When will the next release from The Twitter Files be posted?
Elon Musk is attempting to shine a spotlight on Twitter’s former content moderation policy through a series of online reports.
Elon Musk made waves on Twitter on Friday with the release of an investigative report that looked into one of the platform’s historic content moderation decisions.
Journalist Matt Taibbi was given access by Musk to Twitter’s internal communications to explore the conversations surrounding the decision to temporarily block the distribution of an article about Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, in 2020.
A story in the New York Post claimed that evidence gathered from Hunter’s laptop showed that he had attempted to arrange a meeting between a Ukrainian company and his father, who was then the Vice President.
The Twitter Files bears the hallmarks of Musk’s involvement, with the eye-catching social-first publication and the promise of greater free speech under the new management. As such, Musk announced that a second instalment would be coming soon.
When will the next The Twitter Files be released?
On Friday Musk announced that the report would be published on Twitter, but did not initially outline what form it would take. Then, at around 6pm ET, Musk shared a tweet from Taibbi which read “1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES”.
Over the following two hours Taibbi proceeded to write out and post, tweet-by-tweet, a 37-part thread on the story.
Following the publication of the report Musk said that “Episode 2″ will be coming on Saturday, although he did not say whether or not it would be related to the Hunter Biden laptop story. Given that the time suits readers across the US, a similar publication time seems likely.
It seems most likely that the next report will explore a different example of Twitter’s content moderation processes under the previous management. Musk has been at pains to showcase how he differs from the previous owner and is doing so while attracting huge interest in the site.
Taibbi, who was a prominent reporter from Rolling Stone before moving to focus on his own Substack newsletter, may not be the reporter for the upcoming report. After the release of the first instalment, said it had been a “whirlwind 96 hours” working on the Hunter Biden story.