Obviously, the majority of the left leaning Credentialed Media have no interest in covering this. They’re more interested in discussing Twitter briefly suspending “journalists” who’ve been tracking the exact movements of Elon Musk, getting a little taste of what Conservatives went through
Twitter Files: FBI Kept Busy Censoring Conservatives Instead of Chasing Crooks
In the sixth installment of the Twitter Files, journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter had a “one-big-happy-family” partnership with the FBI to censor content on its platform.
Taibbi released the sixth installment of the Twitter Files document dump, which he dubbed “TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY.”
“The #TwitterFiles show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation,” Taibbi wrote.
For example, Taibbi revealed that former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth exchanged “over 150 emails” with the FBI between January 2020 to November 2022. Further, Taibbi noted that a “surprisingly high number” of the FBI’s correspondence with Twitter were “requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.”
The FBI’s involvement in combatting “misinformation” on social media platforms is a relatively recent development that stemmed from the Democrat narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Taibbi said the 2016 Russia collusion hoax was used as a “pretext for building out the censorship machine,” similar to how the September 11 terrorist attacks “inspired the expansion of the security state.”
Is this what the FBI should be doing? Monitoring the communications of private citizens and entities, recommending that they be temporarily suspended or even permanently suspended? They may be open communications, but, shouldn’t there be a warrant for this? Now, just imagine, if you will, that the FBI was doing this against Democrats. How would they media, elected Democrats, and all the activists respond?
However, Twitter’s contact with federal agencies did not stop with just the FBI. Several agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the DHS, had frequent contact with Twitter about the content posted on its platform.
In a September 2020 email sent by Twitter legal executive Stacia Cardille to former Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker, a former top FBI lawyer, Cardille revealed she participated in monthly calls with “FBI, DOJ, DHS, ODNI, and industry peers on election threats.”
Cardille noted that the monthly calls with those agencies would “soon to be weekly.
The article, and Twitter files, show that the FBI shared 25 accounts they were “concerned” with over “misinformation”, after which 16 accounts saw suspensions, deplatforming, or forced to delete tweets. One of those accounts was a tiny one. Seriously, this is what the FBI is doing
In an email dated November 10, 2022, the FBI provided its “twitter contacts” with a list of four accounts they believed may have violated Twitter’s rules. Ultimately, Twitter suspended three out of the four accounts, with staffers reviewing the fourth account, “@fromMA,” for any possible violation of the rules.
Looking closer, the “@fromMA” account was a political satirist who jokingly tweeted, “I want to remind republicans to vote tomorrow, Wednesday November 9.”
That last one, which got reinstated but is behind protected status, makes fun of those on the left and right. I was permanently suspended for doing something similar in 2016. No point in asking Elon for it back at this point.
Taibbi argued federal law enforcement should have used its resources to track down child sex predators or terrorists rather than mass-flagging social media posts.
“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,” Taibbi tweeted. “People should not be okay with this.”
No, they shouldn’t. But, a goodly chunk will not know about it, because most media outlets are ignoring this. They should all remember that they could be next. Probably not on Twitter with Musk owning it, but, on other outlets.
[…] Pirates Cove reminds us […]
I have been watching this with great interest. Here are my thoughts for consideration:
1. What Twitter did in influencing the election was unfair, but not illegal and should have been expected all along. It is perfectly acceptable for people to use their private corporations to benefit causes they support, including political causes. There is no law preventing this nor would any such law be possible. Sort of like why Democrats in the Senate were totally against any Catholics being on the Supreme Court.
2. For elements of the US government, privately, to collude with Twitter, etc in their “influencing the election”, is a blatant violation of law on the part of each and every person who participated.
3. For elements of the US government to take part in an election and attempt to sway it’s outcome is also a clear violation of law. But since if you win the election, you get to enforce the law (or fail to), we get a system where some people are above the law. This has been objectively true since the Obama administration. And in the trump administration, we discovered that nearly all of the high ranking bureaucrats in DC, regardless of administration, are loyal to the Democrats.
4. When you are trying to win public office it is you fault if you do not understand the political and public terrain well enough to understand that your political enemies in Twitter and facebook will actually be working against you.
5. To the Extent that Twitter and Facebook edited information to influence the election, they violated no laws. But the Democratic party and it’s candidates did violate campaign finance laws by not claiming those in kind contributions that amounted to the equivalent of BILLIONS of dollars worth of free advertising. But again, if they win teh election, and have thousands of supporters working at the FEC, DoJ, and FBI, there is no possibility of this law being enfodrced.
6. It is a natural and predictable path that FB and Twitter would use their hidden algorithms to guide the election outcomes. Newspapers have been doing it since print was invented. Radio and TV have been doing it since Marconi.
7. Such “collusion” is unstoppable. No laws will prevent it. This is why it was absurd on its face for the Democrats to go all in on the Russian Collusion story, instead of trying to nail Trump on something that was real and an actual violation of law. Remember, all of the national media covered that story as if it were real. All of them similarly covered over the Biden Laptop story. All of the national media twisted the Ukraine phone call as if it were a crime for Trump to ask Ukraine to investigate corruption, instead of focusing on Biden BEING CORRUPT.
8. To the extent that Twitter and FB users paid for political advertising in targeted time zones and locations and did not get them, this would be a violation of law and contract on the part of FB and Twitter as the deep pockets, but also naming the corporate execs who made the decisions to do that. In Democratic speak, it’s Ok to refuse to bake a cake for the gay couple wedding if you refuse to take the order, but not if you took their deposit and then don’t tell them until the last minute.
But since the democrats no longer need voters, it hardly matters how much influence Twitter and FB do.
Teach super SADZ as NC Supreme Court strikes down Voter ID law as being enacted solely to limit blacks from voting by Republican Party
RAAAAAACISMMM ????
Nope says Teach just trying to eliminate what the supremes called almost mon existent voter fraud
So Carbon Boy believes only blacks are incapable of obtaining a voter ID? Johnny, why are you so racist?
A change of subject, bustedknuckles posted a you tube video that is beyound great. It is Dan Vasc, a heavy metal guy singing Angles We Have Heard On High. Check it out on You Tube, great.
And now the left are just shaking with rage that conservatives aren’t being censored on Twitter!
Teach admits that tRump’s FBI/DOJ was trying to influence twitter? Interesting.
And as always, nuCons support foreign involvement in our elections so long as the the support is for the nuGOP.
Private entities such as facebook and twitter have the overarching objective of making money and creating value. They can freely choose what to post or what posts to prioritize, including Russian, Chinese, Dem or nuGOP disinformation. Civil libertarian Elon Musk believes any editorial constraint is censorship and allows all posts on twitter (oops… this just in…LOL).
Note that Jeff is all for the government interfering on social platforms in order to influence election.
Daffy’s reading comprehension has diminished to near zero.
[…] Also read: William Teach: FBI Was Super Excited To Censor Conservatives On Twitter […]