A new drop in “The Twitter Files” series Friday afternoon shows that federal law enforcement officials were working in close contact with employees at Twitter to censor content.
Journalist Matt Taibbi said that between January 2020 and November 2022, then-Twitter Senior Director of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth had exchanged more than 150 emails with the FBI.
“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,” Taibbi said. “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.”
“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,” he continued.
Taibbi noted that the newest documents discovered throughout the course of the investigation showed that the FBI and DHS were “regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.”
Taibbi showed examples of the FBI reaching out to get action taken on specific tweets:
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: pic.twitter.com/gwiDtPcWZv
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/ZQeb9Ko06p 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”: pic.twitter.com/yILcgjFyev
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
20. Twitter then replied with its list of actions taken. Note mercy shown to actor Billy Baldwin: pic.twitter.com/zQzNGQMKmO
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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?”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
