What we’ve learned from Elon Musk’s Twitter Files is what we’ve long suspected. The social media platform was run by progressives who favored Democrats and held conservatives to a higher standard for maintaining access to the forum.
It’s less a smoking gun than it is a warning shot. The role Twitter played in the 2020 presidential balloting provides a chilling view of the potential for Big Tech to manipulate the electorate and sway the outcome of elections.
The internal communications examined with Musk’s permission by a team of independent journalists follow two threads. The first tracks Twitter’s censorship just prior to the election of the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop.
Emails on the laptop, the Post reported, raised serious questions about Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s foreign business dealings while he was vice president. Twitter shut down the newspaper’s account, explaining it violated its policy of disseminating “hacked” material.
The Twitter Files reporting exposes the internal machinations that led to the false determination the story was a hoax, as well as possible influence from the Justice Department on the decision to ban the Post’s bombshell disclosure. The conclusion is Twitter often chucked its policies and procedures on banning accounts and acted solely on the whim of its executive team, who were being pressured by outsiders.
The second thread explores how former President Donald Trump came to be permanently banned from Twitter after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. It was not a responsive decision, but one that had been in the works for months, at the urging of several prominent Democrats, including former first lady Michelle Obama.
While it yet may be in the files somewhere, the reporters have not uncovered an instance in which Twitter responded to requests from Republicans to shut down an account.
Again, no great shock here. Social media companies are basically adjuncts of the Democratic Party. In the recent midterm election, 99% of political donations made by Twitter employees went to Democratic candidates.
Social media platforms such as Twitter are private companies, and they can run their businesses any way they want. That includes deciding who can play on their field. They are not bound by the First Amendment to provide equal access to their site. Musk himself this week booted several journalists who had allegedly reported on his whereabouts.
But the platforms exert tremendous control over the dissemination of information. For better or worse, they are the primary source of news for a vast number of Americans. They have the power to determine what stories get seen, which voices are heard, and how a narrative is spun to voters.
When they decide to climb in bed with a political party, it’s an in-kind contribution of incalculable value.
The reach of social media and its dearth of competition invests a tremendous amount of power in a small, elite and unaccountable group.
That makes this Big Tech/Democratic Party alliance Musk is confirming a legitimate public concern.
____
