For years, an ideological status quo was established across the ever-expanding world of social media. With tech companies controlled by liberal-heavy Silicon Valley, conservatives had very few options but to abide by their rules.
That changed in 2022 with Elon Musk.
Musk, the billionaire tycoon celebrated for his industrial innovations as the owner of companies like Tesla and SpaceX, shocked the world when he revealed in April that he had bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter, becoming the company's largest shareholder at the time and signaling a hostile takeover was in the offing.
While Musk is no textbook conservative, he prides himself as a "free speech absolutist" and wants Twitter to be an even playing field for liberals and conservatives alike. This caused many members of the legacy media to panic as they were content with the ideological status quo and sounded the alarm about the prospect of Musk allowing former President Trump back on Twitter.
Within weeks, Twitter accepted Musk's bid to take the company private with a $44 billion price tag. It was a messy union, particularly since Musk attempted to back out of the deal in July by claiming Twitter was not forthcoming with the number of bots that were on the platform. Twitter, in return, vowed to take him to court. After an extended legal back-and-forth, by Oct. 27, Musk had become the owner of Twitter.
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Musk was quick to make waves, beginning when he posted a video of himself arriving at Twitter headquarters for the first time while performing some prop comedy.
"Let that sink in!" Musk exclaimed as he literally carried a sink into the building. That video has nearly 50 million views.
Reality sunk in quickly for the old guard as Musk immediately fired Twitter's top brass including its CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and General Counsel Vijaya Gadde.
They weren't the only ones to go. Roughly 70-80% of Twitter's 7,500 employees had been either laid off or exited under Musk's reign. Among those who decided to leave was Twitter's head of trust and safety Yoel Roth. Musk later dissolved Twitter's Trust & Safety Council.
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Musk's first major initiative as Twitter's new owner was the launch of Twitter Blue, an $8 monthly subscription service that allows users to have the verified blue checkmark and access to other perks like an edit button and higher ranking in replies. However, the program had a disastrous rollout in early November as fake accounts impersonating other users and companies began going viral for controversial tweets. Musk halted the program and relaunched it in December with guardrails attached.
Throughout the course of his ownership, Musk reinstated accounts that were banned or locked out in the previous regime, including former President Trump, the Babylon Bee, Project Veritas and its founder James O'Keefe, Dr. Jordan Peterson, the personal account of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and the liberal Krassenstein Twins.
It wasn't until December when Musk began exercising his power in suspending certain users. His first high-profile ban was Kanye West, who was benched from the platform for his antisemitic posts that violated Twitter's incitement to violence policy.
He took action against @ElonJet, an account that exclusively tracked Musk's private jet usage. Musk claimed the account was suspended due to a "physical safety violation" since it was "doxxing real-time location info," sharing video of a "crazy stalker" that was harassing his child in Los Angeles thinking the Twitter owner was present. Musk threatened to take legal action against the account's user.
Musk warned Twitter users, "Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info."
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Several prominent legacy media journalists including CNN correspondent Donie O'Sullivan, New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac and Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell were told without warning that they were "permanently suspended" from Twitter.
Others who were affected included The Intercept journalist Micah Lee, Voice of America correspondent Steve Herman, Mashable writer Matt Binder, former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann and far-left Substack writer Aaron Rupar.
Those accounts had either reported on @ElonJet's suspension or had posted links to the private jet tracking.
"Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else," Musk defended the suspensions.
Critics blasted Musk's actions, many slamming the premise of his "doxxing" claims since his private jet usage is public information, while others accused him of hypocrisy since the billionaire has called himself a "free speech absolutist" during his acquisition of Twitter. CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post all issued blistering statements denouncing the "impulsive and unjustified" decision and called for their reporters to be reinstated.
After initially clarifying that their accounts were only facing a seven-day suspension, Musk conducted two polls asking his roughly 122 million Twitter followers when the journalists should be reinstated. Voters overwhelmingly chose "now." Musk then restored their accounts, writing "The people have spoken," though some who have chosen not to delete the apparent violative tweets remain locked out.
Musk conducted a similar poll asking users whether Trump should be reinstated, which a majority of voters also supported.
He then briefly suspended Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz for her past behavior of doxxing.
Musk's actions at Twitter have caught the attention of the Biden administration. When asked at a press conference whether he thought Musk was a "threat to national security" due to his foreign business ties, President Biden responded by saying such relationships are "worthy of being looked at." White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also said the Biden administration was "keeping a close eye" on Musk.
During 2022, Musk has made numerous political waves via tweet. In June, Musk claimed he voted for a Republican for the first time ever, expressing his support for Texas's Mayra Flores, who won her special election bid but lost in the midterms due in part to unfavorable redistricting. The day before the midterms, Musk urged independents to opt for "voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic." He also said he would support Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if he were to run for president in 2024.
Twitter became a battlefield as Musk routinely sparred with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. He also went viral in December when he tweeted, "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci."
Perhaps the biggest impact Musk has had on Twitter thus far was the release of the so-called "Twitter Files," which shed light on controversial actions the platform made before he took over. Musk tapped independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, among others, to delve into the company's archives, giving them unprecedented access.
Each installment of the "Twitter Files" was shared by the journalists in lengthy Twitter threads addressing various controversies. Taibbi went viral with the first installment in early December with his "Twitter Files" focusing on Twitter's internal discussions leading to it censor the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election, with some officials struggling to explain how it violated its "hacked materials" policies.
It was later revealed that the first batch of "Twitter Files" was vetted without Musk's knowledge by Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker, who previously served as the FBI's general counsel and was involved in the Russia probe. Musk fired Baker shortly thereafter.
Baker was swept up Taibbi's reporting about the suppression of the Hunter Biden story, telling his colleagues at the time, "I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked" but added, "it's reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted."
Additionally, Taibbi initially reported, "Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story." It is unclear whether Baker's involvement in vetting the "Twitter Files" led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The second installment published by Weiss revealed Twitter's "blacklisting" of prominent conservatives, including Fox News host Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, as well as Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.
Internal communications also reveal Twitter staffers admitting that the popular right-wing account Libs of TikTok never violated its "hateful conduct" policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so.
Those revelations appear to contradict what former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress in 2018, when he testified under oath that Twitter did not censor or shadowban conservatives.
The third, fourth and fifth installments of the "Twitter Files" focused on the permanent suspension of former President Trump around the Capitol riot in January 2021.
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Taibbi reported how Twitter circulated election-related tweets from various users leading up to the 2020 election that were "flagged" by the FBI as being problematic.
Independent writer Michael Shellenberger revealed that Dorsey was phoning it in as he was on vacation while his deputies were pushing to deplatform Trump, with Roth particularly spearheading efforts to censor other users pertaining to tweets about the 2020 election. It became known that Roth met on a weekly basis with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the office of the Director of National Inteligence in the weeks leading up to the election.
Weiss addressed the pressure Twitter management was facing from its employees who called for Trump's permanent suspension, though the Free Press editor also revealed several Twitter staffers who enforce policies did not believe Trump's tweets from Jan. 6 actually violated its rules.
However, it was Vijaya Gadde, then-Twitter's head legal chief, who asked if Trump's tweets could be "coded incitement to further violence." Moments later, the so-called "scaled enforcement team" suggested that based on how Twitter interprets Trump's tweets, it could violate the violence incitement policies.
Part six of the "Twitter Files" put a spotlight on Twitter's close ties with the FBI. Taibbi alleged the law enforcement agency was acting like a "subsidiary" of the tech giant, revealing communications that showed FBI agents systemically flagged Twitter users for tweets that included "possible violative content" pertaining to the election.
In response to the "Twitter Files," a spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News Digital, "The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them."
The FBI's routine contact with Twitter regarding users that would ultimately face punishment for their tweets has raised major flags about potential First Amendment violations.
In part seven, Shellenberger framed the Twitter's coziness with the FBI in the context of the Hunter Biden laptop story, showing the FBI's requests for Twitter to share sensitive data of its users, which Twitter refused to give, and the agency's repeated inquiries into whether Twitter has seen foreign activity leading up to the 2020 election, something Twitter at the time said it hadn't. On Oct. 13, 2020, just one day before the New York Post broke its Hunter Biden story that was quickly censored, Twitter received ten unknown documents from the FBI through its secure one-way Teleport channel.
One email from February 2021 shows the FBI paid Twitter over $3.4 million since October 2019 over the course of their partnership, as Twitter's policies seek reimbursements when it comes to producing information as part of a legal process.
Roth had even participated in what was dubbed the "Hack-and-Dump Working Group" with the Aspen Institute in September 2020 to elaborately simulate how the media and Big Tech should handle something like the Hunter Biden laptop.
The FBI remained defiant amid criticism, telling Fox News in a statement "The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers… It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency."
Part eight, shared by Intercept investigative reporter Lee Fang, exposed Twitter's assistance in the Pentagon's foreign influencing campaigns, allowing the military to use covert accounts to push out propaganda overseas despite it being against Twitter's own policies. Taibbi separately reported in the ningth installment about Twitter's constant interactions with "OGAs" (other government agencies) including the CIA.
The tenth batch of Twitter Files, this time reported by writer David Zweig, focused on COVID and the platform's efforts to enforce its so-called "misinformation" policy, reporting "both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes." Zweig highlighted a memo written by Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, who claimed the Biden team was "very angry" about Twitter not taking action to "de-platform" various accounts based on meetings with the White House. Musk teased there's "much more" Twitter Files to reveal in 2023 particularly about COVID and how top doctors and scientists were "actively suppressed on Twitter," presumably for going against the White House-approved narrative.
Musk's takeover of Twitter was quite the rollercoaster ride. And all rollercoaster rides eventually come to an end. On Dec. 18, he took a poll asking Twitter users if he should "step down as head" of the platform and vowed he'd "abide by the results." Over 17.5 million users responded and 57.5% voted that he should go.
Two days later, amid reports he was seeking someone to lead Twitter, Musk tweeted, "I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!" adding that he would only run the "software & server teams" going forward.
Whether Musk is successful in finding a new figurehead, one thing's for certain: After 2022, Twitter will never be the same again.
