Twitter Files Released — Documents Show Government-Coordinated Speech Suppression
Following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter in October 2022, journalist Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, and others were given access to internal Twitter documents. The "Twitter Files" revealed: FBI and DHS routinely submitted user account suspension and content removal requests; the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed before the 2020 election at the request of Democratic Party officials; a blacklist ("trends blacklist," "search blacklist") was applied to hundreds of accounts without user notification; and a "Site Integrity Policy" gave staff broad discretion to suppress content without transparent public standards. The files also showed Twitter employees expressing political animus in internal discussions about conservative accounts.