Twitter was a “subsidiary” of the FBI, Matt Taibbi avers in the latest installment of the Twitter Files.
That Twitter’s execs, notably homosexual Yoel Roth, were tight as a tick with the bureau isn’t, again, news. As with so much of what the Twitter Files have revealed, the latest merely adds some telling detail to what everyone knew.
Taibbi’s report, though, reveals something more sinister: a wide-ranging censorship conspiracy that likely violated the First Amendment of the Constitution. Twitter shut down accounts and deleted tweets on orders from the FBI.
Joke Tweets Flagged
“Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” Taibbi wrote in yet another long thread detailing the bureau’s and Twitter’s illicit — if not illegal — activities:
Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
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.
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.
Such was the FBI’s obsession to block “misinformation” and stop “foreign influence” and other “election tampering” that 80 agents were detailed to keep track of social media.
“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,” Taibbi reported.
As well, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security routinely flagged content for “moderation” — meaning censorship.
“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,” Taibbi wrote.
Indeed, “FBI San Francisco” informed Twitter that users were violating Twitter’s posting policies called the Twitter Rules:
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.
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:
On November 5, 2022, the FBI’s National Election Command Post sent the field office in San Francisco “a long list of accounts that ‘may warrant additional action.’”
Agent Elvis Chan sent that list to Twitter, which suspended some of the accounts. But most, Taibbi reported, “were satirical.”
Observed user @Tiberius444, “I can’t believe the FBI is policing jokes on Twitter. That’s crazy.”
FBI exchanges with Twitter showed the bureau’s “one-big-happy-family” vibe with the leftist social-media platform.
Such was that vibe that it even wanted Twitter to censor tweets urging users to vote. Twitter called one such tweet “civic misinformation.”
“Get Out the Vote” Tweets Censored
Taibbi also noted that the FBI “spends its time on” tweets that attack elected officials such as disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and, again, those urging users to vote.
The reason for the FBI’s cozy relationship with Twitter: the Russia Collusion Hoax of 2016, a Clinton presidential campaign hit job of which the Obama administration was fully aware.
“The ubiquity of the 2016 Russian interference story as stated pretext for building out the censorship machine can’t be overstated,” Taibbi continued:
It’s analogous to how 9/11 inspired the expansion of the security state.…
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.
First Amendment Violation?
Taibbi’s revelations, which come from files that platform chieftain Elon Musk released, clearly show that the FBI and DHS used Twitter for censorship that might well trespass the First Amendment’s free-speech protections.
Twitter can censor what it wants. But it might have violated the First if it acted as an agent of the federal government to censor Americans.
“The First Amendment applies to the government and prohibits censorship by government agencies and entities, not private actors,” the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky told Fox News:
However, when a private company is censoring information based on direction, coordination and cooperation with the government, then legally it may be considered to be acting as an agent for the government, and it may be found to be violating the First Amendment.
Last year, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki bragged that the Biden administration was “flagging problematic [China Virus] posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
Yet last week, another spokesman denied the administration pressured social media.
The GOP plans to investigate. The question is who plans to file a First Amendment lawsuit.
TNA on the Twitter Files:
Twitter Banned Trump, but Not Leaders Who Advocated Violence, Genocide
Key Twitter Exec Behind Trump Ban Was GOP, Trump-hater Roth
Twitter Files Detail Trump Suspension, Regular Meetings With FBI, DHS
Twitter Blacklist Operation Exposed in Second Dump of “Twitter Files”
Musk Fires Former FBI Attorney Who Vetted Twitter Files, Helped Suppress Hunter Biden Laptop Story
Musk: Twitter Might Have Interfered in Brazil’s Election, Too
Musk Releases “Twitter Files” That Detail Effort to Block Hunter Biden Laptop Story
