Elon Musk has revealed Old Twitter gave the federal government access to users’ private direct messages (DMs).
Musk dropped the revelation during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s upcoming show.
In a preview of the segment, due to air Monday night on Fox News, Musk said he was shocked to learn how deeply the feds had infiltrated Twitter before he bought the company in October.
“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind, I was not aware of that,” said Musk.
“Would that include people’s DMs?” Carlson asked.
“Yes,” Musk responded.
WATCH:
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 16, 2023
It has long been suspected that individual Twitter employees had full access to private messages.
However, the confirmation that branches of the federal government have enjoyed that same privilege is stunning.
Since taking over the company, Musk has worked with journalists to release batches of the “Twitter Files.”
The installments, assembled from Twitter’s internal communications files, have been exposing the egregious censorship policies of the previous regime.
Journalist Matt Taibbi characterized the cozy relationship between the social media network, NGOs, and the US government as the “censorship-industrial complex.”
According to Taibbi, the system worked as “a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives,” acting as an insult to the principles of a free press.
