Just in time for our weekend enjoyment, independent journalist Matt Taibbi has released part six of the “Twitter Files” in an epic dropping of the receipts, many of which are sure to raise even more free speech concerns considering the sheer volume of documented collusion between high-level officials at federal intelligence agencies and Twitter over roughly the last three years alone in suppressing the voices of private citizens for WrongSpeak.
In the third tweet from Taibbi’s thread, he noted how “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.”
Next, we learned that “Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.”
Though he said some of the communications were “mundane,” Taibbi pointed out that others were “requests for information into Twitter users related to active investigations.”
Interestingly and perhaps more disturbingly, “requests for action” were frequently in regards to “low-follower” Twitter accounts that had limited reach on grounds that they were spreading “election misinformation.” In the next tweet, Taibbi talked about the post-2016 election “FBI’s social media-focused task force” which Taibbi says “swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds”:
6. But a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
7. The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
Though DHS involvement was discussed in an earlier release of the Twitter files, Taibbi talked about the “reach” of the FBI along with DHS into Twitter as well:
8. Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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Though Taibbi correctly observed that it was fairly common knowledge that government collects information at all levels on “everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts,” that the Twitter Files were different:
10. The #TwitterFiles show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
Here are some of the accounts federal officials targeted:
“HELLO TWITTER CONTACTS”: The master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter comes through in this November 2022 email, in which “FBI San Francisco is notifying you” it wants action on four accounts: pic.twitter.com/LjgB6fxENo
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
14.Twitter personnel in that case went on to look for reasons to suspend all four accounts, including @fromma, whose tweets are almost all jokes (see sample below), including his “civic misinformation” of Nov. 8: pic.twitter.com/gwiDtPcWZv
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
15. Just to show the FBI can be hyper-intrusive in both directions, they also asked Twitter to review a blue-leaning account for a different joke, except here it was even more obvious that @clairefosterPHD, who kids a lot, was kidding: pic.twitter.com/uLxHayY11C
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
Just nuts. Read more of Taibbi’s full thread either here or here for more examples of the types of accounts that were “flagged” by the FBI, and which in turn were also aggressively monitored by Twitter for alleged policy violations related to “election misinformation.”
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