from Twitter (which lost its public relations team).

Ro Hanna commented on the situation as follows:

“As a congressman representing Silicon Valley, I felt that Twitter’s actions may have violated the First Amendment, and I wrote about it.”

Source: The Verge