Twitter announced that parts of its source code was leaked online, making it potentially vulnerable to hackers, and the platform’s officials suspect a disgruntled insider is to blame.

The social media company on Friday notified GitHub, an online hosting service for software development, that it had allowed Twitter code to be posted in violation of copyright law, The New York Times reported. Twitter filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California asking it to order GitHub to identify the person behind the leak and anyone else involved in the caper, the Times reported.

GitHub responded to the Twitter filing by asking for a description of the copyrighted code that had allegedly been infringed, prompting Twitter to say the material was “proprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools.” The platform acknowledged that it had no measures in place to control access to the content.

The source code is the critical software behind Twitter’s programming functions. Threat analyst Brett Callow told the Times that the public posting of Twitter’s source code could help hackers by making  “it a little bit easier and speedier to probe for vulnerabilities.”

GitHub took the posting down on Friday, but it had reportedly been up for months. It was not known when Twitter became aware that the code had been posted before bringing it to GitHub’s attention. In the Friday filing, Twitter asked GitHub to save any data that could be relevant to determining who was behind the act, including contact info, IP addresses or other information.

According to the Times, the person who leaked Twitter’s source code apparently self-identified as “FreeSpeechEnthusiast” on GitHub.

Twitter owner Elon Musk has said he intends to make all of the company’s code “open source,” or accessible to the public by the end of this month, anyway.

“Twitter will open source all code used to recommend tweets on March 31st. … We’re developing a simplified approach to serve more compelling tweets, but it’s still a work in progress,” Musk tweeted on March 17. “That’ll also be open source. Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality. Most importantly, we hope to earn your trust.”

Our “algorithm” is overly complex & not fully understood internally. People will discover many silly things , but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found!

We’re developing a simplified approach to serve more compelling tweets, but it’s still a work in progress. That’ll also…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2023

Musk has slashed Twitter’s workforce since acquiring the company in October. By the end of February, Twitter had reduced its staff from 7,500 to fewer than 2,000 employees. Musk said Friday that despite the company’s worth having dropped to $20 billion, he thought it could be worth $250 billion in the future.

CNN writer John Blake accused white people of wearing “digital blackface” if they shared memes or gifs featuring black people and expressions in order to “convey comic relief or express emotions.”

Referring to the most popular memes and gifs as “radicalized reactions,” Blake argued that black people “get a pass” for using them — but when white people did so, they had “inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism.”

Blake went on to quote a 2017 Teen Vogue article written by Lauren Michele Jackson — in which she argued that people often cherry-picked gifs that featured black people when attempting to express extreme emotions.

“While reaction GIFs can and do every feeling under the sun, white and nonblack users seem to especially prefer GIFs with black people when it comes to emitting their most exaggerated emotions,” Jackson wrote. “Extreme joy, annoyance, anger and occasions for drama and gossip are a magnet for images of black people, especially black femmes.”

Blake went on later in the article to refer to “digital blackface” as a “modern-day repackaging of minstrel shows.”

But when Blake’s article made the rounds on Twitter on Sunday, critics had a field day with the idea.

Radio host Clay Travis tied the concept to the transgender movement, tweeting, “I’d love to hear an explanation of how posting a gif or meme of a black person online is digital blackface, but a man dressing up like a woman in real life is heroic. Please explain @cnn.”

I’d love to hear an explanation of how posting a gif or meme of a black person online is digital blackface, but a man dressing up like a woman in real life is heroic. Please explain @cnn. pic.twitter.com/fPYXF5ogDC

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 26, 2023

The Media Research Center’s Nicholas Fondacaro added, “CNN boss Chris Licht: I want to make CNN a place of reasonable discussions again. CNN: Segregate memes!!!”

CNN boss Chris Licht: I want to make CNN a place of reasonable discussions again.

CNN: Segregate memes!!! https://t.co/pBc4ZRiqU7

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 26, 2023

“CNN is more concerned about digital blackface than they are biological men wearing womanface IRL,” Siraj Hashmi added.

CNN is more concerned about digital blackface than they are biological men wearing womanface IRL https://t.co/XRQGpbcWay

— siraj hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) March 26, 2023

“The modern-day segregationists do everything possible to keep people divided by race, prevent them from having joyful and natural interactions, ban them from appreciating the culture and humor of others, and in general demand that they have as little in common as possible,” independent journalist Glenn Greenwald remarked.

The modern-day segregationists do everything possible to keep people divided by race, prevent them from having joyful and natural interactions, ban them from appreciating the culture and humor of others, and in general demand that they have as little in common as possible: https://t.co/pMXVCAf2Xr

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 26, 2023

“When the demand for racism radically outstrips the supply,” came from Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro.

When the demand for racism radically outstrips the supply https://t.co/CnnB3KfDDv

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 26, 2023

Matt Walsh chimed in as well, noting just how many critics had responded to the piece.

“Is this the worst ratio of all time?” he asked.

Is this the worst ratio of all time? pic.twitter.com/aY6Z8q2vGy

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) March 26, 2023