This is The Guardian.

Welcome to The Guardian long read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to the Guardian.com forward slash long read.

Money Talks, the deep ties between Twitter and Saudi Arabia by Jacob Silverman, read by

Nazar al-Darazi.

Ali al-Ahmat didn't think that Elon Musk was responsible for the decline and fall of Twitter.

Musk was another face representing an old regime.

And its sins began well before Musk bumbled into Twitter HQ in October 2022, carrying a porcelain sink.

In an attempt at humor, Musk posted a video of himself arriving at the Twitter offices carrying a sink with the caption,

Entering Twitter HQ. Let that sink in. Ahmed was a Saudi journalist and analyst living in the Washington, D.C. area.

He was founder of the Institute of Gulf Affairs, formerly the Saudi Institute.

A Saudi-focused think tank with an emphasis on human rights reporting, and was the kind of expert, passionate,

principled, always glad to hop on the phone. The journalists loved having in their digital

rolodex. For Ahmed, who over the years had many family members imprisoned by the Saudi royal family,

the pursuit of human rights was a solemn

task. But he also had a kind of garrulousness, breaking into asides about his children or the

talking gadget he'd invented to remind them to wash their hands, that reminded one of the deeper

human stakes. Twitter is no different from Boeing or those military companies, Ahmed told me.

They care about making money.

Twitter and Facebook are not champions or models for human rights.

These people are nothing but money grubbers.

Twitter had banned Ahmed's Arabic language Twitter account, which had 36,000 followers,

...