Journalist Matt Taibbi provided a Christmas Eve edition of the Twitter files, which he says details “Twitter’s relationship to other government agencies – including some that don’t like to see their name in print much.”
Read below:
After weeks of “Twitter Files” reports detailing close coordination between the FBI and Twitter in moderating social media content, the Bureau issued a statement Wednesday.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
3.They must think us unambitious, if our “sole aim” is to discredit the FBI. After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the #TwitterFiles. Why stop with one?
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
5.The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors – from local cops to media to state governments.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
7.A chief end result was that thousands of official “reports” flowed to Twitter from all over, through the FITF and the FBI’s San Francisco field office.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
9.OGA, or “Other Government Organization,” can be a euphemism for CIA, according to multiple former intelligence officials and contractors. Chuckles one: “They think it's mysterious, but it's just conspicuous."
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
11. It was an open secret at Twitter that one of its executives was ex-CIA, which is why Chan referred to that executive’s “former employer.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
13.Senior legal executive Stacia Cardille, whose alertness stood out among Twitter leaders, replied, “I know” and “I thought my silence was understood.” pic.twitter.com/SkBObgCQZG
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
15.“I invited the FBI and the CIA virtually will attend too,” Cardille says to Baker, adding pointedly: “No need for you to attend.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
17. These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without government.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
19.The FITF meeting agendas virtually always included, at or near the beginning, an “OGA briefing,” usually about foreign matters (hold that thought). pic.twitter.com/Yx0721VyXI
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
21. Many requests arrived via Teleporter, a one-way platform in which many communications were timed to vanish: pic.twitter.com/3C9uNo2AYC
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
23. Email after email came from the San Francisco office heading into the election, often adorned with an Excel attachment: pic.twitter.com/2xCKHPcBRE
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
25. The FBI was clearly tailoring searches to Twitter’s policies. FBI complaints were almost always depicted somewhere as a “possible terms of service violation," even in the subject line: pic.twitter.com/TiwyiZJTNZ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
27.“They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” remarked Cardille. pic.twitter.com/asTlMhs2if
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
29.The New York FBI office even sent requests for the “user IDs and handles” of a long list of accounts named in a Daily Beast article. Senior executives say they are “supportive” and “completely comfortable” doing so. pic.twitter.com/MfSX7NcZJF
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
31. “Foreign meddling” had been the ostensible justification for expanded moderation since platforms like Twitter were dragged to the Hill by the Senate in 2017: pic.twitter.com/b3wR2aUjcf
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
33. The #TwitterFiles show execs under constant pressure to validate theories of foreign influence – and unable to find evidence for key assertions.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
35. “Extremely tenuous circumstantial chance of being related,” says another. pic.twitter.com/nLnShIZTLc
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
37. In another case, Roth concludes a series of Venezuelan pro-Maduro accounts are unrelated to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, because they’re too high-volume: pic.twitter.com/ySsjM4j0j9
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
39. In a key email, news that the State Department was making a wobbly public assertion of Russian influence led an exec – the same one with the “OGA” past – to make a damning admission:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
41. Translation: “more aggressive” “government partners” had closed Twitter’s “window” of independence.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
43. Former CIA agent and whistleblower John Kiriakou believes he recognizes the formatting of these reports.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
45. Many people wonder if Internet platforms receive direction from intelligence agencies about moderation of foreign policy news stories. It appears Twitter did, in some cases by way of the FITF/FBI.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
47. One intel report lists accounts tied to “Ukraine ‘neo-Nazi’ Propaganda.’” This includes assertions that Joe Biden helped orchestrate a coup in 2014 and “put his son on the board of Burisma.” pic.twitter.com/BiTj9SIHgH
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
49. Often intelligence came in the form of brief reports, followed by long lists of accounts simply deemed to be pro-Maduro, pro-Cuba, pro-Russia, etc. This one batch had over 1000 accounts marked for digital execution: pic.twitter.com/zkf4QdUv3E
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
51. Intel about the shady origin of these accounts might be true. But so might at least some of the information in them – about neo-Nazis, rights abuses in Donbas, even about our own government. Should we block such material?
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
53. Often intel reports are just long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos guilty of “anti-Ukraine narratives”: pic.twitter.com/6q7IX5S7WM
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
55. The line between “misinformation” and “distorting propaganda” is thin. Are we comfortable with so many companies receiving so many reports from a “more aggressive” government?
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
Watch @bariweiss, @shellenbergerMD, @lhfang, and this space for more, on issues ranging from Covid-19 to Twitter's relationship to congress, and more.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
Thread Reader has the text version of the latest Twitter files.
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