A single content moderation call made by a single social media company in October 2020 might seem like rather old news for House Republicans to be dredging up in 2023 — especially because Twitter’s former leaders have long since acknowledged it was a mistake, and all the decision-makers involved have since been fired by the company’s brash new owner, Elon Musk.
But the episode got a new lease on life in December 2022, when Musk invited a handpicked group of writers to comb through internal Twitter communications for evidence of anti-conservative bias and publish their findings in lengthy Twitter threads that they dubbed the “Twitter files.” For Musk, under fire for his erratic leadership of the company and with users and advertisers fleeing, the files served to focus attention on the alleged failings of the previous regime, while doubling as a sort of political reality show to keep users engaged on his site.
