22.Especially as the election approached in 2020, the FITF/FBI overwhelmed Twitter with requests, sending lists of hundreds of problem accounts:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701451124039681
-
The FBI was clearly tailoring searches to Twitter’s policies. FBI complaints were almost always depicted somewhere as a “possible terms of service violation," even in the subject line:
-
Twitter executives noticed the FBI appeared to be aasigning personnel to look for Twitter violations.
27.“They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” remarked Cardille.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701459068051456
29.The New York FBI office even sent requests for the “user IDs and handles” of a long list of accounts named in a Daily Beast article. Senior executives say they are “supportive” and “completely comfortable” doing so.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701461718863873
-
It seemed to strike no one as strange that a “Foreign Influence” task force was forwarding thousands of mostly domestic reports, along with the DHS, about the fringiest material:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701463971196930
-
“Foreign meddling” had been the ostensible justification for expanded moderation since platforms like Twitter were dragged to the Hill by the Senate in 2017:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701466160599041
-
Yet behind the scenes, Twitter executives struggled against government claims of foreign interference supposedly occurring on their platform and others:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701468178075650
-
The #TwitterFiles show execs under constant pressure to validate theories of foreign influence – and unable to find evidence for key assertions.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701469813846017
-
“Found no links to Russia,” says one analyst, but suggests he could “brainstorm” to “find a stronger connection.”
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701472246534147
-
“Extremely tenuous circumstantial chance of being related,” says another.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701474326904832
-
“No real matches using the info,” says former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth in another case, noting some links were “clearly Russian,” but another was a “house rental in South Carolina?”
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701476784779264
-
In another case, Roth concludes a series of Venezuelan pro-Maduro accounts are unrelated to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, because they’re too high-volume:
38.The Venezuelans “were extremely high-volume tweeters… pretty uncharacteristic of a lot of the other IRA activity,” Roth says.
-
In a key email, news that the State Department was making a wobbly public assertion of Russian influence led an exec – the same one with the “OGA” past - to make a damning admission:
-
“Due to a lack of technical evidence on our end, I've generally left it be, waiting for more evidence,” he says. “Our window on that is closing, given that government partners are becoming more aggressive on attribution.”
-
Translation: “more aggressive” “government partners” had closed Twitter’s “window” of independence.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701487601901568
-
“Other Government Agencies” ended up sharing intelligence through the FBI and FITF not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Clouldfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia:
-
Former CIA agent and whistleblower John Kiriakou believes he recognizes the formatting of these reports.
44.“Looks right on to me,” Kiriakou says, noting that “what was cut off above [the “tearline”] was the originating CIA office and all the copied offices.”
-
Many people wonder if Internet platforms receive direction from intelligence agencies about moderation of foreign policy news stories. It appears Twitter did, in some cases by way of the FITF/FBI.
-
These reports are far more factually controversial than domestic counterparts.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701497081024512
-
One intel report lists accounts tied to “Ukraine ‘neo-Nazi’ Propaganda.’” This includes assertions that Joe Biden helped orchestrate a coup in 2014 and “put his son on the board of Burisma.”
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701501677961217
-
Another report asserts a list of accounts accusing the “Biden administration” of “corruption” in vaccine distribution are part of a Russian influence campaign:
-
Often intelligence came in the form of brief reports, followed by long lists of accounts simply deemed to be pro-Maduro, pro-Cuba, pro-Russia, etc. This one batch had over 1000 accounts marked for digital execution:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701506191065088
-
One report says a site “documenting purported rights abuses committed by Ukrainians” is directed by Russian agents:
-
Intel about the shady origin of these accounts might be true. But so might at least some of the information in them – about neo-Nazis, rights abuses in Donbas, even about our own government. Should we block such material?
-
This is a difficult speech dilemma. Should the government be allowed to try to prevent Americans (and others) from seeing pro-Maduro or anti-Ukrainian accounts?
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701517993840640
-
The line between “misinformation” and “distorting propaganda” is thin. Are we comfortable with so many companies receiving so many reports from a “more aggressive” government?
56.The CIA has yet to comment on the nature of its relationship to tech companies like Twitter. Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by third parties, so what I saw could be limited.
Watch
@bariweiss
,
@shellenbergerMD
,
@lhfang
, and this space for more, on issues ranging from Covid-19 to Twitter's relationship to congress, and more.
Will note in a few, then get the twatt files from yesterday loaded.
Notables are NOT endorsements
@ 1st note
#772
>>155212 ANON: flight restricted areas
>>155214, >>155215, >>155216, >>155236, >>155239 VIDEO: Kevin O'Leary's HIDDEN Ties To FTX & SBF REVEALED On CNBC! (YouTube)
>>155217 SharylAttkisson (Twatter) China has launched a digital version of its currency; should the U.S. do the same? Sunday on Full Measure.
>>155219 Twatt) Owner stops shoplifter in New York by blocking the door until she pay
>>155220 Benny (Twatt) OUR FIRST ANIMATED CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: How Joe Biden's Grinch Stole Baggag
>>155221 (Twatt) “If You Think The FBI Twitter Files Were Bad: Wait till you find out about the Bush - Clinton - CIA - Bin Laden - 9/11 story…”
>>155222 SeanHannity (Twatt) WON’T SAY JESUS: Watch Biden Give Christmas Remarks, Bend Over Backwards to Avoid ‘Jesus’
>>155223 VIDEO: Two busloads of migrants dropped off in front of Vice President's home Christmas Eve (VIDEO)
>>155225 DanScavino (Twatt) Christmas Video, old man works out to put star on tree.
>>155226 DanScavino (Twatt) Merry Christmas!
>>155227 ElonMusk (Twatt) Merry Christmas & Good Cheer to All!
>>155228 TomFitton (Twatt) The new @ElonMusk @Twitter files raise the question: Which federal agencies did NOT interfere to help Joe Biden in the 2020 election?
>>155229, >>155230, >>155231, >>155232, >>155233, >>155234, >>155235, >>155238, >>155240, >>155241, >>155242, >>155243, >>155245, >>155246, >>155247, >>155248, >>155249, >>155250, >>155251, >>155252, >>155253, >>155254, >>155255, >>155256, >>155257, >>155258, >>155259 MattTaibbi (Twatt) 1.THREAD: The Twitter Files: TWITTER AND "OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES"
>>155237 3 power substations vandalized in Washington state, over 14K lost power (ABC News)
https://twitter.com/Eric_Schmitt/status/1607774821462441985
(Twatt) Before Twitter Files, before everything you see unfolding now — evidence of Big Government colluding with Big Tech — it was our lawsuit that started it all. Time stamp: May 5. 2022.
P.S. I’m just getting started. Onto the U.S. Senate Jan.3!
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867
DavidZweig (Twatt) 1. THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE
– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s own data
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607379394204516354
-
So far the Twitter Files have focused on evidence of Twitter’s secret blacklists; how the company functioned as a kind of subsidiary of the FBI; and how execs rewrote the platform’s rules to accommodate their own political desires.
-
What we have yet to cover is Covid. This reporting, for The Free Press,
@thefp
, is one piece of that important story.
-
The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19.
-
Internal files at Twitter that I viewed while on assignment for
@thefp
showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes.
-
At the onset of the pandemic, according to meeting notes, the Trump admin was especially concerned about panic buying. They came looking for “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation” about “runs on grocery stores.” But . . . there were runs on grocery stores.
-
It wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607382379018190849
-
When the Biden admin took over, one of their first meeting requests with Twitter executives was on Covid. The focus was on “anti-vaxxer accounts.” Especially Alex Berenson:
-
In the summer of 2021, president Biden said social media companies were “killing people” for allowing vaccine misinformation. Berenson was suspended hours after Biden’s comments, and kicked off the platform the following month.
-
Berenson sued (and then settled with) Twitter. In the legal process Twitter was compelled to release certain internal communications, which showed direct White House pressure on the company to take action on Berenson.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/jesse-jackson-cant-swim
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607383503083012096
-
A December 2022 summary of meetings with the White House by Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, adds new evidence of the White House’s pressure campaign, and cements that it repeatedly attempted to directly influence the platform.
-
Culbertson wrote that the Biden team was “very angry” that Twitter had not been more aggressive in deplatforming multiple accounts. They wanted Twitter to do more.
-
Twitter executives did not fully capitulate to the Biden team’s wishes. An extensive review of internal communications at the company revealed employees often debating moderation cases in great detail, and with more care than was shown by the government toward free speech.
-
But Twitter did suppress views—many from doctors and scientific experts—that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing.
-
There were three serious problems with Twitter’s process:
First, much of the content moderation was conducted by bots, trained on machine learning and AI – impressive in their engineering, yet still too crude for such nuanced work.
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607385019101884418
-
Second, contractors, in places like the Philippines, also moderated content. They were given decision trees to aid in the process, but tasking non experts to adjudicate tweets on complex topics like myocarditis and mask efficacy data was destined for a significant error rate
17 Third, most importantly, the buck stopped with higher level employees at Twitter who chose the inputs for the bots and decision trees, and subjectively decided escalated cases and suspensions. As it is with all people and institutions, there was individual and collective bias
-
With Covid, this bias bent heavily toward establishment dogmas.
-
Inevitably, dissident yet legitimate content was labeled as misinformation, and the accounts of doctors and others were suspended both for tweeting opinions and demonstrably true information.
-
Exhibit A: Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, tweeted views at odds with US public health authorities and the American left, the political affiliation of nearly the entire staff at Twitter.
Had a headache last night, had to retire early.
Back on it.
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607386380325326853
-
Internal emails show an “intent to action” by a moderator, saying Kulldorff’s tweet violated the company’s Covid-19 misinformation policy and claimed he shared “false information.”
-
But Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one which also happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines.
-
After Twitter took action, Kulldorff’s tweet was slapped with a “Misleading” label and all replies and likes were shut off, throttling the tweet’s ability to be seen and shared by many people, the ostensible core function of the platform:
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607387181957488642
-
In my review of internal files, I found countless instances of tweets labeled as “misleading” or taken down entirely, sometimes triggering account suspensions, simply because they veered from CDC guidance or differed from establishment views.
-
A tweet by
@KelleyKga
, a self-proclaimed public health fact checker, with 18K followers, was flagged as “Misleading,” and replies and likes disabled, even though it displayed the CDC’s own data.
-
Internal records showed that a bot had flagged the tweet, and that it received many “tattles” (what the system amusingly called reports from users). That triggered a manual review by a human who– despite the tweet showing actual CDC data–nevertheless labeled it “Misleading”
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607388288717058054
-
Tellingly, the tweet by
@KelleyKga
that was labeled “Misleading” was a reply to a tweet that contained actual misinformation.
Covid has never been the leading cause of death from disease in children. Yet that tweet remains on the platform, and without a “misleading” label.
-
Whether by humans or algorithms, content that was contrarian but true was still subject to getting flagged or suppressed
This tweet was labeled “Misleading,” even though the owner of this account,
@euzebiusz
, a physician, was referring to the results of a published study
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607389087073271810
-
Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, was permanently suspended from Twitter after receiving multiple strikes for misinformation. One of his strikes was for a tweet referring to the results from a peer reviewed study on mRNA vaccines.
-
A review of Twitter log files revealed that an internal audit, conducted after Bostom’s attorney contacted Twitter, found that only 1 of Bostom’s 5 violations were valid.
-
The one Bostom tweet found to still be in violation cited data that was legitimate but inconvenient to the public health establishment’s narrative about the risks of flu versus Covid in children.
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607389643325988866
-
That this tweet was not only flagged by a bot, but its violation manually affirmed by a staff member is telling of both the algorithmic and human bias at play. Bostom’s account was suspended for months and was finally restored on Christmas Day.
-
Another example of human bias run amok was the reaction to this tweet by Trump. Many Trump tweets led to extensive internal debates, and this one was no different.
-
In a surreal exchange, Jim Baker, at the time Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, asks why telling people to not be afraid wasn’t a violation of Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation policy.
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607390483696979968
-
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of Trust & Safety, had to explain that optimism wasn’t misinformation.
-
Remember
@KelleyKga
with the CDC data tweet? Twitter’s response to her is clarifying: “we will prioritize review and labeling of content that could lead to increased exposure or transmission.”
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607391131746156545
-
Twitter made a decision, via the political leanings of senior staff, and govt pressure, that the public health authorities’ approach to the pandemic – prioritizing mitigation over other concerns – was “The Science” . . .
-
Information that challenged that view, such as showing harms of vaccines, or that could be perceived as downplaying the risks of Covid, especially to children, was subject to moderation, and even suppression. No matter whether such views were correct or adopted abroad.
-
What might this pandemic and its aftermath have looked like if there had been a more open debate on Twitter and other social media platforms—not to mention the mainstream press—about the origins of Covid, about lockdowns, about the true risks of Covid in kids, and much more?
-
Thanks to
@ShellenbergerMD @lwoodhouse, @lhfang and the team @thefp for their help reporting this story.
-
An expanded version of this thread is available now @thefp!
Hez some official bidness to do, will be on in a bit.
https://truthsocial.com/@jsolomonreports/posts/109592905468339010
JohnSolomon (TruSoc) Twitter files reveal US government censored COVID-19 data
Watch: Twitter files reveal US government censored COVID-19 data | Just The News justthenews.com/videos/twitter
John.. the freaking ads on the site are off the charts!