On Tuesday afternoon, journalist Matt Taibbi released the twelfth episode of “The Twitter Files,” which examined the interaction between government entities and the microblogging service.
A little over an hour after uploading part eleven of “The Twitter Information,” in which he chronicled the events that led to the Intelligence Community’s adoption of Twitter, Taibbi released the most recent batch of files.
In 2020, Taibbi described Twitter’s efforts to combat “the issue of government and commercial groups sidestepping them and going directly to the media with lists of problematic accounts.” A media report titled “Russian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns” was produced by the State Department’s newly created analytic/intelligence arm, the Global Engagement Center, in February 2020, at the height of the COVID outbreak.
What gives rise to this conclusion is “The GEC “identified accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies,'” as claimed by Taibbi, even though the accounts in question claimed the Coronavirus was a bioweapon, pointed fingers at the Wuhan institute and claimed the CIA was responsible for the virus’s appearance.
The state claims that this development “led to another torrent of misinformation narratives” as users falsely claimed that Twitter had banned the influential US-based ZeroHedge account. [Zero Hedge] has published claims speculating that the virus was deliberately created in a laboratory.
To further illustrate how the GEC’s findings contributed to the early narrative around the pandemic’s beginnings, Taibbi provided instances of more sensationalist headlines.
Director of trust and safety Yoel Roth called the media’s attempts to link the pandemic hoax to Russia “revelatory of their aims.”
According to Taibbi, “the GEC report alleged to identify accounts that followed ‘two or more’ Chinese diplomatic accounts,” based on data from the Department of Homeland Security that has been making the rounds this week. Reportedly on the list of “almost 250,000” were Canadian officials and a CNN account.
For example, according to Taibbi, “Roth regarded GEC’s behavior as an attempt by GEC to exploit intel from other agencies to ‘insert themselves’ into the content moderation club that covered Twitter, Facebook, the FBI, the DHS, and others.”
Taibbi stated Twitter had uncovered no evidence that communist China was spreading disinformation about the epidemic through the site, despite allegations to the contrary by the Trump administration.
According to Taibbi, “Twitter officials at first refused” the FBI’s request to put the GEC on the weekly “industry call” between tech giants like Twitter and Facebook and the DHS and FBI. Executives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter voted against joining the GEC, citing “The GEC’s mandate for offensive IO to support American interests” as their decision.
Although the tweets’ jargon may have been partisan code, Taibbi pointed out that “a deeper explanation was an idea that the GEC was political,” in contrast to the “apolitical” DHS and FBI. One former DOD employee claims that the agency’s employees felt the FBI was less “Trumpy” than their own.
Twitter finally gave in to years of Democratic Party pressure and “took action” on accounts “connected” to Russia. Why? For Roth, adopting the GEC would provide “huge dangers,” and Taibbi concurred. Statements made by senior lawyer Stacia Cardille on the possibility of incorporating the GEC into the FBI “resonated with Elvis, not Laura,” meaning that they had an effect on Agent Elvis Chan rather than FITF unit commander Laura Dehmlow.
This is what Taibbi said next: “The FBI finally pushed for, firstly with Facebook, a compromise option where just the FBI and DHS will operate as ‘conduits,’ while other USG agencies may join the ‘industry’ dialogues. Roth “reached out to Chan with reservations about letting the ‘press-happy’ GEC in, expressing hope that they may keep the ‘circle of trust limited,'” as the rumor goes.
When asked if companies should trust the FBI to keep an eye on their social media accounts, Chan referred to the bureau as “the belly button of the USG,” implying that the bureau would share any pertinent information it uncovered with other government agencies.
Requests to delete or deactivate Twitter accounts came flooding in from various government entities.
That “amazing variety of petitions from authorities asking for persons they don’t like to be barred,” as Taibbi puts it, is proof of that. Paul Sperry, a journalist, has had his Twitter account suspended at the request of Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Even Twitter, as Taibbi claims, could not meet Schiff’s demand at the time. Despite this, “Sperry was later suspended.”
Taibbi discusses the pressure from government authorities on Twitter staff to delete user accounts.