Twitter Files Part 1: What secret details the document revealed and what is it impact?

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk had promised to release the Twitter Files to uphold the principle of transparency. The files were meant to grant an insight into what happened at Twitter before Musk acquired the firm. It was specifically meant to release information about Twitter’s election interference. The Twitter Files were released on Friday and journalist Matt Taibii and Bari Weiss were the first journalists who gained access to the files.

Matt Taibii disclosed some of the information the Twitter Files had and added that more information will follow. Elon Musk said that the files that were released were just part one of the Twitter Files and more will come soon. When the Twitter Files were released, they did reveal a lot. Many people in America and around the world have for long suspected that Twitter has a political bias and it censors people who are not aligned with political ideology of the platform.

Twitter's rights as a company

Whilst Twitter has received a lot of criticism for its political bias, it should be flagged that as a company, it is allowed to have bias. Many, including Elon Musk believe that Twitter is a public sphere, in the way Habermas conceptualised the public sphere. Ban on Twitter is equal to ban from the town square so to say. Whilst that may or may not be true, according to American law, Twitter is not a town square but simply a company, it can decide what kinds of tweets it will allow and what kind of tweets it won't allow. Of courcs, if a consistent pattern is noticed, where it is discriminating against a certain race, group or politcal ideology, people have the option to knock the door of courts. 

Sanctity of democracy 

What Twitter does not have a right to is colluding with an American political party to suppress speech that is against the interest of that political party. The part 1 of Twitter Files published by Matt Taibii reveals exactly that. In the run up to the 2020 elections, Democrats would send email to Twitter with links of tweets that were against the interest of the Democratic party and Twitter would respond by writing "we'll handle them". "Handling" in this context meant suppressing those tweets, deleting them or deleting the account which wrote those tweets. Democrats are avoiding the story and downplaying it. It is crucial to understand what the Twitter Files reveal - an American political party colluded with an American social media firm to suppress information that is against the interest of the political party, just before the 2020 elections. Information for example about actions of the president candidate's son, which suggest he was using his relationship with his father to sell access. Prevention of dissemination of this news story might have impacted the election results of 2020, according to the Republicans. 

Why was a former FBI employee vetting the release of Twitter Files without informing Musk?

All of this information is public now just because of Elon Musk's decision to release internal documents and communication of Twitter. However, something else has happened. The new files which Musk promised to release are not public yet and the time which Musk gave for their release has long passed. So, what happened? The word "extremely" is often thrown out uselessly but it fits rather aptly in this situation. What happened is extremely important so let's go over this slowly. The person who was vetting the release of Twitter Files to journalists was Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker. 

He was vetting these files to control what kind of information was being made public under the release of Twitter Files, without the knowledge of new management at Twitter. In other words, without the knowledge of Elon Musk. The journalist Bari Weiss, who was following this story along with Matt Taibii, said that her jaw hit the floor when she found that Jim Baker was vetting the release of these documents, without the knowledge of Twitter's new management. She had to confirm what Jim's surname is to make sure she was hearing the right thing. Before becoming Twitter Deputy General Counsel, Jim Baker was FBI's General Counsel. 

Jim Baker played a dodgy role as FBI's General Counsel, he was forced to resign in 2018, during Trump's presidency, after an investigation into leaks to the press. According to Lee Fang, an investigative journalist at Intercept (Matt Taibii's previous workplace), Jim Baker, in 2016, passed on fake information from Hilary Clinton's campaign, claiming that Trump's organisation was using secret servers to communicate with Russia's private commercial bank. This story was false. Jim Baker "has been something of a Zelig of FBI controversies dating back to 2016, from the Steele Dossier to the Alfa-Server mess. He resigned in 2018 after an investigation into leaks to the press," wrote Matt Taibii. Elon Musk said that he found out about Jim Baker vetting the release of Twitter Files just on Sunday. Jim Baker has been fired from Twitter now. As of now, it is not clear what documents Jim Baker decided to not release. There is also a possibility that he might have destroyed some documents. Republicans have won the House as a result of the midterms and they might soon launch a probe into this matter.