Deconstructing 'The Twitter Files'

TechCrunch
The bombast with which the so-called Twitter Files have been released is incongruous with the mundanity of their content. Even so, as the circus folds up the big top and the barkers return to their Substacks, it is worth a thorough retrospective to put these breathlessly delivered, revelation-flavored products in context.

That few large news outlets have opted to report much of the information in these threads has been attributed to complaisance, partisanship, complicity with government interference or various species of corruption. The banal truth is that, if other newsrooms are anything like our own, they read each as a matter of diligence, and simply found nothing new or interesting to report, or what little there was contaminated by the dubious circumstances of their presentation.

What’s important to understand at the outset — and what the authors make clear from the start — is that no one involved in the selection and analysis of the internal communications appears to have any familiarity with (let alone expertise in) how social media and tech platforms are moderated or run. This is not said in order to poison the well — it matters because this lack of familiarity is in great part the reason these stories were published to begin with, and it explains the editorial slant they are given. MORE