Leaked messages show an unhealthy link between
Social Media and state security
![The Twitter Files should disturb liberal critics of Elon Musk – and here’s why | Kenan Malik](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8f1edeba8f277dc6b5ab2e3a926cbe2c2ebd4589/3_0_10661_6400/master/10661.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdG8tb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=6d90b6955ac453ccadecf4f48a64890b)
Half the room is jumping up and down, screaming “Gotcha!”. The other half shrugs its shoulders, muttering “So what’s new?”. Welcome to the war over the so-called
Twitter Files.
Over the past month, Twitter’s new owner,
Elon Musk, has made available to a handpicked group of journalists internal documents and conversations that took place before his takeover. They are mainly discussions about who and what should be moderated or banned, ranging from the Hunter Biden laptop story to the question of whether to remove
Donald Trump from the platform. The journalists have made public selected slices of the data through a drip feed of Twitter threads.
Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
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