1. THREAD: The Twitter Files, Part Six
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY
2. The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
9. It’s no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
11. What stands out is the sheer quantity of reports from the government. Some are aggregated from public hotlines: pic.twitter.com/cm9JjEXUSm
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/bcttGWKpFW 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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
“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: pic.twitter.com/LjgB6fxENo
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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
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: pic.twitter.com/uLxHayY11C
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
17.Of the six accounts mentioned in the previous two emails, all but two – @ClaireFosterPHD and @FromMa – were suspended.
— 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
19.Agent Chan passed the list on to his "Twitter folks": pic.twitter.com/eXaZnC3I7y
— 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
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: pic.twitter.com/0S0XoqhwYD
— 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
23.“I can't believe the FBI is policing jokes on Twitter. That's crazy,” said @Tiberius444.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/9IfX3IPzyi 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: pic.twitter.com/oE8fDjomNP
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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?
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/dtvy82pfce the bottom of that letter, she lists a series of “escalations” apparently raised at the meeting, which were already “handled.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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).”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
29.Another internal letter from January, 2021 shows Twitter execs processing an FBI list of “possible violative content” tweets: pic.twitter.com/Dwad3lGM4j
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
https://t.co/v2RzNXCtZw, 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: pic.twitter.com/WfVudSRvIK
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
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”: pic.twitter.com/POOpYrd9q8
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022