Twitter Files Part VI Unrolled
Fresh off the press.
*I’ve also added part six to the master document, which you can find here.
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
1. THREAD: The Twitter Files, Part Six
TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
2.4K Reposts · 4.73K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
2. The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
402 Reposts · 2.06K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
537 Reposts · 2.21K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
618 Reposts · 2.24K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
5. Some are mundane, like San Francisco agent Elvis Chan wishing Roth a Happy New Year along with a reminder to attend “our quarterly call next week.” Others are requests for information into Twitter users related to active investigations.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
353 Reposts · 1.86K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
6. 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.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
570 Reposts · 2.23K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
7. The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
476 Reposts · 1.94K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
8. Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
435 Reposts · 1.88K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
9. It’s no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
299 Reposts · 1.65K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
10. 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.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
520 Reposts · 1.97K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
11. What stands out is the sheer quantity of reports from the government. Some are aggregated from public hotlines:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
354 Reposts · 1.59K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
12.An unanswered question: do agencies like FBI and DHS do in-house flagging work themselves, or farm it out? “You have to prove to me that inside the fucking government you can do any kind of massive data or AI search,” says one former intelligence officer.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
343 Reposts · 1.68K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
“HELLO TWITTER CONTACTS”: The master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter comes through in this November 2022 email, in which “FBI San Francisco is notifying you” it wants action on four accounts:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
510 Reposts · 1.81K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
14.Twitter personnel in that case went on to look for reasons to suspend all four accounts, including @fromMA, whose tweets are almost all jokes (see sample below), including his “civic misinformation” of Nov. 8:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
319 Reposts · 1.33K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
15. Just to show the FBI can be hyper-intrusive in both directions, they also asked Twitter to review a blue-leaning account for a different joke, except here it was even more obvious that @ClaireFosterPHD, who kids a lot, was kidding:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
282 Reposts · 1.24K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
16. “Anyone who cannot discern obvious satire from reality has no place making decisions for others or working for the feds,” said @ClaireFosterPHD, when told about the flagging.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
290 Reposts · 1.42K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
17.Of the six accounts mentioned in the previous two emails, all but two – @ClaireFosterPHD and @fromMA – were suspended.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
240 Reposts · 1.13K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
18.In an internal email from November 5, 2022, the FBI’s National Election Command Post, which compiles and sends on complaints, sent the SF field office a long list of accounts that “may warrant additional action”:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
357 Reposts · 1.23K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
19.Agent Chan passed the list on to his "Twitter folks":
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
282 Reposts · 1.13K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
20. Twitter then replied with its list of actions taken. Note mercy shown to actor Billy Baldwin:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
322 Reposts · 1.19K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
21.Many of the above accounts were satirical in nature, nearly all (with the exceptions of Baldwin and @RSBNetwork) were relatively low engagement, and some were suspended, most with a generic, “Thanks, Twitter” letter:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
270 Reposts · 1.1K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
22.When told of the FBI flagging, @lexitollah replied: “My thoughts initially include 1. Seems like prima facie 1A violation 2. Holy cow, me, an account with the reach of an amoeba 3. What else are they looking at?”
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
266 Reposts · 1.19K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
23.“I can't believe the FBI is policing jokes on Twitter. That's crazy,” said @Tiberius444.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
308 Reposts · 1.33K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
24.In a letter to former Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker on Sep. 16, 2022, legal exec Stacia Cardille outlines results from her “soon to be weekly” meeting with DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
328 Reposts · 1.15K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
25.The Twitter exec writes she explicitly asked if there were “impediments” to the sharing of classified information “with industry.” The answer? “FBI was adamant no impediments to sharing exist.”
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
282 Reposts · 1.15K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
26. This passage underscores the unique one-big-happy-family vibe between Twitter and the FBI. With what other firm would the FBI blithely agree to “no impediments” to classified information?
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
340 Reposts · 1.3K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
27.At the bottom of that letter, she lists a series of “escalations” apparently raised at the meeting, which were already “handled.”
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
125 Reposts · 493 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
28. About one, she writes: “Flagged a specific Tweet on Illinois use of modems to transmit election results in possible violation of the civic integrity policy (except they do use that tech in limited circumstances).”
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
144 Reposts · 536 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
29.Another internal letter from January, 2021 shows Twitter execs processing an FBI list of “possible violative content” tweets:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
142 Reposts · 529 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
30.Here, too, most tweets contained the same, “Get out there and vote Wednesday!” trope and had low engagement. This is what the FBI spends its time on:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
143 Reposts · 532 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
31. In this March, 2021 email, an FBI liaison thanks a senior Twitter exec for the chance to speak to “you and the team,” then delivers a packet of “products”:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
134 Reposts · 518 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
32.The executive circulates the “products,” which are really DHS bulletins stressing the need for greater collaboration between law enforcement and “private sector partners.”
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
134 Reposts · 510 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
33.The ubiquity of the 2016 Russian interference story as stated pretext for building out the censorship machine can’t be overstated. It’s analogous to how 9/11 inspired the expansion of the security state.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
202 Reposts · 629 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
34.While the DHS in its “products” pans “permissive” social media for offering “operational advantages” to Russians, it also explains that the “Domestic Violent Extremist Threat” requires addressing “information gaps”:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
121 Reposts · 495 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
35.FBI in one case sent over so many “possible violative content” reports, Twitter personnel congratulated each other in Slack for the “monumental undertaking” of reviewing them:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
150 Reposts · 525 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
36.There were multiple points of entry into Twitter for government-flagged reports. This letter from Agent Chan to Roth references Teleporter, a platform through which Twitter could receive reports from the FBI:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
162 Reposts · 535 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
37.Reports also came from different agencies. Here, an employee recommends “bouncing” content based on evidence from “DHS etc”:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
130 Reposts · 507 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
38.State governments also flagged content.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
136 Reposts · 535 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
39.Twitter for instance received reports via the Partner Support Portal, an outlet created by the Center for Internet Security, a partner organization to the DHS.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
127 Reposts · 524 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
40.“WHY WAS NO ACTION TAKEN?” Below, Twitter execs – receiving an alert from California officials, by way of “our partner support portal” – debate whether to act on a Trump tweet:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
170 Reposts · 560 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
41.Here, a video was reported by the Election Integrity Project (EIP) at Stanford, apparently on the strength of information from the Center for Internet Security (CIS):
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
134 Reposts · 514 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
42.If that’s confusing, it’s because the CIS is a DHS contractor, describes itself as “partners” with the Cyber and Internet Security Agency (CISA) at the DHS:
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
154 Reposts · 570 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
43.The EIP is one of a series of government-affiliated think tanks that mass-review content, a list that also includes the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Laboratory, and the University of Washington’s Center for Informed Policy.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
142 Reposts · 568 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
44.The takeaway: what most people think of as the “deep state” is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors, and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
377 Reposts · 1.23K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
45. Twitter Files researchers are moving into a variety of new areas now. Watch @bariweiss, @ShellenbergerMD, and this space for more, soon.
9:00 PM · Dec 16, 2022
228 Reposts · 1.05K Likes
The 9-11 terrorists appear to have won. They have caused the US security state to grow out of control and rip the country to shreds from the inside.
Can we just dissolve the FBI and start over?