The Twitter Files: It's the Principle of the Thing
The decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story showed that Twitter had lost its way from its original mission statement.
In the months leading up to the 2020 Presidential election, the New York Post published a story in which it claimed to have obtained a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden, the son of current President Joe Biden, and how Joe’s son introduced his father to a Ukranian businessman, thus calling into question Joe’s relationship to the Ukranian government,
Long story short: Multiple tech companies suppressed the story to some degree, raising objections from some about the role of tech companies in how information is shared.
Fast forward to this past weekend, in which independent journalist Matt Taibbi shared documents detailing what happened when Twitter — now under the private ownership of Elon Musk — took steps to either limit or prevent the sharing of the Post story — a story that has since been vindicated when other outlets revealed the laptop was, in fact, Hunter Biden’s, despite others claiming the Post fabricated the story.
The bulk of the so-called "Twitter Files" doesn't reveal a lot that some already suspected, but does provide details in how Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, went from a platform that was to allow people to share information and ideas "without barriers," to a platform that was more willing to take action to limit information and ideas.
The problem came when various individuals requested that certain tweets be deleted by the company or that certain individuals have their accounts suspended, simply because something was said that was politically inconvenient. Taibbi notes that, in 2020, both the Trump and Biden election teams had the ability to request certain items posted to Twitter be reviewed.
However, as Taibbi notes, the system wasn't balanced and based on contacts. He described the situation thusly:


Utilizing one's political views to decide what is and isn't permissible to share on a social media platform runs against the idea that information and ideas should be shared "without barriers." And it certainly leads to the belief that only certain viewpoints will be allowed, but not others.
This brings us to the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was described in different ways by critics, but the bulk of them utilized the talking point "Russian disinformation." Regardless of what you call it, the Hunter Biden laptop story isn't one that would be favorable to Joe Biden's Presidential election run.
Of course, a story that isn't favorable to someone's election campaign isn't automatically going to decide the election's outcome. Any decision to not share the story does not mean that decision determined the election's outcome, either.
But when those at a major tech company decide to utilize techniques to make it more difficult to share a particular story, they will have a hard time defending against the idea that they were trying to influence an election outcome — particularly when evidence indicates that the story didn't align with the politics of those making said decisions.
Furthermore, that these decisions were made without the knowledge of Dorsey (who was still with the company at the time) will make some wonder exactly who is running things and what the agenda is of those making the decisions.

There are those who would argue that it wasn't a violation of the First Amendment for the Biden campaign team to request certain items be reviewed and possibly pulled. From a legal standpoint, that is true. However, just because it is true from a legal standpoint does not mean that it's the practice you should utilize.
Consider: Both the Trump and Biden campaign teams made these requests. In the months leading to the 2020 election, the Trump team would be representing a current elected official while the Biden team would not. From the legal standpoint, the First Amendment prevents Trump from doing so but not Biden.
However, what happened after November 2020? Biden won the election, which means that, with Biden in office, the First Amendment now applies to him from a legal standpoint, but no longer to Trump. Now ask yourself these questions:
1. Do you really think for one minute that the Biden team isn't going to stop making requests because Biden is now the President?
2. How many people who are utilizing the First Amendment to defend the Biden team before the election, even if they are correct from a legal standpoint, would be willing to utilize the argument to defend the Trump team now that Trump is no longer President?
In other words, what's needed is consistent policy from Twitter, regardless of what the First Amendment does or doesn't say about the issue. A consistent approach would be to declare that neither Presidential campaign team gets to make requests to have material pulled unless they can demonstrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that such information is not allowed under the First Amendment, even if that amendment doesn’t apply to a private company.
I've argued before that using the First Amendment as your guide to determining what should be allowed on social media platforms is the best approach to take. That doesn't mean you go with no limits -- there are some limits that are allowed under the First Amendment and have been decided in court cases. (No, "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater" isn't one of them.)
Nor does this mean that you need to apply the First Amendment directly to private companies. You simply need to remember the principles in the First Amendment, of which one is free speech, and go with that principle in making decisions.
I don't think the Twitter Files revealed anything that was earth shattering, but they did reveal what many suspected all along. They also say a lot about why so many people are losing trust in institutions, particularly when said institutions are attempting to use their influence to shut down discussions and, in some cases, getting away with it.
Making arguments about how Taibbi is doing the bidding of a billionaire is distracting from the point. (Disclaimer: I am a paid subscriber to Taibbi's Substack). That argument comes off as particularly bad when one could point to evidence that a lot of mainstream media folks are doing the bidding of federal government officials.
And the arguments about how the First Amendment does or doesn't apply are distracting from where the real issue lies: A platform that was created to openly share ideas and information turned into anything but that because of who was running the show and, from the evidence thus far, may have been influenced by their politics.
That's where the real danger lies. If you truly believe information and ideas should be freely shared, you have to allow the ideas you don't like as much as the ones you do. Failure to allow the ideas you don't like shows you aren't really supportive of freely sharing ideas.