For a week now, investigative indie journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss have been publishing internal documents intended to prove that Twitter abused its power, suppressed journalistic reporting during the 2020 US election campaign and systematically censored conservative users. The documents were made available to a number of independent journalists by Elon Musk after the takeover of the group.
The publications are controversial, with opinions ranging from “Nothingburger” (Politico) and “conspiracy theories” and “PR” (NPR) on the one hand to allegations of deception against former CEO Jack Dorsey (WaPo) and harshly worded accusations of censorship left-wing activist journalists and employees of the social media group (WSJ). (By the way, Jack Dorsey himself calls for more Twitter files and supports Elon Musk’s actions.)
Bari Weiss has published her texts about the Twitter files in her substack newsletter without paywall in (so far) three parts: Twitter’s Secret Blacklists, Why Twitter Really Banned Trump, Our Reporting at Twitter
The text I piqed in the world, along with a text in the NZZ, is one of the few German-language publications that deal with the Twitter files in more detail and offer a classification that goes beyond just listing the facts. For this reason, too, it is helpful to compare the reporting with the volume of reporting on the so-called Facebook files. I alone have published a total of four posts here on piqd about the publication of the documents by whistleblower Frances Haugen (1, 2, 3, 4), the reporting on the company’s internal misconduct still has an impact today and Zuckerberg himself was before a congressional committee of inquiry quoted. In contrast, the coverage of the Twitter files and their reach is manageable.
The fact is that since 2014, Twitter has been the largest source of viral phenomena. Viral phenomena are more than funny pictures and dance videos, but memes are also political currents and attitudes, consensus building and converging reports – especially on a platform that never had the largest number of users and only played a subordinate role in the mainstream, but has always been the platform of choice for journalists. The internal measures for steering viral flows on a platform like Twitter, the favorite toy of the fourth estate, which is decisive for the formation of public opinion, are therefore of enormous interest in principle – also and straight for journalists.
My own opinion on all of this is not consistent. On the one hand, I consider viral dynamics to be essential and the core of social communication in the 21st century. An opaque control by an elite circle of activist employees therefore seems to me – let’s put it very diplomatically – suboptimal.
On the other hand, the democratization of publishing mechanisms through digital social media offers these control options for viral dynamics not only to employees, but to every user. And so media-manipulative communication techniques are used every day on all platforms (but especially on Twitter), ranging from dog whistling to sealioning and pursuing exactly the same goal: making (in)visible and increasing/reducing the reach of content. The strategies are varied and backstage collusion is a very promising one.
A common argument for shadow banning and account suspension is that Twitter is a private company and can do whatever it wants. However, following this argument, one must also recognize the tremendous power that such a platform holds when it is the main focus of viral dynamics across the internet. Twitter was the central hub for the distribution of ideas and memes – in the form of not only jokes and little pictures, but viral intellectual configurations: MeToo or Aufschrei would not have been possible without Twitter or would have looked very different. Balancing that fact with the ability to direct and disrupt these streams of attention at will is a gargantuan responsibility, and personally I’m just as uncomfortable with the scrutiny of woke-activist staff as I am with the superficial and inconsistent laissez-faire attitude of libertarian musk.
Personally, I prefer a vision of Twitter as open protocol, as public property. Such an organization of the “thinking processes of the Hive Mind” as “Fast Microblogging on the Web” could reduce the mistrust of collusion and opaque moderation decisions and create transparency, which now has to be provided by independent journalists like Bari Weiss and Matt Taibi, because the involvement of journalistic elites with their favorite communication toys is simply too narrow.
With all this background and complexity, it is difficult to take a clear position on the Twitter files. I think my opinion can be summed up like this: Power corrupts – and that applies to every user of publishing technologies after democratization, but it still applies in particular to opinion makers and employees in opinion distribution hubs.