Elon Musk's attempt to stage a blowout media event by releasing internal Twitter correspondence last week hasn't changed many peoples' opinions about the main topic of his document dump, the 2020 controversy over how Twitter handled the story of Hunter Biden's laptop. But anyone playing close attention could see something else shift over the weekend: The contours of the online culture war. Musk's release — and the hours-long Twitter Spaces session he held about it on Saturday night — amounted to something like a coming-out party for an emerging constellation of anti-establishment forces and the digital media ecosystem they inhabit. Much as Donald Trump offered a new political home for long-dormant American nationalist ideas, Musk's company is turning into a kind of coffeehouse for provocateurs, largely from the tech world and alternative publishing platforms like Substack, who see mainstream media as biased towards progressive values over libertarian ones. (Conveniently, the mainstream media largely pooh-poohed the proceedings.) For Twitter, this amounts to a turnabout. After the rise of Trump prompted concerns that his movement was pumping hate speech and disinformation into online discourse, social media companies took steps to more actively police their platforms. Twitter, especially, took an aggressive stance, banning accounts for offensive tweets, putting disclaimers on posts that contradicted the consensus of public health authorities and eventually booting Trump from its platform. Thanks in part to such online crackdowns, Trump's populist insurgency lost steam. But as it did, other anti-establishment currents gained momentum online. In recent years, a slew of defectors fled establishment-oriented institutions in the center and on the left, saying they had become censorious and conformist in the Trump era, finding common cause with Silicon Valley libertarians. Now, following the takeover of Twitter by a new owner who'd rather joust with establishment media than play by its rules, they may have a new home. The grassroots populist right that fueled Trump's rise has not gone away — many of its leaders , including, Trump, have been recalled from Twitter exile — but after the poor showing of Trump-aligned populists in the Midterms, it's fair to wonder if it has now ceded primacy to Musk's brand of techno-billionaire anti-woke politics . While this reshuffle has been years in the making, it crystallized with this weekend's digital media extravaganza. In promoting his document release, Musk collaborated with writer Matt Taibbi, a longtime critic of mainstream media outlets and online censorship, who — after stints at Rolling Stone and First Look Media, publisher of the Intercept — hosts his own outlet, TK News , on Substack. Substack itself is almost a character in this drama: The newsletter platform embodies the budding alliance between Silicon Valley libertarians and establishment defectors. Founded by a former Tesla executive, Substack has set up itself as a free-speech foil to establishment outlets, which have at times criticized its lack of oversight of writers, many of whom left large media organizations for the platform. (Another one is Bari Weiss, formerly of the New York Times, who Musk said was also reviewing the documents; Substack writer Glenn Greenwald, formerly of the Intercept, has taken the lead in pushing back against mainstream media critics of Taibbi's collaboration with Musk.) Part digital hangout, part makeshift press conference , the Twitter Spaces on Saturday night saw Musk opine on free speech, take questions from Fox News reporters, chat with online influencers, and dodge pointed questions about his stance on freedom in China, where he has extensive business entanglements. The conversation, hosted by crypto entrepreneur Mario Nawfal, has drawn 2.1 million listeners on the platform. Taibbi, who said he is continuing to review the internal files, told POLITICO late Sunday that his findings thus far have provided more fodder for his longstanding critiques of online censorship, but have yet to yield major bombshells. "So far what I've seen mostly just confirms what we know, though it's embarrassing to read," he said. Even if the story fizzles, its convening power for this movement raises the question: is the whole spectacle of Musk-owned Twitter a sideshow, or the start of something bigger? There's no question that Musk sees it as the latter. In recent weeks, the mogul has outlined a view that Twitter's hivemind — he calls the social network a "super-intelligence" — should be harnessed to promote free speech , in order to win nothing less than "a battle for the future of civilization."
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