Another round of Twitter Files has dropped, and this one comes courtesy of Matt Taibbi (who the Washington Post laughably dubbed a “conservative journalist”).
This latest round features how deeply the FBI, DHS, state governments and others were involved in what was and wasn’t allowed on the social media platform. Most of the focus is on the FBI:
COMING at 4 est:
TWITTER: THE FBI SUBSIDIARY pic.twitter.com/jQFh72jHec
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
And awaayyy we go:
2. The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
The files show that the FBI was in routine contact with Twitter personnel:
4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
5. Some are mundane, like San Francisco agent Elvis Chan wishing Roth a Happy New Year along with a reminder to attend “our quarterly call next week.” Others are requests for information into Twitter users related to active investigations.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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
It sure sounds like the FBI was all over trying to keep the preferred narratives in check.
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
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
9. It’s no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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
Nothing to see here!
11. What stands out is the sheer quantity of reports from the government. Some are aggregated from public hotlines: pic.twitter.com/cm9JjEXUSm
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/bcttGWKpFW unanswered question: do agencies like FBI and DHS do in-house flagging work themselves, or farm it out? “You have to prove to me that inside the fucking government you can do any kind of massive data or AI search,” says one former intelligence officer.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
“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
“Fact-checking” jokes and memes? That sure sounds familiar.
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
16. “Anyone who cannot discern obvious satire from reality has no place making decisions for others or working for the feds,” said @ClaireFosterPHD, when told about the flagging.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
::Laughs in Babylon Bee::
17.Of the six accounts mentioned in the previous two emails, all but two – @ClaireFosterPHD and @FromMa – were suspended.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/ZQeb9Ko06p an internal email from November 5, 2022, the FBI’s National Election Command Post, which compiles and sends on complaints, sent the SF field office a long list of accounts that “may warrant additional action”: pic.twitter.com/yILcgjFyev
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
It sure sounds as if the FBI was a co-owner of Twitter back then.
19.Agent Chan passed the list on to his "Twitter folks": pic.twitter.com/eXaZnC3I7y
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
20. Twitter then replied with its list of actions taken. Note mercy shown to actor Billy Baldwin: pic.twitter.com/zQzNGQMKmO
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
A lefty actor was shown mercy? Ya don’t say!
21.Many of the above accounts were satirical in nature, nearly all (with the exceptions of Baldwin and @RSBNetwork) were relatively low engagement, and some were suspended, most with a generic, “Thanks, Twitter” letter: pic.twitter.com/0S0XoqhwYD
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
22.When told of the FBI flagging, @Lexitollah replied: “My thoughts initially include 1. Seems like prima facie 1A violation 2. Holy cow, me, an account with the reach of an amoeba 3. What else are they looking at?”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
23.“I can't believe the FBI is policing jokes on Twitter. That's crazy,” said @Tiberius444.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/9IfX3IPzyi a letter to former Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker on Sep. 16, 2022, legal exec Stacia Cardille outlines results from her “soon to be weekly” meeting with DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: pic.twitter.com/oE8fDjomNP
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
25.The Twitter exec writes she explicitly asked if there were “impediments” to the sharing of classified information “with industry.” The answer? “FBI was adamant no impediments to sharing exist.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
26. This passage underscores the unique one-big-happy-family vibe between Twitter and the FBI. With what other firm would the FBI blithely agree to “no impediments” to classified information?
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
At this point the Left’s “Twitter was just in contact with a campaign but nobody in the federal government so what happened doesn’t constitute censorship” excuses have run out of gas.
https://t.co/dtvy82pfce the bottom of that letter, she lists a series of “escalations” apparently raised at the meeting, which were already “handled.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
28. About one, she writes: “Flagged a specific Tweet on Illinois use of modems to transmit election results in possible violation of the civic integrity policy (except they do use that tech in limited circumstances).”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
29.Another internal letter from January, 2021 shows Twitter execs processing an FBI list of “possible violative content” tweets: pic.twitter.com/Dwad3lGM4j
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/v2RzNXCtZw, too, most tweets contained the same, “Get out there and vote Wednesday!” trope and had low engagement. This is what the FBI spends its time on: pic.twitter.com/WfVudSRvIK
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
31. In this March, 2021 email, an FBI liaison thanks a senior Twitter exec for the chance to speak to “you and the team,” then delivers a packet of “products”: pic.twitter.com/POOpYrd9q8
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
Did Twitter get some FBI swag for their generous cooperation?
32.The executive circulates the “products,” which are really DHS bulletins stressing the need for greater collaboration between law enforcement and “private sector partners.” pic.twitter.com/by9cpm7YVf
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
Naturally the bogus 2016 “Russia collusion” narrative was presented as justification for these measures in 2020:
33.The ubiquity of the 2016 Russian interference story as stated pretext for building out the censorship machine can’t be overstated. It’s analogous to how 9/11 inspired the expansion of the security state. pic.twitter.com/GSaEzM0aYo
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
34.While the DHS in its “products” pans “permissive” social media for offering “operational advantages” to Russians, it also explains that the “Domestic Violent Extremist Threat” requires addressing “information gaps”: pic.twitter.com/Jq4qaYK9Tm
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
35.FBI in one case sent over so many “possible violative content” reports, Twitter personnel congratulated each other in Slack for the “monumental undertaking” of reviewing them: pic.twitter.com/rt5WzhfCga
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
36.There were multiple points of entry into Twitter for government-flagged reports. This letter from Agent Chan to Roth references Teleporter, a platform through which Twitter could receive reports from the FBI: pic.twitter.com/lNbgvsu5LV
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
37.Reports also came from different agencies. Here, an employee recommends “bouncing” content based on evidence from “DHS etc”: pic.twitter.com/5DP8DEFZiO
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
38.State governments also flagged content.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
39.Twitter for instance received reports via the Partner Support Portal, an outlet created by the Center for Internet Security, a partner organization to the DHS.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
40.“WHY WAS NO ACTION TAKEN?” Below, Twitter execs – receiving an alert from California officials, by way of “our partner support portal” – debate whether to act on a Trump tweet: pic.twitter.com/W4DQvYwq7Z
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/4zD4nEkDdW, a video was reported by the Election Integrity Project (EIP) at Stanford, apparently on the strength of information from the Center for Internet Security (CIS): pic.twitter.com/kJfJ6gDrb1
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
42.If that’s confusing, it’s because the CIS is a DHS contractor, describes itself as “partners” with the Cyber and Internet Security Agency (CISA) at the DHS: pic.twitter.com/Klz132BZ59
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
43.The EIP is one of a series of government-affiliated think tanks that mass-review content, a list that also includes the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Laboratory, and the University of Washington’s Center for Informed Policy.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
So basically the “deep state” is a Frankenstein’s monster of different areas of government:
44.The takeaway: what most people think of as the “deep state” is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors, and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
More to come:
45. Twitter Files researchers are moving into a variety of new areas now. Watch @BariWeiss, @ShellenbergerMD, and this space for more, soon.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
One thing’s for sure:
Boy, they sure had their tentacles all through Twitter, didn't they?
— Cetacean_Kim (@CetaceanKim) December 16, 2022
Yep!
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Related:
Bari Weiss drops #TwitterFiles Part 5, exposing depths of Twitter’s crusade against Donald Trump
Tom Elliott charts media mentions of ‘Twitter Files’ in the last 10 days
NPR’s spin on #TwitterFiles is sure to earn them a holiday gift basket from the Dems
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