What Did Part 1 of the 'Twitter Files' Reveal?
AllSides Summary
What did new Twitter owner Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" unveil over the weekend?
For Context: Musk and journalist Matt Taibbi (Center bias) published screenshots of conversations between Twitter employees detailing the company's decision to censor the New York Post's (Lean Right bias) 2020 story about potential evidence of Biden family misconduct being found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. The screenshots show uncertainty among employees and communications between Democratic lawmakers and top Twitter decision-makers regarding the platform's handling of the story.
Where People Agreed: Many on the left and some on the right framed the reveal as underwhelming. The left often framed it as a failed headline grab, and the right often framed it as an incomplete picture of the purported conspiracy at hand. A HuffPost (Left bias) article said the reveal "flopped big time...even with right-wingers who were supposed to swoon over the information." Miranda Devine (Right bias) said Musk "half-delivered on his promise to tell all about Twitter’s censorship."
Where People Disagreed: Some on the right took the Twitter Files as more evidence that Twitter's political bias could have played a role in the 2020 election. National Review writer Jim Geraghty (Lean Right bias) said it painted "an ugly portrait of the individuals who made decisions about standards of content on Twitter during the 2020 presidential campaign." Conversely, a Washington Post writer called that assertion "indefensible," and cited a lack of evidence that the censorship "actually kept interested people from learning about it."
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Right
FBI, Big Tech, Big Media: Partners in collusion

The bold release by Elon Musk of Twitter files on how and why employees blocked The Post’s 2020 bombshell on Hunter Biden’s laptop marks a defining moment in modern American history. The disturbing details of arrogance and ignorance revealed the so-called geniuses pulling the technology levers to be as supernatural as the man behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz.”
The deflating reaction in both is the same: Is that all there is?
In this case, no, not by a long shot. For Musk’s revelations must be the start of a national campaign...
From the Center
The Twitter files on Hunter Biden

On Friday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk told his followers that he would be releasing documents showing "what really happened with the Hunter Biden story suppression by Twitter" in the lead-up to the 2020 election, calling the company’s actions "free speech suppression." On Saturday, independent journalist Matt Taibbi started a Twitter thread he called "the Twitter files," sharing screenshots of internal communications at Twitter which showed how members of the moderation team decided to throttle the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Reminder: In October of 2020, just weeks before election day, The...
From the Left
No, limiting the Hunter Biden laptop story didn’t cost Trump the election

One of the indefensible assertions that’s reemerged in recent days is that social media companies’ efforts to limit sharing of a New York Post story in October 2020 cost Donald Trump that year’s presidential election.
This is a long-standing claim, made newly salient with new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s release last week of internal documents about the decision to impose that limit. His intent was to suggest that pre-him Twitter was a place where conservative arguments were unfairly censored. But others, like former president Donald Trump, have gone further, suggesting...
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