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.
Read: FBI Was Super Excited To Censor Conservatives On Twitter »