Twitter Files of internal company documents attract extensive media coverage
Pulling back the curtain on the social media giant, the Twitter Files’ release of internal company documents and messages has drawn widespread media coverage.
After billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, he promised he would lift the corporate veil on alleged ideologically motivated censorship done by the social media platform’s previous management.
The first set of the Twitter Files, which came out last December, detailed Twitter’s decision to restrict an October 2020 New York Post story on the laptop controversy of Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi posted multiple tweets with a focus on discussions among the company's staff on censoring a story about a laptop belonging to Hunter.
In a lengthy thread, Taibbi said he had received "thousands of internal documents" from Twitter sources pointing to the suppression of the Biden laptop story on Twitter in which the company controversially blocked people from tweeting and direct-messaging about the story.
Twitter and Facebook reportedly took major steps to limit the spread of the article. Twitter blocked workers from tweeting out the link to the story or sending it in private messages.
The president’s son and his laptop have been the subject of controversy since an October 2020 New York Post story reported that emails discovered on the laptop revealed a meeting he had arranged for his father – then-candidate Biden – and an executive at Ukrainian energy company Burisma in April 2015.
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Democrats have charged that the stories are blown out of proportion and are meant to distract from the much more extensive scandals involving then-President Trump using his position and office to financially benefit both his own businesses and his children and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, including those who worked at the White House.
‘Secret blacklists’
Twitter built secret blacklists to restrict the visibility and reachability of “disfavored” accounts and tweets, independent journalist Bari Weiss said, posting part two of the Twitter Files.
Under the headline "Twitter’s Secret Blacklists," Weiss, who runs The Free Press company, tweeted: “A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.”
Twitter, however, denied that it places accounts on a blacklist, she said, adding that in 2018, Vijaya Gadde, then head of legal policy and trust, and Kayvon Beykpour, head of product, said: "We do not shadow ban," "And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology."
Musk said Twitter is working on a software update that will "show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal." Since taking over Twitter, Musk himself has been criticized for banning users for unclear reasons, including possibly their criticism of him.
Runup to 2020 election
Musk promoted a series of tweets featuring internal company files saying that the big tech’s "activist employees, without basis, suppressed and censored" then-President Donald Trump in the days before the 2020 election.
In a lengthy thread, Taibbi said: “The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before Jan. 6. The ban will come after other avenues are exhausted.”
“As soon as they finished banning Trump, Twitter execs started processing new power. They prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses – perhaps even Joe Biden. The ‘new administration,’ says one exec, ‘will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary’,” he added.
On Jan. 8, 2021 – two days after a violent mob, encouraged by Trump, attacked the US Capitol building, where Congress was confirming Biden’s presidential win – Twitter announced a “permanent ban” on Trump due to the "risk of further incitement of violence."
Last November, however, Twitter’s new owner Musk restored Trump’s account.
‘Free speech suppression’
Author Michael Shellenberger released the fourth installment of the Twitter Files to shed light on what he called “free speech suppression.”
In Part 4, Shellenberger related conversations leading up to the decision to ban Trump's Twitter account.
The thread of uncovered information about Twitter’s pre-Musk content moderation focused on employees’ reactions to the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, leading up to the banning of Trump instituted on Jan. 8.
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Shellenberger discussed how former CEO Jack Dorsey was out of the country during a series of decisions that would ultimately lead to the permanent suspension of Trump’s Twitter account, though later restored by Musk.
Flagged tweets
Before Twitter was bought by Musk, the FBI used to send it messages flagging tweets for suggested moderation, according to an ongoing release of internal documents.
Among contacts with the FBI’s social media task force FTIF, staffed with some 80 agents, some were mundane, but “a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts,” said Taibbi.
“The Twitter Files show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation,” Taibbi said on Twitter.
In response to the revelations, an FBI spokesperson told Fox News: "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.”
Uncomfortable with request for written answers
The FBI repeatedly grilled Twitter executives in the summer of 2020 for not including enough “state propaganda” on the site, insisting that the company provide more information about safety enforcement.
"In July of 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan tells Twitter executive (then-trust and safety chief) Yoel Roth to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), the inter-agency group that deals with cyber threats," Taibbi, who writes for the online publishing platform Substack, said on Twitter.
Taibbi went on to say that Roth was not “comfortable” with the FBI demanding written answers.
The thread came on the heels of his earlier revelations that Twitter employees had near-constant communication with the FBI from 2020 to 2022.
Censorship allegations
Musk also claimed that the US government “paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public.”
Musk retweeted a lengthy thread from Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never and San Fransicko, laying out “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.”
Shellenberger alleged in a thread made up of 47 tweets that the “payments” Musk described are compensation for legal processes requested from Twitter in its reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Musk’s tweet capitalizes on two tweets with emails from Twitter enclosed that Shellenberger revealed in his thread, saying: “The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.”
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“I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!” said a redacted email.
PsyOp
Part 8 of the "Twitter Files" thread purports to disclose how the social media giant helped the US military with secret psychological operations or PsyOp campaigns.
"Despite promises to shut down covert state-run propaganda networks, Twitter docs show that the social media giant directly assisted the U.S. military’s influence operations," tweeted investigative journalist Lee Fang of The Intercept.
"But behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval & special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological influence ops," Fang added. "Despite knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts used covert identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around 2 years or more. Some remain active."
Fang said Twitter worked hand-in-hand with US Central Command (CENTCOM) to give the US military blue check verification status.
‘Doorman to surveillance’
The FBI acts “as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government,” according to another Twitter Files release.
Saying that the FBI did not disprove previous claims about how it benefited from the social media platform, which basically asserted that the FBI moderates Twitter, Taibbi said on Twitter that the bureau shared a statement saying: “The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public…”
Taibbi said: “The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”
Toeing the line
Twitter reportedly interfered with discussions of COVID-19 by censoring information that contradicted US officials and suppressed experts who disagreed with official positions.
"The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content" about the virus, according to Twitter Files documents made public by Free Press reporter David Zweig.
Zweig said the administrations of former President Donald Trump and current Oval Office occupant Joe Biden "directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes."
He said Twitter executives did not fully capitulate to the Biden team’s wishes but suppressed views, many from doctors and scientific experts that conflicted with official positions of the White House.
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During the pandemic, Twitter openly banned users from the platform who promoted misinformation about the virus, as a public health measure. The measures to promote the use of approved vaccines and discourage unproven “alternative” treatments may have saved millions of lives.
Mass suspension
The latest installment of the Twitter Files claimed that a US government agency demanded the suspension of hundreds of thousands of accounts from the social media platform.
"US govt agency demanded suspension of 250K accounts, including journalists and Canadian officials!" said Twitter CEO Elon Musk, retweeting a revelation by Taibbi.
"The GEC (US State Department Global Engagement Center) report appeared based on DHS (Department of Homeland Security) data circulated earlier that week, and included accounts that followed ‘two or more’ Chinese diplomatic accounts. They reportedly ended up with a list ‘nearly 250,000’ names long, and included Canadian officials and a CNN account," said Taibbi in one tweet, calling the GEC a "fledgling analytic/intelligence arm of the State Department."
The series revealed that Twitter was also trying to reduce the number of agencies with access to then-trust and safety chief Roth, who resigned last November.