Reminder: New Twitter Files Livestream Tonight at 5:00 PM ET

Dr. Matt Bivens and I dip a toe in the lake of unpublished Twitter Files, and release a number of things overlooked the first time

Reminder that Dr. Matt Bivens and I will be doing a livestream at 5:00 PM tonight, going over early Twitter Files material. Matt was in the room with the handful of people given access to the first documents, and upon review, we’re finding a lot of eyebrow-raising material that should have been published a lot earlier. We’re going to go through some of that stuff this evening.

Looking back, it’s important to understand that not only was there a lot of pressure to publish quickly — I was very paranoid about the project being shut down before we got material out, and was continually trying to narrow focus to thread-sized issues so we could push things out the door — but that we also didn’t understand a lot of what we were looking at early on. We didn’t know how shadowbanning worked, didn’t understand who was consulting with what agency, and didn’t know what key acronyms or terms meant. And sometimes, we just missed things, or I did, anyway.

For example, this is from a Slack chat Matt found early on. An employee was hopeful there was “enough” in the words “rigged election” to make a Trump tweet actionable. Upon being denied, on the grounds that Trump was referencing a real story, she wrote, Darn it!

At the time, I didn’t understand how meaningful this sort of thing was. Only later, after seeing dozens of similar exchanges and/or reports about techniques like “prebunking,” would it have been possible to know that this was an early example of how reviewers looked at narratives first, and only later bothered with factuality. We also didn’t understand why labeling mattered so much, nor did we really know how government agencies fit into such discussions, if they did at all. (Hint: they did.) In any case, Matt and I will take you behind the scenes of the first releases, and start releasing a few interesting things. This was a historic story that for a variety of reasons has been underplayed, even by me. More to come. Clink the links below to join us tonight:

Or on X @mtaibbi