Many people were shocked by Elon Musk’s promise to tweet the Hunter Biden story.

Elon Musk is unhappy with Twitter, the free-speech crusader A year old decisionTo suppress a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in advance of the 2020 presidential election. Musk said last month that he would publish internal communications to show how it all went in order to “restore public confidence” in Twitter.

Friday night arrived in a slow and drawn-out fashion. Tweet topicThe entire process took two hours and was done by Matt Taibi, a journalist Musk apparently leaked to and then orchestrated to post his findings to Twitter.

Tibi’s post contains screenshots of emails that were exchanged between Twitter leadership, members from the Biden campaign, as well as foreign policy leaders. One point, there was a “secret communication” from Twitter’s Deputy Chief Counsel.

Emails reveal that Twitter’s team struggled to explain how they handled a file New York Post The story that broke the news of Hunter’s leaked laptop files — and whether they made the right moderation decision in the first place. It was unclear at the time if the material was genuine and Twitter. You decide to block links or imagesThe MailAn article citing Twitter’s policy on the distribution of hacked material. This move was controversial at the time, not only with Republicans but also speech advocates concerned about Twitter’s decision to block a news source.

Musk may want to see documents showing that the (largely former Twitter employees) decided to act in a manner that helped the current President Joe Biden. However the communications mostly show a group discussing how to end and communicate this difficult moderation decision.

One former communications employee wrote that he was unable to understand the policy behind flagging the story as unsafe. “Are you going to mark similar stories unsafe?” Another asked.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of trust & safety, stated at the time that the company had decided to be cautious “given the high stakes here” and the lessons learned in 2016. Jim Baker, Twitter’s Deputy General counsel, agreed that it was reasonable to assume they might have been [hacked]And this is a good thing.

The emails don’t show how the initial decision came about – only that there were emails later in which leaders at Twitter debated whether it had been the right decision. Thebes reported that Jack Dorsey (then CEO of Twitter) was not aware of the decision.

Musk seems to have taken the events as evidence that there was government interference. “If this aren’t a violation to the First Amendment of the Constitution, what is?” It was written in response a leaked email. However, the email seems to show the Biden Campaign, which isn’t a government entity, flagging tweets to Twitter for “review”. This is in accordance with their moderation policies. Taibi claims that there is no evidence – that I have seen – of government involvement in the laptop story.

Meanwhile, Tibi’s handling of the emails — which appear to have been delivered to him at Musk’s direction, though he only cites “Twitter sources” — appears to have revealed the personal email addresses of two high-ranking leaders: Dorsey and the actor. Ro Khanna. El Tayeb identified Dorsey as the email address. Dorsey then sent El Tayeb an article critiquing Twitter’s handling. Mail A story. Khanna appears to have her personal Gmail address. Khanna also includes an email in which she criticizes Twitter’s decision to restrict. MailStory also.

The story also revealed the names and contact information of several Twitter employees who were involved in the moderation decision. Although journalists are not accustomed to reporting on the involvement public-facing people or senior decision-makers in leaked communications, it does not include all of those named in the communications. Given the excitement surrounding Hunter’s laptop, some of these people may be harassed by the leaked material. “I don’t understand why names need to be called. It sounds dangerous,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said Books tonightThis is a clear reference to the leaked.

Later, Tibi deleted the tweet that contained Dorsey’s email address. The tweet involving Khanna is still in effect as of this writing. The edge I reached out to Thebes, but they did not respond immediately. Twitter, whose communications department was also dismantled last month during layoffs, did not respond to my request for comment. Khanna or Dorsey did no immediate respond to requests for comment.