Elon Musk is using the Twitter Files to discredit foes and push conspiracy theories

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer media award in Berlin on Dec. 1, 2020.

Twitter owner Elon Musk says he’s pulling back the curtain on how the social network has handled high-profile content moderation decisions, including banning then-President Donald Trump after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Over the past two weeks, Musk has been releasing internal documents to a handpicked group of journalists who are digging through them and posting excerpts on Twitter.

Musk and his allies promote these tweet threads – dubbed the “Twitter Files” – as bombshell revelations proving that Twitter intentionally muzzled conservatives because of their political views. That’s a long-running claim by Republicans who are convinced social media companies censor them, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Twitter’s internal researchers, for example, have found its algorithms favor right-leaning political content.