Mysterious government agencies were involved in censoring content along with Twitter Inc. on the social media platform, journalist Matt Taibbi said in newly-released Twitter Files.
The files—which mostly were internal communications among Twitter executives and employees—show that unspecified agencies worked with Twitter before Elon Musk bought the company.
The agencies were usually referred to as “Other Government Agencies,” or OGA, inside Twitter.
The FBI has repeatedly flagged Twitter accounts for the social media platform to review and censor over the last few years, raising questions as to whether the agency violated the First Amendment rights of Twitter users, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Twitter Files, a series of revelations by several journalists based on internal Twitter communications, revealed that FBI agents colluded with Twitter executives to censor users and suppress information, while the agency paid Twitter $3.5 million to compensate them for their time processing the FBI’s requests. This partnership raises questions as to whether the FBI may have violated user’s constitutional rights, legal experts told the DCNF, with some arguing the agency’s involvement in Twitter censorship constitutes a First Amendment violation.
The FBI and intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed them in October 2020
Over the last two weeks, a team of journalists that includes me has enjoyed extraordinary access to the internal emails and other documents of the social media platform Twitter. The only condition we agreed to was to first publish our findings on Twitter, which I have done so twice, first, on December 10 in Twitter Files Part 4: The Removal of Donald Trump, and yesterday in Twitter Files Part 7: The FBI and the Hunter Biden Laptop. This report was made possible by Bari Weiss and The Free Press, an exciting new publication to which I am proud to contribute.
Internal documents show Twitter whitelisted CENTCOM accounts that were then used to run its online influence campaign abroad.
TWITTER EXECUTIVES HAVE claimed for years that the company makes concerted efforts to detect and thwart government-backed covert propaganda campaigns on its platform.
Behind the scenes, however, the social networking giant provided direct approval and internal protection to the U.S. military’s network of social media accounts and online personas, whitelisting a batch of accounts at the request of the government. The Pentagon has used this network, which includes U.S. government-generated news portals and memes, in an effort to shape opinion in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and beyond.
Members of the intelligence community, and censors at Twitter, stress that they just didn’t know the Hunter Biden laptop was real, so they erred on the side of caution. “It has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” the infamous letter from 50 former officials said.
Now we know that was a lie.
The FBI already had Hunter’s laptop — it was handed over to them by the owner of a Delaware repair shop, the same man who would provide it to The Post nearly a year later.
This is why they are persecuting Trump.
1. TWITTER FILES: PART 7
The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop
How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
Twitter users have voted in favour of Elon Musk stepping down as the platform’s chief executive after the billionaire ran a poll on his future.
A total of 57.5% voted “yes” after Mr Musk asked his 122 million followers whether he should stand down.
Mr Musk, who bought Twitter for $44bn (£36bn), said before the poll closed that he would abide by the result.
The Twitter account for a Colorado-based Antifa group has been suspended – less than a month after the platform’s new owner Elon Musk promised to purge all accounts that incite violence.
Screenshots taken Saturday evening show that @COSAntiFascists, the Colorado Springs cell of the domestic terror group, has, in fact, been nixed – with reporter Andy Ngo the first to break the news.
Part Six of the Twitter Files was released by journalist Matt Taibbi on Twitter Dec. 16, revealing just how closely the platform worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to censor Americans prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” Taibbi tweeted.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
The December Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll is out this week and Mark Penn and his colleagues have some interesting results to share. Despite the refusal of many in the media to cover the Twitter files, nearly two-thirds of voters believe Twitter shadow-banned users and engaged in political censorship during the 2020 election. Seventy percent of voters want new national laws protecting users from corporate censorship.
This week, the media continued to fulfill that common view of a de facto state media by ignoring new evidence of FBI coordination in censorship targets with Twitter in the latest news blackout.
On Friday, Twitter released additional information showing that the FBI and CIA actively pushed for censorship, supplying lists of accounts to be suspended or banned.
On Friday, Independent journalist Matt Taibbi released another round of bombshell revelations that prove Twitter is guilty of suppressing information to favor Democrats.
The thread revealed how the FBI was in cahoots with the social media platform and “how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content,” including how “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive.”
Does Elon Musk have any clue what he’s gotten himself into? I’m skeptical. It’s easy to kick over a hornet’s nest and then have some fun. Populists and nonconformists do this all the time. The trouble is that the hornets plan, coordinate and swarm. And then you need more than just an attitude and some memes.
You need a plan. Does Musk have a plan? We’ll find out.
During a global pandemic, the role of social media companies shouldn’t be to police discussions about highly complex, multi-factorial medical questions such as the effectiveness of cloth masks against viral infection, potential adverse events from mRNA vaccines, or the origins of Covid-19. Their role should be to allow free speech to thrive and opposing perspectives to clash in the marketplace of ideas.
The FBI has refused to say how many social media companies it works with, defending their actions after it emerged that agents from the bureau regularly met with Twitter executives and handed over lists of accounts they found questionable.
Officials from the bureau even asked for Twitter to hand over the locations from where the Twitter accounts were being operated, in a disturbing move that many saw as an attack on the First Amendment.
One user targeted by the FBI, who goes by @Lexitollah, said: ‘Seems like prima facie 1A violation.’
I would not be surprised to find worse has gone on in Canada.
