by Sophia Flores source

This illustration picture taken on November 23, 2020 shows a bottle reading “Vaccine Covid-19” and a syringe next to the Pfizer and Biontech logo. (Photo by JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)[/caption]

Pfizer partner BioNTech pushed for social media platforms to censor activists who demanded low-cost generic vaccines for low-come countries.
Global drug giants saw the pandemic as an opportunity to make an immense amount of profit. Unbeknown to the public, pharma launched a massive lobbying blitz in order to crush any effort to share patents for new COVID- related medicines. This included therapeutics and vaccines.
In 2021, BIO, the lobby group that represents Moderna and Pfizer, wrote to the newly inaugurated Biden administration demanding that the United States government sanctions any country that was attempting to violate patent rights and create generic low cost COVID medicine or vaccines.
In addition, the company reached out to Twitter to let the social media company know that they should censor users who asked about generic low-cost vaccines.
5. That brings us to Twitter. The global lobbying blitz includes direct pressure on social media. BioNTech, which developed Pfizer’s vaccine, reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic low cost vaccines. pic.twitter.com/6cVIRcUDZV
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 16, 2023
Twitter quickly responded to the request. It’s not clear how the platform censored posts where people asked for poorer countries to get access to the vaccines, however, moderators kept moderating activist tweets.
6. Twitter’s reps responded quickly to the pharma request, which was also backed by the German government. A lobbyist in Europe asked the content moderation team to monitor the accounts of Pfizer, AstraZeneca & of activist hashtags like #peoplesvaccine pic.twitter.com/Bt9YNJUlN1
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 16, 2023
In a different push, BIO fully funded a special content moderation campaign designed by a contractor called Public Good Projects. Public Good Projects worked alongside Twitter to set content moderation rules around COVID “misinformation.”
The company provided $1,275,000 to that particular campaign. The campaign focused on tweets that had unhinged misinformation. They also focused on vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and policies that coerce vaccination.
10. BIO provided $1,275,000 to the campaign, part of which is revealed through tax forms. The PGP campaign, called “Stronger,” helped Twitter create content moderation bots, select which public health

The Twitter Files: Part 14 – #ReleaseTheMemo scandal

Growing distrust of mainstream media should be supplemented by scrutiny among users of Big Tech social media. They’re not an answer to the problem.

Twitter files 14: This one was prepared by news veteran Matt Taibbi. From his Substack post: “Remember this one? Russian bots and trolls were blamed by virtually every major news organization in the country for amplifying the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo. The files contain a mass of emails from executives blowing up this ridiculous story, once and for all. / “The #ReleaseTheMemo scandal was one of the more shameful episodes in the recent history of our media, but taken seriously by all but one or two mainstream editors at the time. All citing the same dubious source — the Hamilton 68 “dashboard” trumpeted by former FBI counterintelligence official and current MSNBC contributor Clint Watts — they insisted Russians deployed Twitter bot-armies to whip up cyber-support for Republican congressman Devin Nunes. Nunes had just released a classified memo alleging Democrats and the FBI used the infamous paid oppositional research dossier of ex-spy Christopher Steele to obtain secret FISA surveillance authority on Trump-connected figures like Carter Page, amid other improprieties. / “We now know Twitter internally found no evidence, as in zero, that Russians were anywhere near this story.”

From TF 14:

The significance of this (and probably other) Russian influence claims is that the mainstream media pros — whose news sense we are all supposed to trust — either did not suspect anything or pretended that they did not. They entirely failed to ask critical questions. That’s why we hear very little about the steady stream of Twitter revelations from them now. The big question is what news institutions that the public can trust will replace them?

Here are capsule summaries of all the Twitter files up to 13 so far, with links and glossary.

There is a danger, if we get caught up in the latest revealing file dump, of failing to see the momentous big picture, which is that Big Tech control of the news, with the tacit support of Big Media and the U.S. federal government, means that we did not get a very good picture of what was happening in the last few years by turning to the internet. Here are three instances to ponder:

● If you relied on legacy mainstream media for coverage of Elon Musk’s Twitter reforms, you probably heard plenty of angst from former employees but you may not have heard about the crackdown on using the platform for child sex abuse:

To those who aren’t aware yet, last week Twitter did add a direct reporting option for child sexual exploitation. (ONLY on tweets with content images/videos) this was not previously available and was a separate form that wasn’t easy to find.

I’m grateful to see these changes. pic.twitter.com/AI88XdX9HW— Eliza (@elizableu) November 20, 2022

It may relevant that Musk has ten kids himself.

● Facebook, eager to please the White House, apparently suppressed true information about the COVID vaccines in order to combat “vaccine hesitancy”: “As you know, in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable information. This is often-true content, which we allow at the post level because it is important for people to be able to discuss both their personal experiences and concerns about the vaccine, but it can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.” In short, if you thought that Facebook was manipulating your news in order to get compliance, you were right. No wonder 2022 has been dubbed the year conspiracy theory became conspiracy fact. Or as some wags now say, these days the lead time between a conspiracy theory and today’s news is six months.

● Non-compliant media have also been a target. A recent lawsuit by the attorneys-general of Missouri and Louisiana show that the White House was after Facebook to censor Fox News host Tucker Carlson: “Facebook’s efforts did not meet the administration’s demands for greater censorship, however. In response to the representative, White House Director of Digital Strategy Robert Flaherty questioned how Carlson’s video didn’t violate Facebook’s existing policies and pressured the company to turn over information on the efficacy of its censorship practices.

“‘How was this not violative? The second half of the segment is raising conspiracy theories about the government hiding that all vaccines aren’t effective,’ Flaherty claimed. ‘Moreover, you say reduced and demoted. What does that mean? There’s 40,000 shares on the video. Who is seeing it now? How many? How effective is that?’” – The Federalist (January 10, 2023)

For the purpose of creating public trust, there’s nothing like the White House stage managing news in order to protect its political narrative…

At any rate, the current plunge in public trust of legacy mainstream media needs to be supplemented by growing scrutiny among users of Big Tech social media. They’re not an answer to the problem.

You may also wish to read: As the Twitter files drop, ponder the future of mainstream media. Mainstream media are largely ignoring the story for reasons that go to the heart of their own growing weakness and unstoppable decline. Journalism will never matter anywhere near as much to the MSM again as doing what their betters want. And they view those who follow the story as a threat.

and

Big Tech censorship goes well beyond Twitter. Big Tech media is not, in itself, an answer to current legacy mainstream media if we would like to know information that our betters would prefer that we didn’t. Governments that gain control of media generally want an absolute rewrite of history so that it re-emerges as a PR machine for their governance.

source

Twitter Files: Top Democrats peddled false Russian bots narrative about Nunes memo, despite Twitter warnings

Twitter officials called Adam Schiff and others ‘congressional trolls’ for pushing fake bots narrative about #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag

By Brian Flood | Fox News

Journalist Matt Taibbi unveiled part 14 of the Twitter Files on Thursday, diving into the “Russiagate lies” and how he says a “fake tale of Russian bots” helped Democrats denounce the famous Devin Nunes report about flaws in the Trump-Russia investigation.

Emails and memos show that high-powered Democrats peddled a narrative of Russian bots despite being told directly by Twitter that there wasn’t a connection to the Kremlin.

The lengthy Twitter thread began with Taibbi noting that “at a crucial moment in a years-long furor, Democrats denounced a report about flaws in the Trump-Russia investigation, saying it was boosted by Russian ‘bots’ and ‘trolls.'”

He then indicated “Twitter officials were aghast, finding no evidence of Russian influence,” and shared an email in which Twitter executives appeared to inform Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the social media platform “has not identified any significant activity connected to Russia with respect to Tweets posting original content to this [#ReleaseTheMemo] hashtag.”

Journalist Matt Taibbi unveiled part 14 of the “Twitter Files” on Thursday. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

Elon Musk has been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter’s past and present actions curating content on the platform, including censored content. The Twitter owner has enlisted independent journalists to slowly release evidence of these actions in a series dubbed the “Twitter Files” that continue to expose once-secret communications.

“Twitter warned politicians and media they not only lacked evidence, but had evidence the accounts weren’t Russian – and were roundly ignored,” Taibbi wrote. “On January 18th, 2018, Republican Devin Nunes submitted a classified memo to the House Intel Committee detailing abuses by the FBI in obtaining FISA surveillance authority against Trump-connected figures, including the crucial role played by the infamous ‘Steele Dossier.'”

“The Nunes assertions would virtually all be verified in a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in December 2019,” Taibbi continued. “Nonetheless, national media in January and early February of 2018 denounced the Nunes report in oddly identical language, calling it a ‘joke.'”

Taibbi pointed out that on Jan. 23, 2018, Feinstein and Schiff “published an open letter saying the hashtag ‘gained the immediate attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations.’”

“Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal followed suit, publishing a letter saying, ‘We find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans,’” Taibbi wrote.

“Feinstein, Schiff, Blumenthal, and media members all pointed to the same source: the Hamilton 68 dashboard created by former FBI counterintelligence official Clint Watts, under the auspices of the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD),” Taibbi noted; Watts is an MSNBC contributor. But Twitter officials found no authentic Russian connection to the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag and informed Democrats as such.

“Inside Twitter, executives panned Watts, Hamilton 68, and the Alliance for Securing Democracy. Two key complaints: Hamilton 68 seemed to be everyone’s only source, and no one was checking with Twitter,” Taibbi wrote.

He then noted that then-Twitter exec Emily Horne wrote, “I encourage you to be skeptical of Hamilton 68’s take on this, which as far as I can tell is the only source for these stories… it’s a comms play for ASD.”

Then-Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth also warned “all the swirl is based on Hamilton,” and other Twitter execs echoed that notion.

Twitter staffers tried to stop Blumenthal from releasing his letter, to no avail.

“Execs eventually grew frustrated over what they saw as a circular process – presented with claims of Russian activity, even when denied, led to more claims,” Taibbi wrote. “They expressed this explicitly to Blumenthal’s camp, saying ‘Twitter spent a lot of resources’ on this request and the reward from Blumenthal shouldn’t be round after round of requests.”

“Despite universal internal conviction that there were no Russians in the story, Twitter went on to follow a slavish pattern of not challenging Russia claims on the record,” Taibbi wrote. “As a result, reporters from the AP to Politico to NBC to Rolling Stone continued to hammer the ‘Russian bots’ theme, despite a total lack of evidence.”

Taibbi then shared a series of headlines in which media outlets pushed the Russian bots narrative.

Twitter also discovered no Kremlin source for other hashtags that mainstream and liberal media outlets blamed on sinister Russian activity.

“NBC, Politico, AP, Times, Business Insider, and other media outlets who played up the ‘Russian bots’ story – even Rolling Stone – all declined to comment for this story,” Taibbi wrote.

But media organizations aren’t the only ones refusing to speak with Taibbi.

“The staffs of Feinstein, Schiff, and Blumenthal also declined comment,” Taibbi wrote.

Asked for comment, Nunes told Taibbi that the “Russia collusion hoax” was one of the “greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in U.S. history.”

“The Russiagate scandal was built on the craven dishonesty of politicians and reporters, who for years ignored the absence of data to fictional scare headlines,” Taibbi wrote. “Twitter had no editorial input on this story. Searches were carried out by third parties, so the documents could be limited.”

This marked the 14th installment of the Twitter Files, which began going viral last month shared by prominent independent journalists including Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shallenberger, Lee Fang and David Zweig.

Previous Twitter Files have covered a wide range of topics, including the company’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election; the internal pressure it faces to permanently ban former President Donald Trump; efforts by the White House and government officials to suppress content; and the existence of shadow-banning of prominent conservatives.

Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn and David Rutz contributed to this report. 

Brian Flood is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to brian.flood@fox.com and on Twitter: @briansflood. 

Democrats and media organizations knowingly propagated
the ‘Russiagate theory’ hoax to discredit Donald Trump’s election victory: Twitter Files

Dibakar Dutta source

The story was covered in detail by journalist Matt Taibbi who emphasised that Twitter employees found no evidence of Russian influence in the 2016 US elections, yet they continued to allow Democrats and media organisations to use their platform to push the notion that Trump had Moscow’s backing.

On Thursday (January 12), the 14th tranche of the ‘Twitter Files’ was released on the social media platform, which exposed how the Democratic Party leaders and the mainstream media organisations used the ‘Russiagate theory’ to discredit the 2016 victory of the former US President Donald Trump.

The story was covered in detail by journalist Matt Taibbi who emphasised that Twitter employees found no evidence of Russian influence in the 2016 US elections, yet they continued to allow Democrats and media organisations to use their platform to push the notion that Trump had Moscow’s backing. “Twitter warned politicians and media they not only lacked evidence but had evidence the accounts weren’t Russian – and were roundly ignored,” he pointed out.

Former US House of Representative, Devin Nunes, had submitted a classified memo to the House Intel Committee on January 18th, 2018, pointing out several flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory.

Although the report was verified by the US Justice Department a year later in December 2019, the Democrats went all-out to cast aspersions on the memo presented by Devin Nunes.

The sceptics included Democratic leaders Senator Dianne Feinstein, Congressman Adam Schiff, Senator Richard Blumenthal and leftist propaganda outlets such as MSNBC, The Washington Post and others.

Interestingly, Democrats and their lap-dog media had unilaterally relied on an online dashboard called ‘Hamilton 68’, published by a national security advocacy group ‘Alliance for Securing Democracy’ to further their claims. The dashboard claimed to expose Twitter activity related to the supposed ‘Russian disinformation campaign.’

However, internal communications now show that Twitter employees (who are mostly Democratic Party supporters) had failed to gather any evidence that could lend credence to the Russiagate conspiracy theory.

Yoel Roth, former Global Head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, pointed out, “I just reviewed the accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with release the memo (hashtag) and…none of them show any signs of affiliation to Russia.”

‘Twitter Files 14.0’ revealed how attempts made by top executives to stop Democrats from posting unverified claims about Russiagate were in vain.

“It might be worth nudging Blumenthal’s staffer that it could be in his boss’ best interest not to go out there because it could come back to make him look silly,” emphasised one concerned Twitter employee about the political well-being of Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal.

“Executives eventually grew frustrated over what they saw as a circular process – presented with claims of Russian activity, even when denied, led to more claims,” wrote journalist Matt Taibbi.

It became clear that Democrats went ahead with their outlandish claims about the ‘bogus’ Russian disinformation campaign, despite warnings from top Twitter employees.

Later, it dawned upon the Twitter employees that they were being exploited by the Democratic Party leader. “Blumenthal isn’t looking for real and nuanced solutions,” noted one executive.

“Despite universal internal conviction that there were no Russians in the story, Twitter went on to follow a slavish pattern of not challenging Russia claims on the record,” noted journalist Matt Taibbi.

“…Reporters from the AP to Politico to NBC to Rolling Stone continued to hammer the “Russian bots” theme, despite a total lack of evidence,” the author of ‘Twitter Files 14.0’ added.

Matt Taibbi said, “Russians weren’t just blamed for #ReleaseTheMemo but #SchumerShutdown, #ParklandShooting, even #GunControlNow – to “widen the divide,” according to the New York Times.”

Interestingly, the above-mentioned news outlets and Democratic Party leaders who peddled the Russiagate conspiracy theory refused to speak to Matt Taibbi.

While speaking about the matter, ex-US House of Representative member Devin Nunes said, “Schiff and the Democrats falsely claimed Russians were behind the Release the Memo hashtag, all my investigative work.”

 

He added, “By spreading the Russia collusion hoax, they instigated one of the greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in U.S. history.”

 

“This #ReleaseTheMemo episode is just one of many in the #TwitterFiles. The Russiagate scandal was built on the craven dishonesty of politicians and reporters, who for years ignored the absence of data to fictional scare headlines,” journalist Matt Taibbi concluded.

---

Democrats peddled debunked ‘bot’ conspiracy to denounce memo exposing ‘abuses’ in the Trump-Russia investigation – even though Twitter told them there was NO EVIDENCE of Moscow’s involvement, new files reveal

• 14th Twitter Files installment dives into spread of discredited Russia theory 
• Centers on 2018 memo from Devin Nunes on flaws of Trump-Russia links 
• Democrats said the memo was being promoted on Twitter by ‘Russian bots’
• But Twitter executives found no evidence Moscow was behind the push
• It warned the Democrats, but they kept publicly pushing the false claims
• The social media company failed to issue a public statement on their findings  

By WILLS ROBINSON FOR source

Democrats peddled false narratives that Russian bots were promoting a memo about the Trump-Russia investigation – even though Twitter told them they had found no evidence of Moscow’s involvement, according to a new installment of the Twitter Files.

The 14th installment of the social media company’s files released by journalist Matt Taibbi showed executives tried to warn senior Democrats about a debunked ‘Russian bot’ theory in 2018.

The Democrats claimed Devin Nunes’s 2018 memo, which exposed flaws in the investigation linking Donald Trump to Russia before the 2016 election, was being amplified by Kremlin-backed entities on social media.

Twitter employees said the claims weren’t true and shared their findings with the Democrats, but their efforts were in vain because politicians kept pushing the theory anyway.

Instead of publicly challenging the claims, Twitter was instead told by outside counsel to issue a vague statement saying they take bots and foreign interference ‘seriously’, Taibbi writes.

• The 14th installment of the Twitter Files released by journalist Matt Taibbi showed executives tried to warn senior Democrats about a debunked ‘Russian bot’ theory in 2018

It is further evidence of how Russiagate theories and the discredited Steele Dossier were able to be publicized with little challenge.

‘Twitter warned politicians and media they not only lacked evidence but had evidence the accounts weren’t Russian – and were roundly ignored’, Taibbi wrote.

In 2018, Democrats discredited the Republican memo on FBI surveillance abuse by falsely suggesting it was being promoted by ‘Russian bots’ with the hashtag ReleaseTheMemo.

The memo, written by former Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes, pointed out flaws in the investigation into Trump’s supposed links to Moscow.

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Nunes’s memo was verified by the Department of Justice a year later.

California Democrats Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff wrote an open letter saying the ReleaseTheMemo hashtag was being promoted by ‘Russian influence operations’.

And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) then said it was ‘reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans’.

Taibbi wrote that: ‘Feinstein, Schiff, Blumenthal, and media members all pointed to the same source: the Hamilton 68 dashboard created by former FBI counterintelligence official Clint Watts, under the auspices of the Alliance for Securing Democracy.’

The dashboard claimed to expose Twitter activity connected to any ‘Russian disinformation campaign’.

Twitter’s Global Policy Communications Chief Emily Horne, who went on to work at the White House and National Security Council, told her colleagues to be ‘skeptical’ of the Hamilton 68 dashboard and said it was a ‘comms play’ for the Alliance for Securing Democracy.

 

Twitter executives wrote to Feinstein and Schiff saying they had found no evidence of Russian activity connected to the Release The Memo hashtag

Their own internal investigations on the ‘bot’ theory had found ‘not any… significant activity connected to Russia’.

Ex-trust and safety chief Yoel Roth, who resigned over his role in censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story, also couldn’t find any Russian connection to the bid to discredit the memo.

‘I just reviewed the accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with #releasethememo,’ Roth wrote according to Taibbi. ‘None of them show any signs of affiliation to Russia’.

Twitter reached out to Senator Blumenthal’s office to explain that bots were not responsible, but they were ignored.

Staffers even tried to offer the Democrat other information that could be seen as ‘wins’ for him.

‘It might be worth nudging Blumenthal’s staffer that it could be in his boss’ best interest not to go out there because it could come back to make him look silly,’ one Twitter staffer wrote.

But Blumenthal went ahead and published the false claims anyway, and Twitter executives grew ‘frustrated’ with the fact their work was being swept under the rug.

Their efforts to try and combat the claims waned, and they didn’t release statements on the record saying the ‘bot’ theory was false.

News outlets continued to push the false narrative.

Twitter execs responded internally by saying: ‘We are feeding congressional trolls’.

They also said Democrats were putting the ‘cart before the horse’ by assuming the social media campaign was started by Russia.

Twitter senior executives compared the situation to the story: ‘If You Give a Mouse a Cookie’.

‘He’ll want a glass of milk, which will lead to a wave of other exhausting requests, at the end of which he’ll want a glass of milk. And one more cookie’, Taibbi wrote.

On the bombshell claims, Nunes told Taibbi: ‘Schiff and the Democrats falsely claimed Russians were behind the Release the Memo hashtag, all my investigative work.

‘By spreading the Russia collusion hoax, they instigated one of the greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in U.S. history.’

Taibbi concluded: ‘This #ReleaseTheMemo episode is just one of many in the #TwitterFiles. The Russiagate scandal was built on the craven dishonesty of politicians and reporters, who for years ignored the absence of data to fictional scare headlines’.

Twitter Files part 14 sheds light on “Russian bots” and #ReleaseTheMemo

It began in 2018 when Senators Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff wrote the platform a letter regarding trending hashtags and Russian disinformation campaigns. Twitter pointed out that both the politicians and the media didn’t only lack the evidence but had evidence the accounts were not Russian. However, the platform was “roundly ignored.”

Backtracking to a week before Twitter received the letter, Republican Devin Nunes submitted a classified memo to the House Intel Committee that detailed the abuses by the FBI in obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance authority against those connected to former President Trump. Included was the role played by the Steele Dossier.

Credit: Matt Taibbi

In December 2019, a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz verified Nunes’ assertions virtually.

“We also found that the FBI’s interviews of Steele, his Primary Sub-Source, a second sub-source, and other investigative activity revealed potentially serious problems with Steele’s descriptions of information in his reports,” the report read. “Among other things, regarding the allegations attributed to Person 1, the Primary Sub-source’s account of these communications, if true, was not consistent with and, in fact, contradicted the allegations of a “well-developed conspiracy” in Reports 95 and 102 attributed to Person 1.”

The report also pointed out that the FBI filed three renewal applications with the FISC in 2017, repeating the seven “significant errors contained in the first FISA application.” Yet, the report found another ten errors in the three renewal applications. Taibbi noted that despite that, the national media denounced Nunes’ report in January and February 2018 in “oddly identical language, calling it a ‘joke.’

Senators Feinstein and Schiff also wrote an open letter claiming that the hashtag “gained the immediate attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations.

The senators claimed that Nunes’ memo “distorts” classified information. “But note they didn’t call it incorrect,” Taibbi wrote.

Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal also wrote a letter. “We find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans citizens and undermined our democratic processes through our elections and public policy debates.”

The letter asked Twitter to notify users who interacted with tweets created by the accounts tracked by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD). The senators and members of the media pointed to the Hamilton 68 dashboard created by Clint Watts, a former FBI counterintelligence official, created The letter asked Twitter to notify users who interacted with tweets created by the accounts tracked by the Alliance for Securing Democracy.”

The Hamilton 68 dashboard was described as a project with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshal Fund and tracked around 600 accounts that it claimed were tied to Russian-sponsored influence and disinformation campaigns. Bret Schafer, an analyst who helped run the project, spoke about the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag.

“I’ve never seen any single hashtag that has had this amount of activity behind it,” he said. Taibbi noted that the dashboard “was vague in how it reached its conclusions.”

Twitter executives didn’t quite trust the dashboard and the key complaints were that Hamilton 68 seemed to be the only source of information and no one was checking with Twitter. Global Policy Communications Chief Emily Horne encouraged skepticism of the dashboard’s take. In the screenshots below, Horne pointed out that it was a comms play for ASD.

“They’ve made a very strong media push in the last week, piggybacking on Clint’s testimony.”

Off the record, she said, “I encourage you to be skeptical of Hamilton 68’s take on this, which, as best as I can tell, is the only source for these stories. 1) Hamilton 68 does not release the accounts that make up their dashboard, so no one can verify the accounts they include are, in fact, Russian automated accounts, and 2) it is extraordinarily difficult for outside researchers, who do not have access to our full API and internal account signals, to say with any degree of certainty that an account they believe is behaving suspiciously is 1) automated and 2) Russian.”

“If you speak with them, I encourage you to press them on how they can be sure of both of these claims when they do not have access to internal signals and data.”

Twitter’s former head of safety, Yoel Roth, wasn’t able to find any Russian connection to the hashtag and noted that after reviewing accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with the hashtag, none showed any signs or affiliation to Russia. Instead, Twitter found that the engagement was “overwhelmingly organing and driven by strong VIT engagement). VIT is an acronym for very important Tweeters, and these included Wikileaks, Donald Trump Jr., and Congressman Steve King.

When Twitter brought this up to a Blumenthal staffer, the staffer tried to wave them off “because we don’t believe these are bots.”

Another Twitter executive pointed out that if Blumenthal would lay off on this, “it seems like there are other wins we could offer him.” However, the senator published his letter, which led to the platform’s executives being frustrated over what they viewed as a circular process.

“Twitter spent a lot of resources to respond to the initial request, and the reward from Blumental shouldn’t be round after round of requests for user notice. It also doesn’t do anything to fix the problem. That distracts our team from the real iq fight.”

Twitter executives later realized that they were”feeding congressional trolls” and compared the requests to a popular children’s book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

Although Twitter believed that there were no Russians in the story, it stopped challenging Russia’s claims on the record. Outside counsel from firms advised Twitter to use language such as “With respect to particular hashtags, we take seriously any activity that may represent an abuse of our platform.”

This resulted in reports from several mainstream media outlets pushing the “Russian bots” story without any evidence. Taibbi noted that several media outlets that played up the “Russian bots” story declined to comment. So did the staff for Senators Feinstein, Schiff, and Blumenthal. Nunes shared a comment.

“Schiff and the Democrats falsely claimed Russians were behind the Release the Memo hashtag, all my investigative work… By spreading the Russia collusion hoax, they instigated one of the greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in U.S. history.”

Alex Berenson shared the 13th installment of Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’

By Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News

The latest Twitter Files involving the tech giant’s response to the pandemic puts a focus on Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner and sitting board member of prominent COVID vaccine manufacturer Pfizer.

Alex Berenson, a vocal COVID contrarian whose past commentary on the vaccine has received scorn by critics and praise by fans, was the latest to be granted access to Elon Musk’s Twitter Files, publishing his findings on his “Unreported Truths” Substack newsletter.

Berenson shared an August 2021 email Gottlieb sent to Twitter’s senior public policy manager Todd O’Boyle flagging a tweet written by former Trump administration official Dr. Brett Giroir, who had written “It’s now clear #COVID19 natural immunity is superior to #vaccine immunity, by ALOT. There’s no scientific justification for #vax proof if a person had prior infection.”

According to Berenson, O’Boyle forward Gottlieb’s email to Twitter’s “Strategist Response” team, writing “Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner.”

Giroir’s tweet was later slapped with a “misleading” label and blocked any ability to like or share the tweet, telling Twitter users “Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people.”

Dr. Scott Gottlieb is the latest figure to be swept up in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files.” (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

Gottlieb, a CNBC contributor who was a prominent media pundit in the height of the pandemic, flagged another tweet in Sept. 2021, one from Substack writer and COVID policy critic Justin Hart, which read “Sticks and stones may break my bones but a viral pathogen with a child mortality rate of ~0% has cost our children nearly three years of schooling.”

“Why Gottlieb objected to Hart’s words is not clear, but the Pfizer shot would soon be approved for children 5 to 11, representing another massive market for Pfizer, if parents could be convinced Covid was a real threat to their kids,” Berenson wrote.

In the August 2021 tweet Gottlieb flagged, Berenson was critical of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“This is whats promoted on Twitter. This is why Tony needs a security detail,” Gottlieb told Twitter at the time.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member and former FDA commissioner, was prominently featured in the media’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. (Chris Usher/CBS via Getty Images)

In reaction to the latest Twitter Files, Gottlieb issued his own thread suggesting the disclosed emails don’t tell the whole story.

“In the past, I’ve raised concerns with Twitter related to the safety of me and others, and threats being made on the platform. This included direct as well as specific threats. Sometimes it included statements that I believed were purposely false and inflammatory,” Gottlieb wrote Monday. “The selective disclosure of my private communications with Twitter stokes the threat environment. So does actions that empower people who’ve shown little restraint when it comes to purposeful vitriol. It instigates more menacing dialogue, with potentially serious consequences.”

Gottlieb went on to share other emails he sent to Twitter flagging threatening tweets directed towards him and his family.

Alex Berenson, former New York Times writer and vocal COVID policy critic, was the latest to be tapped by Elon Musk to report on the “Twitter Files.” (Fox News)

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This marked the 13th installment of the Twitter Files, which began going viral last month shared by prominent independent journalists including Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shallenberger, Lee Fang and David Zweig.

Previous Twitter Files have covered a wide range of topics from the company’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election, the internal pressure it faces to permanently ban former President Trump, efforts by the White House and government officials to suppress content, to the existence of shadow-banning of prominent conservatives.

The Twitter Files: Part 13 – Pfizer Secretly Pressed Twitter to Hide Posts Challenging the Company’s COVID Shots

 Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb secretly pressed Twitter to hide posts challenging his company’s massively profitable Covid jabs

Growing distrust of mainstream media should be supplemented by scrutiny among users of Big Tech social media. They’re not an answer to the problem.

First, as Elon Musk continues to dump the files out the window at Twitter — to the dismay of the media elite that generally knew and approved of censorship of views other than their own, especially where COVID-19 or U.S. federal politics was concerned:

Twitter files 13: Handled by independent journalist Alex Berenson — once banned from Twitter for criticizing the government response to the pandemic: “Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb secretly pressed Twitter to hide posts challenging his company’s massively profitable Covid jabs /To funnel his demands, Gottlieb used the same Twitter lobbyist the White House did – fresh evidence of overlap between the company selling mRNA shots and the government forcing them on the public.”

Twitter Files 13: Pfizer’s Dr. Scott Gottlieb Lobbied for Censorship

Former Food & Drug Administration chief Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer director, lobbied for the censorship of tweets that might have harmed the bottom line of the company he was representing, according to the latest Twitter Files.

“Besides being former FDA commissioner, a CNBC contributor, and a prominent voice on COVID public policy, Gottlieb was a senior board member at Pfizer, which depended on mRNA jabs for almost half its $81 billion in sales in 2021,” according to Alex Berenson, an author on the pandemic and a former The New York Times reporter.

“Pfizer paid Gottlieb $365,000 for his work that year.”

Giroir was a more recent FDA chief under the Trump administration, too, but Gottlieb called the tweet “corrosive,” fearing it would “end up going viral and driving news coverage,” according to Berenson’s review of internal Twitter emails.

Twitter moved the request by calling Gottlieb a former FDA chief, without mentioning he was sitting on Pfizer’s board.

The conflict of interest and using government authority is the latest damning evidence of censorship of Trump-connected voices on Twitter, and the first of perhaps many promised by Musk under the loose heading of “Fauci Files” — a reference to retired White House COVID-19 face Dr. Anthony Fauci.

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Matt Taibbi also reports on the Trump State Department’s eagerness to engage with Twitter

It was revealed in the latest “Twitter Files,” that the office of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., made requests for Twitter to suspend certain accounts.

In the second of two back-to-back batches of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” shared on Tuesday by Substack writer Matt Taibbi, he reported that Twitter “received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned.”

An example he shared was one sent in November 2020 by Schiff’s office, who contacted Twitter hoping the tech giant would take action regarding “alleged harassment from QAnon conspiracists” against Schiff’s staff, including aide Sean Misko.

“Remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service- to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content,” the request to Twitter read. “Suspend the many accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry, which have repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, speaks with members of the press after a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, June 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Schiff’s office also requested that Twitter “stop the spread of future misinformation on Twitter” regarding committee staff and “label and reduce the visibility of any content.”

“Even Twitter declined to honor Schiff’s request at the time,” Taibbi wrote, noting Twitter’s responses to Schiff’s office repeatedly saying “we don’t do this.” As Taibbi noted, though, Sperry was later suspended.

Schiff’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

Much of the twelfth installment of the “Twitter Files” was focused on eagerness from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which Taibbi described as a “fledgling analytic/intelligence” arm to participate in guiding Twitter’s moderation of content and how it often used the media to clash with the tech giant beginning in February 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic was underway.

“The GEC flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like, ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA,’” Taibbi wrote. “State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. ZeroHedge, claiming the episode ‘led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.’ ZH had done reports speculating that the virus had lab origin.”

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then-head of trust and safety, push backed at GEC’s own analysis allegedly based on data from the Department of Homeland Security that “nearly 250,000” Chinese-linked accounts were peddling propaganda and disinformation about COVID. Roth saw GEC’s report partly as “an attempt to insert themselves” into conversations Twitter has had with intel agencies including the DHS and FBI.

The GEC eventually agreed to “loop in Twitter” before going public with its own findings, but the conflict continued between Twitter and the State Department arm. As Taibbi reported, tech giants including Twitter, Facebook and Google opposed the GEC’s inclusion in government talks. Roth at the time saw the GEC as “political” unlike the FBI and DHS. Roth also saw “major risks” for Twitter being chummy with the GEC “especially as the election heats up,” according to an email.

Roth further expressed his distrust in the “press-happy” GEC to FBI special agent Elvis Chan, who had constant communication with Twitter. Taibbi wrote, “Chan reassured him it would be a ‘one-way’ channel, and ‘State/GEC, NSA, and CIA have expressed interest in being allowed on in listen mode only.'”

Taibbi continued quoting the FBI agent, “‘We can give you everything we’re seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies,” Chan explained, but the DHS agency CISA ‘will know what’s going on in each state.’ He went on to ask if industry could ‘rely on the FBI to be the belly button of the USG.’ They eventually settled on an industry call via Signal.”

“Twitter was taking requests from every conceivable government body, beginning with the Senate Intel Committee (SSCI), which seemed to need reassurance Twitter was taking FBI direction. Execs rushed to tell “Team SSCI” they zapped five accounts on an FBI tip,” Taibbi tweeted with screenshots of emails. “Requests arrived and were escalated from all over: from Treasury, the NSA, virtually every state, the HHS, from the FBI and DHS, and more.”

“Twitter honored almost everyone else’s requests, even those from GEC – including a decision to ban accounts like @RebelProtests and @BricsMedia because GEC identified them as ‘GRU-controlled’ and linked ‘to the Russian government,’ respectively,” Taibbi added.

By 2020, requests from the intel community “came in bulk” and carried on into the Biden administration. According to Taibbi, one memo from the 2020 showed that Twitter was “warned about publicity surrounding a book by former Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokhin, who alleged ‘corruption by the U.S. government’ – specifically by Joe Biden.”

In the eleventh installment reported earlier in the day by Taibbi, Twitter had undergone a “PR crisis” following the 2016 presidential election as it was being pressured by Democrats to take action on alleged Russian influence on the platform as Facebook was doing in 2017, something Taibbi concluded influenced Twitter to embrace the intel community.

Substack writer Matt Taibbi reported on the first installment of the “Twitter Files,” which focused on the tech giant’s decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story.  (Lloyd Bishop/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

Each installment of the “Twitter Files” was shared by the journalists tapped by Elon Musk in lengthy Twitter threads addressing various controversies. Taibbi went viral with the first installment in early December with his “Twitter Files” focusing on Twitter’s internal discussions leading to it censor the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election, with some officials struggling to explain how it violated its “hacked materials” policies.

It was later revealed that the first batch of “Twitter Files” was vetted without Musk’s knowledge by Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker, who previously served as the FBI’s general counsel and was involved in the Russia probe. Musk fired Baker shortly thereafter.

Baker was swept up Taibbi’s reporting about the suppression of the Hunter Biden story, telling his colleagues at the time, “I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked” but added, “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”

Additionally, Taibbi initially reported, “Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story.” It is unclear whether Baker’s involvement in vetting the “Twitter Files” led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Jim Baker was fired by Elon Musk as Twitter’s deputy general counsel after revelations that he had vetted the first batch of the Twitter Files without Musk’s knowledge. (Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images)

The second installment published by The Free Press editor Bari Weiss revealed Twitter’s “blacklisting” of prominent conservatives, including Fox News host Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, as well as Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.

Internal communications also reveal Twitter staffers admitting that the popular right-wing account Libs of TikTok never violated its “hateful conduct” policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so.

Those revelations appear to contradict what former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress in 2018, when he testified under oath that Twitter did not censor or shadowban conservatives.

The third, fourth and fifth installments of the “Twitter Files” focused on the permanent suspension of former President Trump around the Capitol riot in January 2021.

Taibbi reported how Twitter circulated election-related tweets from various users leading up to the 2020 election that were “flagged” by the FBI as being problematic.

Independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss were tapped by Elon Musk to report on the “Twitter Files.” (Daniel Zuchnik/WireImage, Bari Weiss)

Independent writer Michael Shellenberger revealed that Dorsey was phoning it in as he was on vacation while his deputies were pushing to deplatform Trump, with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth particularly spearheading efforts to censor other users pertaining to tweets about the 2020 election. It became known that Roth met on a weekly basis with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the office of the Director of National Inteligence in the weeks leading up to the election.

Weiss addressed the pressure Twitter management was facing from its employees who called for Trump’s permanent suspension, though the Free Press editor also revealed several Twitter staffers who enforce policies did not believe Trump’s tweets from Jan. 6 actually violated its rules.

However, it was Vijaya Gadde, then-Twitter’s head legal chief, who asked if Trump’s tweets could be “coded incitement to further violence.” Moments later, the so-called “scaled enforcement team” suggested that based on how Twitter interprets Trump’s tweets, it could violate the violence incitement policies.

Part six of the “Twitter Files” put a spotlight on Twitter’s close ties with the FBI. Taibbi alleged the law enforcement agency was acting like a “subsidiary” of the tech giant, revealing communications that showed FBI agents systemically flagged Twitter users for tweets that included “possible violative content” pertaining to the election.

In response to the “Twitter Files,” a spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News Digital, “The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

The FBI’s routine contact with Twitter regarding users that would ultimately face punishment for their tweets has raised major flags about potential First Amendment violations.

FBI headquarters building is seen in Washington, U.S. Pro-Russian hackers have claimed to have hacked the FBI website this week. (REUTERS/Yuri Gripas)

In part seven, Shellenberger framed the Twitter’s coziness with the FBI in the context of the Hunter Biden laptop story, showing the FBI’s requests for Twitter to share sensitive data of its users, which Twitter refused to give, and the agency’s repeated inquiries into whether Twitter has seen foreign activity leading up to the 2020 election, something Twitter at the time said it hadn’t. On Oct. 13, 2020, just one day before the New York Post broke its Hunter Biden story that was quickly censored, Twitter received ten unknown documents from the FBI through its secure one-way Teleport channel.

One email from February 2021 shows the FBI paid Twitter over $3.4 million since October 2019 over the course of their partnership, as Twitter’s policies seek reimbursements when it comes to producing information as part of a legal process.

Roth had even participated in what was dubbed the “Hack-and-Dump Working Group” with the Aspen Institute in September 2020 to elaborately simulate how the media and Big Tech should handle something like the Hunter Biden laptop.

The FBI remained defiant amid criticism, telling Fox News in a statement “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers… It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

Part eight, shared by Intercept investigative reporter Lee Fang, exposed Twitter’s assistance in the Pentagon’s foreign influencing campaigns, allowing the military to use covert accounts to push out propaganda overseas despite it being against Twitter’s own policies. Taibbi separately reported in the ninth installment about Twitter’s constant interactions with “OGAs” (other government agencies) including the CIA.

The tenth batch of Twitter Files, this time reported by writer David Zweig, focused on COVID and the platform’s efforts to enforce its so-called “misinformation” policy, reporting “both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes.” Zweig highlighted a memo written by Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, who claimed the Biden team was “very angry” about Twitter not taking action to “de-platform” various accounts based on meetings with the White House. Musk teased there’s “much more” Twitter Files to reveal in 2023 particularly about COVID and how top doctors and scientists were “actively suppressed on Twitter,” presumably for going against the White House-approved narrative.

Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.

New Twitter files allege platform suppressed medical opinions, information on COVID

WASHINGTON (TND) — Journalist David Zweig started a new chapter in the “Twitter Files” saga Monday with a thread of tweets examining the social media platforms’ alleged errors in trying to curb the spread of misinformation during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Zweig reported the story in conjunction with The Free Press, the right-of-center media company founded by ousted New York Times editor (and fellow “Twitter Files” writer) Bari Weiss.

This thread shifts the focus on the “Twitter Files” – a series of information drops of previously private and internal communications from the company made available to a select group by owner Elon Musk – from its recent series hurling allegations of wrongdoing and censorship collusion between Twitter and the FBI, as well as the federal law enforcement and intelligence communities writ large. Previous entries included a trilogy diving into discussions at Twitter in the lead up to the ban on former President Trump’s account in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as well as Twitter’s handling of the New York Post’s article on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Zweig divided his narrative into two parts Monday: the first focusing on alleged pressure from the Biden White House on Twitter to moderate or ban certain “anti-vaxxer” accounts; the second breaks down how the social media platform moderated content from voices that sought to disrupt the established wisdom on pandemic response.

“In the summer of 2021, President Biden said social media companies were ‘killing people’ for allowing vaccine misinformation,” writes Zweig in a tweet. “Berenson was suspended hours after Biden’s comments, and kicked off the platform the following month.” He notes that Berenson then sued Twitter, during which legal process internal documents revealed that the White House had asked company officials about kicking him off the platform. “They had only one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off the platform,” wrote a Twitter employee in a Slack channel. “Otherwise their questions were pointed but fair.” Zweig then points out that Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, wrote in a summary of White House meetings with the White House during December 2022, members of the Biden team were “very angry in nature” as they were dissatisfied with the company’s handling of and lack of action on several accounts.

This point has been a common thread in the “Twitter Files,” between authors like Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and now, Zweig, as The National Desk has previously reported. They frequently cite instances of government requests, especially ones that come from a place of frustration, as examples of overreach or censorship by the government and therefore major proof of wrongdoing and possible violations of the First Amendment. What the “Twitter Files” fails to contextualize in those claims is that Twitter never had to follow the FBI or Biden White House’s requests for moderation, nor do users on their platform have a right to say whatever they want. As a private company, Twitter is not bound by free speech and does not have to continue to allow voices and statements that it finds violate its policies.

Zweig then expands this argument of alleged overreach by Twitter when it comes to COVID by looking at how the social media platform handled moderating contents and accounts that challenged the recommended guidelines for dealing with the novel coronavirus as laid out by the Centers for Disease Control, World Health Organization and others.

He starts by breaking down the – very potentially real – problems with Twitter’s strategy, which lied in the strategy – and its implementation – itself. “There were three serious problems with Twitter’s process,” wrote Zweig. “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.”

On the note of nuance, he follows up with the second broad area of failure. This revolved around the company hiring contractors in locations like the Philippines who did not have the proper training to handle the science-heavy tweets around COVID. “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,” he reports.

While those kinds of missteps could definitely lead to botched attempts to moderate content in a balanced and fair way, Zweig continues by alleging that the personal outlooks and opinions of Twitter’s employees, which bent towards “establishment dogmas,” informed the AI and the final decisions that led to purported censorship. “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.”

Zweig then cites examples from a handful specific accounts where he claims the social media company went out of its way to censor “legitimate” information, data and expert opinions on COVID-19 that deviated from the norm of the global medical community.

He leads off with the case of Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a Swedish-born biostatistician who was then a professor of medicine at Harvard’s Medical School. Kulldorff co-authored the “Great Barrington Declaration” with three other medical professors, advocating for an end to lockdowns and a herd immunity approach to addressing COVID-19. One of Kulldorff’s tweets from March 2021, saying those with prior infection and children do not need to be vaccinated, was flagged with a label calling the information “misleading.” He was banned the next month.

Zweig alleges that this was overstep by Twitter as Kulldorff was offering an “expert opinion” on COVID strategy shared by “numerous other countries” – though he fails to cite a single country with that outlook. However, experts agree that the protection from natural antibodies gained as a result of COVID infection do not last indefinitely (granted neither do vaccines, hence why booster shots are needed), which is concerning for his lassiez-faire attitude towards immunization.

Furthermore, the “Great Barrington Declaration” he co-authored was immediately decried in the highest terms across the medical community. “Not only is there no proof of lasting immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection, but the strategy would place an unacceptable burden on healthcare workers, as well as the economy,” wrote Dr. Deepti Gurdasani of Queen Mary University of London, in an open letter signed by 80 medical researchers to The Lancet, one of the most prestigious academic journals in the world.

The head of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that strategies like those Kulldorf advocated for are “scientifically and ethically problematic.” “Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic,” he said in a press briefing a week after the declaration was published.

Zweig then cites the tweets of a “self-proclaimed public health fact checker” with 18,000 followers that were also flagged as misinformation. The fact checker admits on her website that she had just started to keep track of COVID data in May 2020 and that she does not have any formal training in epidemiology.

The last major example he cites is when Twitter labeled a tweet by physician Euzebiusz Jamrozik as “misinformation.” Jamrozik shared a graph from a 2022 study that tracks the number of cardiac arrests among participants in the study (ages 16-39) following their receipt of a COVID mRNA vaccine. While Zweig alleges this as wrongdoing because a physician was sharing the results of a published study, he neglected to say that the study was about the under 40 population of Israel and the study furthermore stated that it did not establish “causal relationships between” vaccines and heart attacks.

In a follow-up tweet Monday, Musk said there was “Much more to The Twitter Files: Covid Editon than this introductory thread.” He promised a follow up piece coming next week to feature “leading doctors & researchers from Harvard, Stanford & other institutions.”

So it seems, the “Twitter Files” are winding up for 2022.

cited

Twitter Files Part 11 shows how ‘PR crisis’ following 2016 election allowed company to embrace intel community

Matt Taibbi shared 2023’s first batch of “Twitter Files”

Twitter files allege ‘very angry’ Biden team targeted journalists over COVID tweets: Howard Kurtz

‘Media Buzz’ host Howard Kurtz discusses the latest batch of Twitter files that reveal the Biden and Trump administrations attempted to suppress COVID content they did not agree with.

The first “Twitter Files” of 2023 dove into the tech giant’s evolution from its resistance to its embrace of the intel community.

In the eleventh installment of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files,” Substack writer Matt Taibbi reported about the “PR crisis” Twitter underwent in 2017 when Democrats pummeled the tech giant for its apparent inaction of investigating Russian influence on the platform as Facebook was public with uprooting suspicious foreign accounts following the 2016 presidential election.

Amid pressure, Twitter launched a “Russia Task Force” to investigate whether the Kremlin had such a foothold on the platform, even after it had suspended several suspected Russia-linked accounts.

“First round of RU investigation… 15 high risk accounts, 3 of which have connections with Russia, although 2 are RT,” an October 2017 memo shared by Taibbi read at the time.

Another read, “Finished with investigation… 2500 full manual account reviews, we think this is exhaustive… 32 suspicious accounts and only 17 of those are connected with Russia, only 2 of those have significant spend one of which is Russia Today…remaining <$10k in spend.”

Taibbi cited a report from BuzzFeed News that had flagged 45 “fake propaganda accounts” to Twitter, which were later suspended, and “leaks” from Congress published in the media and proposed legislation from lawmakers that further pressured the tech giant to take action.

“This cycle – threatened legislation, wedded to scare headlines pushed by congressional/intel sources, followed by Twitter caving to moderation asks – would later be formalized in partnerships with federal law enforcement,” Taibbi wrote Tuesday.

He then highlighted the discrepancy between Twitter’s “external” policy, which was that it would remove content “in our soul discretion,” while its “internal guidance” read that “any user identified by the U.S. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber operations against targets associated with U.S. or other elections… shall not be allowed to advertise on Twitter.”

“We will not be reverting to the status quo,” Twitter’s then-Public Policy VP Colin Crowell told his colleagues at the time.

Each installment of the “Twitter Files” was shared by the journalists in lengthy Twitter threads addressing various controversies. Taibbi went viral with the first installment in early December with his “Twitter Files” focusing on Twitter’s internal discussions leading to it censor the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election, with some officials struggling to explain how it violated its “hacked materials” policies.

It was later revealed that the first batch of “Twitter Files” was vetted without Musk’s knowledge by Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker, who previously served as the FBI’s general counsel and was involved in the Russia probe. Musk fired Baker shortly thereafter.

Baker was swept up Taibbi’s reporting about the suppression of the Hunter Biden story, telling his colleagues at the time, “I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked” but added, “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”

Additionally, Taibbi initially reported, “Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story.” It is unclear whether Baker’s involvement in vetting the “Twitter Files” led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Jim Baker was fired by Elon Musk as Twitter’s deputy general counsel after revelations that he had vetted the first batch of the Twitter Files without Musk’s knowledge. (Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images)

The second installment published by The Free Press editor Bari Weiss revealed Twitter’s “blacklisting” of prominent conservatives, including Fox News host Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, as well as Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.

Internal communications also reveal Twitter staffers admitting that the popular right-wing account Libs of TikTok never violated its “hateful conduct” policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so.

Those revelations appear to contradict what former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress in 2018, when he testified under oath that Twitter did not censor or shadowban conservatives.

The third, fourth and fifth installments of the “Twitter Files” focused on the permanent suspension of former President Trump around the Capitol riot in January 2021.

Taibbi reported how Twitter circulated election-related tweets from various users leading up to the 2020 election that were “flagged” by the FBI as being problematic.

Independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss were tapped by Elon Musk to report on the “Twitter Files.” (Daniel Zuchnik/WireImage, Bari Weiss)

Independent writer Michael Shellenberger revealed that Dorsey was phoning it in as he was on vacation while his deputies were pushing to deplatform Trump, with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth particularly spearheading efforts to censor other users pertaining to tweets about the 2020 election. It became known that Roth met on a weekly basis with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the office of the Director of National Inteligence in the weeks leading up to the election.

Weiss addressed the pressure Twitter management was facing from its employees who called for Trump’s permanent suspension, though the Free Press editor also revealed several Twitter staffers who enforce policies did not believe Trump’s tweets from Jan. 6 actually violated its rules.

However, it was Vijaya Gadde, then-Twitter’s head legal chief, who asked if Trump’s tweets could be “coded incitement to further violence.” Moments later, the so-called “scaled enforcement team” suggested that based on how Twitter interprets Trump’s tweets, it could violate the violence incitement policies.

Part six of the “Twitter Files” put a spotlight on Twitter’s close ties with the FBI. Taibbi alleged the law enforcement agency was acting like a “subsidiary” of the tech giant, revealing communications that showed FBI agents systemically flagged Twitter users for tweets that included “possible violative content” pertaining to the election.

In response to the “Twitter Files,” a spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News Digital, “The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

The FBI’s routine contact with Twitter regarding users that would ultimately face punishment for their tweets has raised major flags about potential First Amendment violations.

FBI headquarters building is seen in Washington, U.S. Pro-Russian hackers have claimed to have hacked the FBI website this week. (REUTERS/Yuri Gripas)

In part seven, Shellenberger framed the Twitter’s coziness with the FBI in the context of the Hunter Biden laptop story, showing the FBI’s requests for Twitter to share sensitive data of its users, which Twitter refused to give, and the agency’s repeated inquiries into whether Twitter has seen foreign activity leading up to the 2020 election, something Twitter at the time said it hadn’t. On Oct. 13, 2020, just one day before the New York Post broke its Hunter Biden story that was quickly censored, Twitter received ten unknown documents from the FBI through its secure one-way Teleport channel.

One email from February 2021 shows the FBI paid Twitter over $3.4 million since October 2019 over the course of their partnership, as Twitter’s policies seek reimbursements when it comes to producing information as part of a legal process.

Roth had even participated in what was dubbed the “Hack-and-Dump Working Group” with the Aspen Institute in September 2020 to elaborately simulate how the media and Big Tech should handle something like the Hunter Biden laptop.

The FBI remained defiant amid criticism, telling Fox News in a statement “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers… It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

Part eight, shared by Intercept investigative reporter Lee Fang, exposed Twitter’s assistance in the Pentagon’s foreign influencing campaigns, allowing the military to use covert accounts to push out propaganda overseas despite it being against Twitter’s own policies. Taibbi separately reported in the ninth installment about Twitter’s constant interactions with “OGAs” (other government agencies) including the CIA.

The tenth batch of Twitter Files, this time reported by writer David Zweig, focused on COVID and the platform’s efforts to enforce its so-called “misinformation” policy, reporting “both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes.” Zweig highlighted a memo written by Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, who claimed the Biden team was “very angry” about Twitter not taking action to “de-platform” various accounts based on meetings with the White House. Musk teased there’s “much more” Twitter Files to reveal in 2023 particularly about COVID and how top doctors and scientists were “actively suppressed on Twitter,” presumably for going against the White House-approved narrative.

Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.

Latest ‘Twitter Files’ alleges rigged COVID debate
Tom Dempsey, Devan Markham

The Twitter Files: Part 11 – How Twitter Rigged The COVID Debate

The latest Twitter Files investigative report has dropped, this time from author and journalist David Zweig. In this edition, Zweig unveils Twitter and the U.S. Government’s efforts to censor info that was true but inconvenient to government policy, discredit doctors and other experts who disagreed, and suppress ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s own data.

“The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19,” Zweig tweeted. “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.”

Check out Zweig’s investigation below:

The Twitter Files: Part 10 – Twitter And “Other Government Agencies”

Twitter Files Part 10:
Trump, Biden White Houses leaned on tech giant to moderate content during COVID

David Zweig went viral with reporting that implicates both Trump and Biden administrations

Twitter And “Other Government Agencies” • Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi)

By Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News

The latest installment of the “Twitter Files” shed light on how both the past and current administrations leaned on tech giants to moderate content during the coronavirus pandemic.

Independent writer David Zweig went viral on Monday with reporting on behalf of Bari Weiss’s publication, The Free Press, on how the U.S. 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,” Zweig wrote. Citing Twitter’s “meeting notes” with the Trump administration, one name-dropped then-White House Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios, who “led the Trump administration’s calls for help from the tech companies to combat misinformation.”

“Areas of focus included conspiracies around 5G cell towers, runs on grocery stores, and misinformation that could stoke panic buying and behaviors,” the memo read, according to Zweig.

The memo revealed other companies including Google, Facebook and Microsoft participated in “weekly” calls with the Trump administration to discuss “general trends” that were happening on their platforms.

The “Twitter Files” noted that when President Biden took over, “one of the first meeting quests from the Biden White House was about COVID misinformation” and that Biden’s staff “focused on vaccines and hight profile anti-vaxxer accounts, including Alex Berenson.”Another memo, written in December 2022 by Twitter’s head of U.S. public policy Lauren Culbertson, alleged the Biden administration was “not satisfied with Twitter’s enforcement approach as they wanted Twitter to do more and to de-platform several accounts.”

“Because of this dissatisfaction, we were asked to join other calls. They were very angry in nature,” Culbertson wrote, according to Zweig’s reporting.

Zweig continued, “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.”

The latest “Twitter Files” could implicate up to three potential 2024 hopefuls; former President Trump, who last month launched his third bid for the presidency, former Vice President Mike Pence, who led the coronavirus task force during the Trump administration, and President Biden, who has repeatedly said he intends to seek re-election.

Fox News Digital asked Kratsios, representatives for both Trump and Pence as well as the Biden White House whether they ever suggested, encouraged, requested or demanded Twitter or any other tech company to either suppress or remove content related to COVID and whether they had any concerns that such inquiries would be in violation of the First Amendment.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, cited a post the former president made about the “Twitter Files” on his social media app Truth Social, which specifically knocked former Twitter lawyer and ex-FBI general counsel Jim Baker, who Zweig reported wanted Twitter to suppress the then-president’s Twitter account over an optimistic COVID tweet from Oct. 2020. Cheung also shared a campaign statement touting Trump’s record combating COVID, but did not respond to the multiple inquiries regarding the Trump administration’s apparent role in social media censorship.

Neither Kratsios, Pence’s office, nor the Biden White House responded to Fox News’ requests for comment. Twitter also did not respond to a request for comment.

Each installment of the “Twitter Files” was shared by the journalists tapped by Twitter owner Elon Musk to address various controversies. Substack writer Matt Taibbi went viral with the first installment in early December with his “Twitter Files” focusing on Twitter’s internal discussions leading to it censor the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election, with some officials struggling to explain how it violated its “hacked materials” policies.

It was later revealed that the first batch of “Twitter Files” was vetted without Musk’s knowledge by Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker, who previously served as the FBI’s general counsel and was involved in the Russia probe. Musk fired Baker shortly thereafter.

Baker was swept up in Taibbi’s reporting about the suppression of the Hunter Biden story, telling his colleagues at the time, “I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked” but added, “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”

Additionally, Taibbi initially reported, “Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story.” It is unclear whether Baker’s involvement in vetting the “Twitter Files” led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The second installment published by Weiss revealed Twitter’s “blacklisting” of prominent conservatives, including Fox News host Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, as well as Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.

Internal communications also revealed Twitter staffers admitting that the popular right-wing account Libs of TikTok never violated its “hateful conduct” policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so.

Those revelations appear to contradict what former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress in 2018, when he testified under oath that Twitter did not censor or shadowban conservatives.

The third, fourth and fifth installments of the “Twitter Files” focused on the permanent suspension of former President Trump around the Capitol riot in January 2021.

Taibbi reported how Twitter circulated election-related tweets from various users leading up to the 2020 election that were “flagged” by the FBI as being problematic.

Independent writer Michael Shellenberger revealed that Dorsey was phoning it in as he was on vacation while his deputies were pushing to deplatform Trump, with Roth particularly spearheading efforts to censor other users pertaining to tweets about the 2020 election. It became known that Roth met on a weekly basis with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the office of the Director of National Intelligence in the weeks leading up to the election.

Weiss addressed the pressure Twitter management was facing from its employees who called for Trump’s permanent suspension, though the Free Press editor also revealed several Twitter staffers who enforce policies did not believe Trump’s tweets from Jan. 6 actually violated its rules.

However, it was Vijaya Gadde, then-Twitter’s head legal chief, who asked if Trump’s tweets could be “coded incitement to further violence.” Moments later, the so-called “scaled enforcement team” suggested that based on how Twitter interprets Trump’s tweets, it could violate the violence incitement policies.

Part six of the “Twitter Files” put a spotlight on Twitter’s close ties with the FBI. Taibbi alleged the law enforcement agency was acting like a “subsidiary” of the tech giant, revealing communications that showed FBI agents systemically flagged Twitter users for tweets that included “possible violative content” pertaining to the election.

In response to the “Twitter Files,” a spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News Digital, “The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

The FBI’s routine contact with Twitter regarding users that would ultimately face punishment for their tweets has raised major flags about potential First Amendment violations.

In part seven, Shellenberger framed the Twitter’s coziness with the FBI in the context of the Hunter Biden laptop story, showing the FBI’s requests for Twitter to share sensitive data of its users, which Twitter refused to give, and the agency’s repeated inquiries into whether Twitter has seen foreign activity leading up to the 2020 election, something Twitter at the time said it had not. On Oct. 13, 2020, just one day before the New York Post broke its Hunter Biden story that was quickly censored, Twitter received 10 unknown documents from the FBI through its secure one-way Teleport channel.

One email from February 2021 shows the FBI paid Twitter over $3.4 million beginning October 2019 over the course of their partnership, as Twitter’s policies seek reimbursements when it comes to producing information as part of a legal process.

Roth had even participated in what was dubbed the “Hack-and-Dump Working Group” with the Aspen Institute in September 2020 to elaborately simulate how the media and Big Tech should handle something like the Hunter Biden laptop.

The FBI remained defiant amid criticism, telling Fox News in a statement, “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers… It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

Part eight, shared by Intercept investigative reporter Lee Fang, exposed Twitter’s assistance in the Pentagon’s foreign influencing campaigns, allowing the military to use covert accounts to push out propaganda overseas despite it being against Twitter’s own policies. Taibbi separately reported in the ninth installment about Twitter’s constant interactions with “OGAs” (other government agencies) including the CIA.

‘Organized effort’ by intelligence community to influence Twitter, independent writer says

by Brian Flood | Fox News

The FBI & The Hunter Biden Laptop • Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD)

Independent writer Michael Shellenberger released part 7 of the “Twitter Files” on Monday, delving into how the FBI and intelligence community “discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.”

The lengthy Twitter thread reveals what Shellenberger calls an “influence campaign” by the FBI that eventually “worked” when Twitter censored Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop.

Elon Musk had been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter’s past and present actions curating content on the platform, including censored content. The Twitter owner has enlisted independent journalists to slowly release evidence of these actions in a series dubbed the “Twitter Files” that continue to expose once-secret communications.

“In Twitter Files #6, we saw the FBI relentlessly seek to exercise influence over Twitter, including over its content, its users, and its data,” Shellenberger wrote, later adding, “We have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms.”

“In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published,” he continued. “The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden’s laptop.”

“It’s important to understand that Hunter Biden earned *tens of millions* of dollars in contracts with foreign businesses, including ones linked to China’s government, for which Hunter offered no real work,” Shellenberger wrote.

“During all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation,” he wrote, screenshotting a sworn declaration by Roth discussing years of weekly meetings warning of such an operation happening right before the 2020 election.

Shellenberger noted that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once said the FBI approached Facebook and also warned of Russian “propaganda” ahead of the 2022 election.

“Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel? No, they weren’t,” Shellenberger wrote in a tweet sharing comments from FBI agent Elvis Chan.

“Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,” Chan wrote.

Shellenberger also noted that Twitter executives “repeatedly” indicated there was “very little” Russian activity on the platform.

Shellenberger wrote that Twitter even “debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform,” including polarizing NBC News reporter Ben Collins who reported White nationalists posing as Antifa called for violence on Twitter.

“We haven’t seen any evidence to support that claim,” former Twitter exec Yoel Roth wrote to Chan on June 2, 2020.

“It’s not the first time that Twitter’s Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process,” Shellenberger wrote before noting “pressure had been growing” and sharing an email in which a Twitter executive told Roth the intelligence community wanted the company to share more information and change API policies.

“They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff),” Twitter’s director of policy and philanthropy wrote.

“Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren’t finding anything worth reporting,” Shellenberger wrote. “Despite Twitter’s pushback, the FBI repeatedly requests information from Twitter that Twitter has already made clear it will not share outside of normal legal channels.”

“Then, in July 2020, the FBI’s Elvis Chan arranges for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections,” Shellenberger wrote, proving email evidence.

“On August 11, 2020, the FBI’s Chan shares information with Twitter’s Roth relating to the Russian hacking organization, APT28, through the FBI’s secure, one-way communications channel, Teleporter,” Shellenberger wrote.

Roth recently said during an interview that the Hunter Biden laptop set off his “finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells.” Shellenberger provided video of Roth’s comments in the 24th portion of the lengthy thread.

Emails then revealed how Jim Baker, who previously served as the FBI’s general counsel and was involved in the Russia probe, but was working for Twitter ahead of the 2020 election, got involved.

Journalist Matt Taibbi went viral with the first installment in early December with his “Twitter Files” focusing on Twitter’s internal discussions leading to it censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election, with some officials struggling to explain how it violated its “hacked materials” policies.

It was later revealed that the first batch of “Twitter Files” were vetted without Musk’s knowledge by Baker. Musk fired Baker shortly thereafter.

Baker was swept up by Taibbi’s reporting about the suppression of the Hunter Biden story, telling his colleagues at the time, “I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked” but added, “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”

Additionally, Taibbi initially reported, “Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story.” It is unclear whether Baker’s involvement in vetting the “Twitter Files” led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Shellenberger continued to put a spotlight on Baker.

“As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees — ‘Bu alumni’ — working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals,” Shellenberger wrote.

Shellenberger indicated that efforts “continued to influence” Roth.

“In Sept 2020, Roth participated in an Aspen Institute ‘tabletop exercise’ on a potential ‘Hack-and-Dump’ operation relating to Hunter Biden,” Shellenberger wrote. “The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it.”

Shellenberger wrote that “Chan & Roth had set up an encrypted messaging network so employees from FBI & Twitter could communicate” by September 2020 and they even agreed to create a “virtual war room.”

Eventually, the FBI asked Twitter for a “classified briefing for Jim Baker, without any other Twitter staff, such as Yoel Roth, present,” Shellenberger wrote.

“On Oct 14, shortly after @NYPost publishes its Hunter Biden laptop story, Roth says, ‘it isn’t clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else,’ but adds, ‘this feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.’”

Hours later, emails indicate “Twitter execs had bought into a wild hack-and-dump story,” with Baker pushing that claim.

“There is evidence that FBI agents have warned elected officials of foreign influence with the primary goal of leaking the information to the news media. This is a political dirty trick used to create the perception of impropriety,” Shellenberger wrote. “In 2020, the FBI gave a briefing to Senator Grassley and Johnson, claiming evidence of ‘Russian interference’ into their investigation of Hunter Biden. The briefing angered the Senators, who say it was done to discredit their investigation.”

“Notably, then-FBI General Counsel Jim Baker was investigated *twice,* in 2017 and 2019, for leaking information to the news media,” Shellenberger wrote, proving a Politico report as evidence.

“In the end, the FBI’s influence campaign aimed at executives at news media, Twitter, & other social media companies worked: they censored & discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story,” Shellenberger wrote.

Shellenberger noted that Rep. Jim Jordan recently said he’s concerned that the government was “running a misinformation operation on We the People,” before ending the seventh edition of the Twitter Files.

“Anyone who reads the Twitter Files, regardless of their political orientation, should share those concerns,” he wrote.

The second installment of Twitter Files previously published by Weiss revealed Twitter’s “blacklisting” of prominent conservatives, including Fox News host Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, as well as Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.

Internal communications also reveal Twitter staffers admitting that the popular account Libs of TikTok never violated its “hateful conduct” policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so.

Those revelations appear to contradict what former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress in 2018, saying under oath that Twitter did not censor or shadowban conservatives.

The third, fourth and fifth installments of the “Twitter Files” focused on the permanent suspension of former President Trump around the Capitol riot events in January 2021.
Taibbi reported how Twitter circulated election-related tweets from various users leading up to the 2020 election that were “flagged” by the FBI as being problematic.

Shellenberger revealed that Dorsey was phoning it in as he was on vacation while his deputies were pushing to deplatform Trump, with Roth spearheading efforts to censor other users pertaining to tweets about the 2020 election. It became known that Roth met on a weekly basis with the FBI, DHS as well as the office of DNI in the weeks leading up to the election.

Weiss addressed the pressure Twitter management was facing from its employees who called for Trump’s permanent suspension, though the Free Press editor also revealed several Twitter staffers who enforce policies did not believe Trump’s tweets from Jan. 6 actually violated its rules.

However, it was Vijaya Gadde, then-Twitter’s head legal chief, who asked if Trump’s tweets could be “coded incitement to further violence.” Moments later, the so-called “scaled enforcement team” suggested that based on how Twitter interprets Trump’s tweets, it could violate the violence incitement policies.

Part six of the “Twitter Files” put a spotlight on Twitter’s close ties with the FBI. Taibbi alleged the law enforcement agency was acting like a “subsidiary” of the tech giant revealing communications that showed the FBI, as many as 80 agents, systemically flagged Twitter users for tweets that included “possible violative content” pertaining to the election.

In response to the “Twitter Files,” a spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News Digital, “The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

The FBI’s routine contact with Twitter regarding users that would ultimately face punishment for their tweets has raised major flags about potential First Amendment violations.

This is a developing story, more to come…

Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Adam Sabes and David Rutz contributed to this report. 

Conversation Below

Michael Shellenberger  @ShellenbergerMD

25. In Aug, 2020, FBI’s Chan asks Twitter: does anyone there have top secret clearance? When someone mentions Jim Baker, Chan responds, “I don’t know how I forgot him” — an odd claim, given Chan’s job is to monitor Twitter, not to mention that they worked together at the FBI.

27. As general counsel of the FBI, Baker played a central role in making the case internally for an investigation of Donald Trump

wsj.com

FBI Took Michael Sussmann’s Allegation of Trump-Russia Ties Seriously, Former Official Testifies

The 2016 claims from national-security lawyer Michael Sussmann alarmed the agency’s most senior officials, the FBI’s then-top lawyer testified at the criminal trial of Mr. Sussmann.

28. Baker wasn’t the only senior FBI exec. involved in the Trump investigation to go to Twitter. Dawn Burton, the former dep. chief of staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the investigation of Trump, joined Twitter in 2019 as director of strategy.

29. As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees — “Bu alumni” — working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.

30. Efforts continued to influence Twitter’s Yoel Roth. In Sept 2020, Roth participated in an Aspen Institute “tabletop exercise” on a potential “Hack-and-Dump” operation relating to Hunter Biden The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHGROV1eTc8

 

Download PDF Twitter Files Part 7  Summary PDF and here is the PDF source

Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale calls for investigations into Google, YouTube, Apple amid ‘Twitter Files’

By Kristen Altus FOXBusiness

A major technology investor has called for the break up of Big Tech, claiming the “Twitter Files” reveal “terrifying” truths about censorship and the urgent need for “radical transparency.”

“We have to investigate YouTube and Google. We have to investigate Apple,” Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale said on “Mornings with Maria” Thursday. “I’m excited for the House Republicans to do the ‘YouTube Files,’ because I bet you that’s going to be even worse. And if we don’t investigate it, it’s a huge problem for our democracy.”

The “Twitter Files” – now on part five of the ongoing series – have revealed Twitter’s collusion with the government to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, suppress conservative voices and most recently: to ban Donald Trump from using the platform.

Amid the revelations, Twitter CEO Elon Musk fired lawyer and former FBI general counsel James Baker from the company “in light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in the suppression of information important to the public dialogue.”

“These guys were meeting regularly with DHS, with [the] FBI, with all sorts of our intelligence agencies. The administration was clearly telling them what they wanted censored,” Lonsdale said. “Everyone talks about how they banned Trump, and that was obviously done inappropriately. But more than that, they’re turning down ideas. They’re turning down certain people. They’re turning up other people. Like this is hugely affecting elections. This is affecting our public square. There’s tens of millions of people that are getting different ideas.”

Lonsdale detailed the kind of “monopoly power” held by tech giants like Apple and YouTube, noting that Apple can be “corrupt” in the way it decides what apps are approved for its App Store.

“They’ll tell you one thing, you work for months on it. They’ll change their mind. That kind of monopoly power, that’s not transparent, that’s not acceptable in our economy,” the Palantir co-founder argued.

The investor also called out the Federal Trade Commission head Lina Khan for pushing along Biden’s agenda and attacking big businesses if they don’t align with it.

“The FTC is killing people left and right, blocking things in the bio world right now… Illumina, real thing, it detects cancer. Illumina was going to scale it up, they could be saving thousands of people a month with their marketing engine and because they have this Big Tech bias against it, they’re blocking acquisitions that are not allowing the technology to scale up,” Lonsdale explained.

“So you’re literally saying, ‘We’re going to kill ten thousand people a year because we don’t like big tech?’ That’s not acceptable,” Lonsdale further criticized the FTC. “You can hold them accountable, you can make it transparent. But let’s not arbitrarily block the markets and capitalism from encouraging innovation.”

In order to level the playing field between and remove political bias within tech workplaces, Lonsdale called for “radical transparency.”

“There should be no ability for a company that affects more than a million people in the U.S. to decide to get to censor what it wants to. It should have to be totally transparent, exactly how it’s doing it, and it should show us within a day when it was turned down, a person or an idea. And this is the law we should be passing,” Lonsdale said.

The investor also slammed Democrats and legacy media for remaining largely silent about the “Twitter Files,” claiming they’re “gaslighting” the American public.

Twitter, The FBI Subsidiary • Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi)

Republicans respond after ‘Twitter Files 6’ reveals FBI flagged users and tweets: ‘A lot to answer for’

The Twitter Files 6th installment was shared by Substack writer Matt Taibbi on Friday, Dec. 16

By Lawrence Richard | Fox News

Republican lawmakers have promised to take action after the sixth and latest installment of the “Twitter Files” alleged members of the FBI coordinated with Twitter executives to censor users and their tweets.

Substack writer Matt Taibbi dropped dozens of tweets about the new “Twitter Files” Friday that detailed the FBI’s ties with the social media platform — a connection Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, said he will be asking the FBI about.

“[The] FBI has a lot to answer for after the latest drop of Twitter Files 6,” Gaetz tweeted Friday.

During a segment of “Hannity,” Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, similarly blasted the FBI.

“Anyone that cares about free speech should be outraged,” Comer said. “Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, this has to stop.”

The GOP House Judiciary Committee account, which is managed by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, added: “Does anyone still trust the FBI?”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, speculated the FBI’s alleged interactions with Twitter could suggest they were working with Google and Facebook as well.

Taibbi began the thread on Friday sharing screenshots of emails between former Twitter Trust and Safety Chief Yoel Roth and members of the FBI.

“The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” Taibbi wrote. “Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth… 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.”

Taibbi highlighted the FBI’s own social media task force, which was established after the 2016 presidential election, assigned as many as “80 agents” to monitor social media activity in an effort to locate potential election interference.

The journalist shared an email from November 5, 2022, from the FBI’s National Election Command Post to the agency’s field office in San Francisco, where Twitter Headquarters is located, with a lengthy list of Twitter accounts that “may warrant additional action” as the accounts were “being utilized to spread misinformation about the upcoming election.”

Another email on Nov. 6, shows FBI Agent Elvis Chan forwarded the list to “Twitter folks.”

Taibbi also shared a Nov. 10 email sent to “Twitter contacts” from an FBI official listing multiple Twitter accounts that “may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service.”

Some of the accounts included tweets that were posted as jokes, Taibbi highlighted, but they were apparently banned.

In response to the “Twitter Files,” a spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News Digital, their communication was part of an effort to ensure national security but that the FBI only offered the information to Twitter and allowed the private company to make its own decisions.

“The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities,” the spokesperson wrote. “Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

House Republicans will get an opportunity to further question the FBI and intelligence officials, as well as others, when they are sworn in as the majority in January 2023. At that time, Republicans will lead committee majorities and gain the power to launch House investigations.

Fox News’ Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.

Twitter Files Part 6 reveals FBI’s ties to tech giant: ‘As if it were a subsidiary’

Matt Taibbi released the sixth installment of the ‘Twitter Files’ outlining the FBI flagging Twitter users

By Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News

Substack writer Matt Taibbi dropped his latest installment of the “Twitter Files” on Friday that detailed the FBI’s ties with the tech giant.

“The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” Taibbi began the thread on Friday. “Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth… 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.”

In response to the “Twitter Files,” a spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News Digital, “The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

Taibbi highlighted the FBI’s social media task force established after the 2016 presidential election that assigned as many as “80 agents” to monitor foreign interference prominently featured in the Twitter Files.

“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 f—ing government you can do any kind of massive data or AI search,’ says one former intelligence officer,” Taibbi wrote.

He then shared an email sent to “Twitter contacts” from an FBI official listing multiple Twitter accounts that “may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service.”

“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,” Taibbit tweeted.

Taibbi highlighted two additional accounts, one he described as being “blue-leaning” whose tweets were clearly joking, writing “Of the six accounts mentioned in the previous two emails, all but two… were suspended.”

Taibbi then shared an email from November 5, 2022 from the FBI’s National Election Command Post to the agency’s field office in San Francisco, where Twitter Headquarters is located, with a lengthy list of Twitter accounts that  “may warrant additional action.”

Agent Elvis Chan forwarded the list to “Twitter folks.”

Twitter replied with a list of accounts it took action on, including actor Billy Baldwin.

“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,” Taibbi reported.

The Substack writer included the reactions to several of the Twitter users whose accounts were flagged by the FBI, many expressing shock at the revelations from the “Twitter Files.”

Taibbi then revealed a September 2022 exchange between Twitter’s then-legal executive Stacia Cardille and then-deputy general counsel (and former FBI general counsel) Jim Baker, sharing the results from her “soon to be weekly” meeting with law enforcement agencies like FBI, DHS, DOJ, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“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,’” Taibbi reported. “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?”

He added, “At the bottom of that letter, she lists a series of ‘escalations’ apparently raised at the meeting, which were already ‘handled.'”

The thread displayed numerous examples of correspondence between the Twitter and the FBI, mostly pertaining to tweets the FBI had flagged as “possible violative content.”

“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,” Taibbi wrote, showing a screenshot of the exchange.

Taibbi then reported, “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,” adding “Reports also came from different agencies. Here, an employee recommends ‘bouncing’ content based on evidence from ‘DHS etc.’”

“State governments also flagged content,” Taibbi reported. “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… Twitter execs – receiving an alert from California officials, by way of ‘our partner support portal’ – debate whether to act on a Trump tweet… video was reported by the Election Integrity Project (EIP) at Stanford, apparently on the strength of information from the Center for Internet Security (CIS).”

“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. 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,” he continued.

Taibbi wrapped up his thread by telling his followers, “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.”

“Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this,” Taibbi added.

Twitter owner Elon Musk tapped independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss to report on the so-called “Twitter Files.” (Getty Images)

Taibbi went viral with the first installment of the “Twitter Files” earlier this month which focused on Twitter’s internal discussions leading to it censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election, with some officials struggling to explain how it violated its “hacked materials” policies.

It was later revealed that the first batch of “Twitter Files” were vetted without Musk’s knowledge by Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker, who previously served as the FBI’s general counsel and was involved in the Russia probe. Musk fired Baker shortly thereafter.

Baker was swept up Taibbi’s reporting about the suppression of the Hunter Biden story, telling his colleagues at the time, “I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked” but added, “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”

Additionally, Taibbi initially reported, “Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story.” It is unclear whether Baker’s involvement in vetting the “Twitter Files” led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story. The second installment published by Bari Weiss revealed Twitter’s “blacklisting” of prominent conservatives, including Fox News host Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, as well as Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.

Internal communications also reveal Twitter staffers admitting that the popular account Libs of TikTok never violated its “hateful conduct” policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so.

The third, fourth and fifth installments of the “Twitter Files” focused on the permanent suspension of former President Trump around the Capitol riot events in January 2021.

Taibbi reported how Twitter circulated election-related tweets from various users leading up to the 2020 election that were “flagged” by the FBI as being problematic.

Internal communications also reveal Twitter staffers admitting that the popular account Libs of TikTok never violated its “hateful conduct” policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so.

The third, fourth and fifth installments of the “Twitter Files” focused on the permanent suspension of former President Trump around the Capitol riot events in January 2021.

Taibbi reported how Twitter circulated election-related tweets from various users leading up to the 2020 election that were “flagged” by the FBI as being problematic. However, it was Vijaya Gadde, then-Twitter’s head legal chief, who asked if Trump’s tweets could be “coded incitement to further violence.” Moments later, the so-called “scaled enforcement team” suggested that based on how Twitter interprets Trump’s tweets, it could violate the violence incitement policies.

Elon Musk had been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter’s past and present actions curating content on the platform, including censored content.

Fox News’ Adam Sabes contributed to this report. 

Download PDF Twitter Files Part 6 Summary PDF and here is the PDF source

Twitter’s previous management made some controversial political decisions. Some of them haven’t held up.

By Andrew Prokop source

Big surprise: The Twitter Files — the reports based on internal Twitter documents and messages that the company’s new owner Elon Musk provided to journalists — have landed as a polarizing salvo in the culture war.

Many inclined to distrust what they see as Big Tech’s liberal leanings have cried vindication. The documents show in detail how Twitter made key content moderation decisions that disadvantaged Trump, conservatives, and people who broke with the public health consensus on Covid-19. They say the evidence proves that, again and again, Twitter intervened to squelch speech that the liberal establishment didn’t like.

Meanwhile, others — including most liberals and many mainstream journalists — are unimpressed. They say Twitter’s policies here were already known and that the specific decisions in question — blocking a story they feared stemmed from a foreign hack, banning the account of President Trump after he incited an insurrection, and deboosting accounts spreading public health misinformation — generally seem at least defensible.

The discourse has quickly become one of us versus them — perfect for Twitter. The journalists to whom Musk gave the documents — most prominently, Substackers Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss — are outspoken, unsparing critics of what they believe is the “woke” liberal groupthink that pervades mainstream American media institutions, making them now effectively allies of the right in the culture war. Musk’s behavior since buying Twitter has made him a villain to the left, too.

So liberals have been inclined to view anything they say with deep skepticism, an instinct that was seemingly vindicated quickly after Taibbi posted his first report. He spotlighted an email stating that in October 2020 the Biden campaign had sent along requests to delete certain tweets, writing that an executive responded: “Handled.” Musk responded to this revelation with outrage: “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?” But internet archive sleuths soon established the deleted tweets were pornographic or nude images of Hunter Biden that violated Twitter’s ban on nonconsensually posted sexual material, something Taibbi seemingly had not known. “No, you do not have a Constitutional right to post Hunter Biden’s dick pic on Twitter,” the Bulwark’s Tim Miller wrote. Additionally, some fear that the documents are being selectively pruned to tell a preferred story that could lack context.

Still, it is worth evaluating the documents on their own merits to the extent we can, without a too-hasty dismissal of all Taibbi and Weiss’s arguments or a defense of Twitter’s old management regime. That regime is gone now, but while they were in place, Twitter was a powerful institution that had a major impact on politics, and its decisions deserve scrutiny — just as decisions made by Twitter’s new regime, or monarch, deserve scrutiny. Some of the previous management’s decisions, it seems to me, were wrong, and indeed arguably driven by liberal groupthink. Others I’m less certain about, but they’re at least worth discussing. So here are the main decisions being second-guessed.

Was Twitter right to block the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop?

The first part of the Twitter Files, from Taibbi, focuses on Twitter’s October 2020 decision to outright ban links to the first New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. The ban lasted a little over one day before Twitter lifted it, but the recriminations have continued ever since.

Twitter’s justification was that the story violated its policy against posting “hacked materials.” However, the Post said the materials came from a laptop abandoned at a computer repair store, not a hack. There was widespread skepticism of this claim at the time, but there was no evidence for the hack supposition, and none has since emerged. So what was Twitter thinking?

One clue is in a message by Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth, who alludes to “the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016.” In 2016, there was an effort by the Russian government to interfere with the general election in a way that would hurt Hillary Clinton and Democrats’ prospects. As later documented in the Mueller report, this effort involved both a “troll farm” of Russian accounts masquerading as Americans to spread false or inflammatory information, and the “hack-and-leak” campaign in which leading Democrats’ emails were stolen and provided to WikiLeaks.

After Trump won, many leading figures in politics, tech, media, and law enforcement concluded that major social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook should have done more to stop this Russian interference effort and the spread of “misinformation” more generally (with some arguing that this was a problem regardless of electoral impact, and others claiming that this helped or even caused Trump’s victory). Law enforcement officials argued the Russian campaign was illegal and indicted about two dozen Russians believed to be involved in it. Social media companies began to take a more aggressive approach to curbing what they saw as misinformation, and as the 2020 election approached, they met regularly with FBI and other government officials to discuss the dangers of potential new foreign interference campaigns.

But several issues are being conflated here. Misinformation is (in theory) false information. Foreign propaganda is not necessarily false, but it is being spread by a foreign government with malicious intent (for example, to inflame America’s divisions). Hacked material, though, is tricker in part because it often isn’t misinformation — its power comes from its accuracy. Now, it is theoretically possible that false information could be mixed in with true information as part of a hacked document dump, so it’s important to authenticate it to the extent possible. And even authentic information can often be ripped out of context to appear more damning than it really is. Still, Twitter was putting itself in the awkward position where it would be resolving to suppress information that could well be accurate, for the greater good of preventing foreign interference in an election.

More broadly, a blanket ban on hacked material doesn’t seem particularly well thought through, since a fair amount of journalism is based on material that is illicitly obtained in some way (such as the Pentagon Papers). Every major media source wrote about the DNC and Podesta email leaks, as well as the leaked State Department cables, while entertainment journalists wrote about the Sony hack. Should all those stories be banned like the Post’s was? A standard that Twitter won’t host any sexual images of someone posted without their consent, or any personal information like someone’s address, is a neutral one. Beyond that, determining what stolen or hacked information is newsworthy is inherently subjective. Should that judgment be left to social media companies?

Then there’s the problem that Twitter jumped to the conclusion that this was a hack in the first place. I can see why they did — recent high-profile examples of mass personal info dumps like this were generally hacks. So if you had been anticipating a chance to “do over” 2016’s hack scandal, here it seemed to be. But it was jumping to a conclusion. Additionally, the apparent belief of some employees that proactively censoring the story until there was more information about whether it was hacked info was a way to express “caution” seems dubious — fully banning a link to a media outlet from the platform was a sweeping measure.

So to me this seems a pretty clear case of overreach by Twitter. This wasn’t a “rigging” of the election (again, the ban was only in place for a little over a day). But the decision — born out of a blinkered focus on avoiding a repeat of 2016, rather than taking speech or press freedom or the different details of this situation into account — was the wrong call, in my view.

Was Twitter right to ban Trump?

Parts 3, 4, and 5 of the Twitter Files all focus on the company’s decision to ban President Trump’s account in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack. They show that as pressure for the company to act against Trump rose from both outside voices and their own employees, Twitter leaders applied various standards in determining Trump’s account shouldn’t yet be banned, before making a rather abrupt switch in deciding to ban him on January 8, saying two tweets of his that day violated their “glorification of violence” policy and that Trump’s account presented a “risk of further incitement of violence.”

Weiss points out that, earlier in the day, Twitter staffers evaluated those new Trump tweets — one saying he wouldn’t attend the inauguration, another that “75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me” will “not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” — and concluded they did not violate policies against incitement of violence. Only later did top executives ask about other possible interpretations and begin discussing whether this was a coded “glorification of violence” interpretation. Weiss’s implication is that, under immense internal and external pressure, Twitter’s executives searched for a pretext to ban Trump, and found one. (The day before, Facebook had done something similar.)