An Open Letter To Twitter

consentfactory  |  To: Ella G. Irwin, Head of Trust and Safety, Twitter, Inc.
                                cc: Elon Musk

Dear Ms. Irwin,

This open letter is further to our brief correspondence on May 3, 2023 (on Twitter) regarding Twitter’s censorship and defamation of my @consent_factory Twitter account with fake “age-restricted adult content” labels for approximately two years.

First, thank you for taking action to cease and desist from further censorship and defamation. From what I can tell, it appears that Twitter is removing or has removed the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels from the @consent_factory Twitter account’s Tweets (or at least going back to late 2021). I trust that these fake “age-restricted adult content” labels will be removed from all of the account’s Tweets in due course, and I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. Please accept my apology for claiming that you had lied about taking action on this. I admit, after two years of being censored and defamed, and having my complaints ignored by Twitter, I have become rather skeptical regarding your company’s behavior and statements. That said, it is clear now that you were not lying, and that you have taken action to have the fake, defamatory labels in question removed, and I apologize for publicly claiming otherwise.

Assuming the process is eventually completed and all of the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels that Twitter has been censoring the @consent_factory Twitter account with are in fact removed, I would appreciate substantive answers to the following questions:

(1) Why and exactly how did Twitter start censoring and defaming my Consent Factory account with these fake, defamatory “adult content” labels? When I asked you to explain that in our correspondence, you replied:

Clearly, the account did not “post multiple tweets containing sensitive content (nazi imagery) that resulted in the sensitive content label being applied,” because Twitter has now removed the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels from those Tweets, which contain the same “Nazi imagery” they originally contained. As I am sure you have noted, the so-called “Nazi imagery” contained in those Tweets was simply historical photos of the Nazi Germany era, which were used to illustrate critical points I was making in opposition to totalitarianism, and not at all any type of celebration or approval of totalitarianism or fascism. Any rational adult, seeing those Tweets, could not possibly mistake the anti-fascist/totalitarian intent behind them. Also, the fact that the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels are being removed gradually, in stages, rather than all at once, suggests that the application of the fake labels (or “interstitials”) in question was not the result of a blanket algorithm applied to the account. Additionally, not every Tweet (or every Tweet containing an image) by this account was censored with a fake “interstitial,” which suggests that something other than a blanket algorithm was at work.

In any event, having been censored and defamed for two years by Twitter, Inc., I think I am entitled to an actual explanation of how this started, including documentation of any intra-company discussions or “log” notes in connection with the decision to begin censoring and defaming the account. Your substantive response to this request will demonstrate that the “new” Twitter is, in fact, committed to transparency, and free speech, and not just another element of the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” as Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi dubbed it, before Mr. Musk cut off access to the “Twitter Files.”

(2) What, if any, other restrictions/visibility filtering tactics have been applied to my @consent_factory Twitter account from 2020 to the present? Again, I would appreciate documentation of any such “visibility filtering” or other “restrictions” and/or the removal thereof. Having been censored and maliciously defamed by Twitter for years, I believe I am entitled to know how my “visibility” is being and/or has been “filtered.”

(3) What steps is Twitter, Inc. now taking to cease and desist from the type of malicious defamation the company has been engaging in to suppress political speech and damage the reputation and income of writers, like me, and independent media outlets, like, for example, OffGuardian? Twitter blocks links to all OffGuardian articles with a different fake, defamatory “interstitial” warning.

There is nothing “unsafe” about OffGuardian, or any content published on the website that could possibly “lead to real-world harm.” It is a small, independent news and commentary outlet. Twitter, Inc. is using the fake “interstitial” warning above to discourage users from visiting the site, and thus damaging OffGuardian’s reputation and income. This is just one further example (i.e., in addition to my case). Twitter’s continued use of fake, defamatory, “interstitial” labels to suppress political views is relatively widespread, as far as I can tell. Moreover, recent updates to Twitter’s Platform Use Guidelines make it clear that Twitter intends to continue using these “interstitials,” which is worrying, given the fact that the company has been using them to deceive people, and to suppress political speech, and to damage the reputations and incomes of small businesses and sole proprietors.

Scott Ritter Permanently Banished From Twitter

consortiumnews |  One of my reasons for joining Twitter was to contribute to the overall process of engaging in responsible debate, dialogue, and discussion about issues of importance in my life and the lives of others, in order to empower people with knowledge and information they might not otherwise have access to, so that those who participate in such interaction, myself included, could hold those whom we elect to higher office accountable for what they do in our name.

Land of the free pic.twitter.com/3bzYAW7h6R

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) April 13, 2022

To me, such an exercise is the essence of democracy and, for better or for worse, Twitter had become the primary social media platform I used to engage in this activity.

From my perspective, credibility is the key to a good Twitter relationship. I follow experts on a variety of topics because I view them as genuine specialists in their respective fields (I also follow several dog and cat accounts because, frankly speaking, dogs and cats make me laugh.) People follow me, I assume, for similar reasons. Often I find myself in in-depth exchanges with people who follow me, or people I follow, where reasoned fact-based discourse proves beneficial to both parties, as well as to those who are following the dialogue.

Before my Twitter account was suspended, I had close to 95,000 “followers.” I’d like to believe that the majority of these followed me because of the integrity and expertise I brought to the discussion.

Having someone hijack my identity and seek to resurrect my suspended account by appealing to those who had previously followed me can only be damaging to whatever “brand” I had possessed that managed to attract a following that was pushing 100,000. When one speaks of injury, one cannot ignore the fact that reputations can be injured just as much as the physical body.

Indeed, while a body can heal itself, reputations cannot. The fact that Twitter has facilitated the wrongful impersonation of me and my Twitter account makes it a party to whatever damage has been accrued due to this activity.

It is not as though Twitter can, or ever will, be held accountable for such actions. Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA), holds that internet platforms that host third-party content — think of tweets on Twitter—are not (with few exceptions) liable for what those third parties post or do.

Like the issue of Freedom of Speech, the concept of holding Twitter accountable for facilitating the fraudulent misappropriation of a Twitter user’s online identity is a legal bridge too far. Twitter, it seems, is a law unto itself.

My Twitter War came to an end today when I received an email from Twitter Support proclaiming that “Your account has been suspended and will not be restored because it was found to be violating the Twitter Terms of Service, specifically the Twitter Rules against participating in targeted abuse,” adding that “In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs on our platform, we do not tolerate abusive behavior. This includes inciting other people to engage in the targeted harassment of someone.”

This ruling, it seems, is not appealable.

At some point in time, the U.S. people, and those they  elect to higher office to represent their interests, need to bring Twitter in line with the ideals and values Americans collectively espouse when it comes to issues like free speech and online identity protection.

If Twitter is to be absolved of any responsibility for the content of ideas expressed on its platform, then it should be treated as a free speech empowerment zone and prohibited from interfering with speech that otherwise would be protected by law.

The U.S. Constitution assumes that society will govern itself when deciding the weight that should be put behind the words expressed by its citizens. Thus, in a nation that has outlawed slavery and racial discrimination, organizations like the Klu Klux Klan are allowed to demonstrate and give voice to their odious ideology.

America is a literal battlefield of ideas, and society is better for it. Giving voice to hateful thought allows society to rally against it and ultimately defeat it by confronting it and destroying it through the power of informed debate, discussion, and dialogue; censoring hateful speech does not defeat it, but rather drives it underground, where it can fester and grow in the alternative universe created because of censorship.

In many ways, my Twitter Wars represent a struggle for the future of America. If Twitter and other social media platforms are permitted to operate in a manner that does not reflect the ideals and values of the nation, and yet is permitted to mainstream itself so that the platform controls the manner in which the American people interact when it comes to consuming information and ideas, then the nation will lose touch with what it stands for, including the basic precepts of freedom of speech that define us as a people.

Mainstreaming censorship is never a good idea, and yet by giving Twitter a free hand to do just that, the American people are sowing the seeds of their own demise.

Huntergate 2.0 - The MSM Largely Blacked Out Coverage Of The Twitter File Drops

FoxNews |  CBS News, ABC News and NBC News did not cover the story, while CNN only mentioned it once.  While the files have dominated discussion on Twitter, a site known to facilitate discussions among members of the press, on-air coverage of the internal documents has been almost nonexistent. 

Since Friday, networks have only discussed the Twitter files for a combined total of 14 minutes. The term "Twitter files" has only been used six times on-air over the same span of time, according to a review of Grabien transcripts by Fox News Digital. 

The fifth installment of Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" Monday revealed that staffers believed that tweets written by former President Trump around the events of Jan. 6 had not actually violated its policies against incitement despite the company saying so at the time.

The Twitter Files began on Dec. 2 with Matt Taibbi revealing internal efforts to suppress the New York Post's Hunter Biden story in 2020.

Bari Weiss reported the second installment of the Twitter Files Thursday which revealed the company "blacklisting" or shadow banning certain tweets and users. 

Parts three and four were dedicated to outlining what led to Trump being removed from Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021. Musk reinstated Trump's Twitter account in November.

CBS News, ABC News, and NBC News have not discussed the Twitter files in the last week.  

"You look now, and they’re talking of course about Hunter Biden’s laptop. They’re in the middle of this Twitter thing that I swear I’ve tried to read through a thousand times and figure out exactly what they’re trying to prove, and if they’re proving anything, what, maybe that Twitter made decisions that they didn’t like," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said on Monday, briefly alluding to the files. 

The Monday evening newscasts were filled with discussions about Twitter, including criticisms of Musk and the re-release of Twitter Blue. However, the Twitter files never came up on the networks, except a brief reference on NBC News when a reporter discussed how former top Twitter official Yoel Roth was forced to leave his home after receiving death threats. 

Left-wing MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan was the one pundit who offered a full on-air block to the story Sunday, in which he argued that the Twitter files showed no evidence of a company bias against conservatives. 

"Do the Twitter files show evidence of left-wing bias on Twitter?," Hasan asked rhetorically. "No. In fact, the whole Twitter-discriminates-against conservatives-line that Elon or his spin merchants, conservative journalists, like to spout, is literally the opposite of the truth."

 

Musk Full Interview: An "Unfair Presentation Of Reality"

WaPo  | There are laws that govern how federal law enforcement can seek information from companies such as Twitter, including a mechanism for Twitter’s costs to be reimbursed. Twitter had traditionally provided public information on such requests (in the aggregate, not specifically) but hasn’t updated those metrics since Musk took over.

But notice that this is not how Carlson and Musk frame the conversation.

Once Musk gained control of Twitter, he began providing sympathetic writers with internal documents so they could craft narratives exposing the ways in which pre-Musk Twitter was complicit with the government and the left in nefarious ways. These were the “Twitter Files,” various presentations made on Twitter itself using cherry-picked and often misrepresented information.

One such presentation made an accusation similar to what Carlson was getting at: that the government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor user information. That was how Musk presented that particular “Twitter File,” the seventh in the series, though this wasn’t true. The right-wing author of the thread focused on government interactions with social media companies in 2020 aimed at uprooting 2016-style misinformation efforts. His thread suggested through an aggregation of carefully presented documents that the government aimed to censor political speech. The author also pointedly noted that Twitter had received more than $3 million in federal funding, hinting that it was pay-to-play for censorship.

The insinuations were quickly debunked. The funding was, in reality, reimbursement to Twitter for compliance with the government’s subpoenaed data requests, as allowed under the law. The government’s effort — as part of the Trump administration, remember — did not obviously extend beyond curtailing foreign interference and other illegalities. But the narrative, boosted by Musk, took hold. And then was presented back to Musk by Carlson.

Notice that Musk doesn’t say that government actors were granted full, unlimited access to Twitter communications in the way that Carlson hints. His responses to Carlson comport fully with a scenario in which the government subpoenas Twitter for information and gets access to it in compliance with federal law. Or perhaps doesn’t! In Twitter’s most recent data on government requests, 3 in 10 were denied.

Maybe Musk didn’t understand that relationship between law enforcement and Twitter before buying the company, as he appears not to have understood other aspects of the company. Perhaps he was one of those rich people who assumed that because DMs were private they were secure — something he, a tech guy, should not have assumed, but who knows.

It’s certainly possible that there was illicit access from some government entity to Twitter’s data stores, perhaps in an ongoing fashion. But Carlson is suggesting (and Musk isn’t rejecting) an apparent symbiosis, in keeping with the misrepresented Twitter Files #7.

It is useful for Musk to have people think that he is creating a new Twitter that’s centered on free speech and protection of individual communications. That was his value proposition in buying it, after all. And it is apparently endlessly useful to Carlson to present a scenario to his viewers in which he and they are the last bastions of American patriotism, fending off government intrusions large and small and the robot-assisted machinations of the political left.

In each case, something is being sold to the audience. In Musk’s case, it’s a safe, bold, right-wing-empathetic Twitter. In Carlson’s, it’s the revelation of a dystopic America that must be tracked through vigilant observation each weekday at 8 p.m.

In neither case is the hype obviously a fair presentation of reality.

I Have Never Used Twitter - But At Arms-Length - Its Goings-On Amuse Me

nymag |  While the sort of value Musk got out of Twitter — monetary, reputational, significant — is rare and has little to do with the most common experience of the platform, his relationship to the platform is aspirationally relatable to the people he interacts with in real life and on the site himself. Musk and his small cadre of sympathetic advisers narrowly but correctly understand Twitter as a tool that can be used by public figures to make money and acquire power. Venture capitalists use it because it helps them build public profiles but also because it helps them with deals. (Some pay good money for ghostwritten tweets!) Politicians use it because it lets them bypass the press — it’s hard to imagine Trump’s term in office without it, and its value to him was immense. Pundits and some journalists owe Twitter for raising their profiles, which has made coverage of this whole situation fraught and occasionally embarrassing. (In fairness, a direct and accurate way to describe this situation is that a very wealthy and powerful person has functionally purchased a tool that is extremely valuable to the function of the free press around the world.)

Among the 400,000 or so verified Twitter users, there are plenty who use Twitter in transactional or profitable ways without paying for advertising: brands, people who think of themselves as brands, people who have to be there for their jobs, people looking for jobs, people looking for dates, people running scams. There’s something to the idea that you can’t understand Twitter’s full value without taking into account its external influence — again, consider Trump, whose campaign paid for Facebook ads but who actually attempted to govern with Twitter — as well as the related observation that YouTube, a social network that creates and distributes immense value within its marketplace, in the form of creator payouts, seems to exert much less direct influence on the broader culture relative to its massive size and revenue. Most Americans don’t use Twitter at all. But they certainly hear about it.

It’s an insight! Is it a business plan? The vast majority of people who are on Twitter don’t derive much or any material value from the platform, which, according to Twitter’s most recent public filings, prices their attention to advertisers at about two dollars a month. The few that do will soon be given a choice to make based on admittedly imperfect information: Is whatever they’re doing there worth it? And will it stay that way? By asking heavily invested users to pay to remain or become verified and to remain or become visible — to maintain their brand, whatever it is — Twitter is treating this group of users almost exactly the way it has treated its other most important customers for years: advertisers. You get what you pay for. 

Jessica Lessin, founder and editor of subscription tech site the Information, tweeted, “Watching @elonmusk + Co take over Twitter is like watching a business school case study on how to make money on the internet. Amazing that at some level it is so basic.” Among the obvious lessons, she said, was charging power uses “what they are willing to pay.” And maybe it will really turn out to be so simple! Musk charges, blue checks pay, most everyone else sticks around, and then, uh, some other stuff happens and Twitter is worth its $44 billion price tag and more.

But whatever “@elonmusk + Co” believe they understand about Twitter’s captive upper echelons risks obscuring what makes the platform interesting, or even tolerable, to a much larger base of users. There’s been plenty of indignation from verified users about Musk’s ransom, and, whether Musk ends up calling their bluffs, they do have a point: Their work contributes to Twitter’s bottom line, and thousands — in some cases millions — of other users have explicitly expressed interest in their presence. I expect a lot of those users will still pay; I also expect that their conversion into de facto advertisers will make their relationship with the platform worse, and worth less, to them and their followers.

Twitter Files 8, 9 & 10

neuberger |   These are the latest Twitter Files since the first two sets were released. They extend the list collected here and here. (Emphasis added below.)

Twitter Files 8 — How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon’s Covert Online PsyOp Campaign
Lee Fang, December 20, 2022

An expanded version was published at The Intercept.

Despite promises to shut down covert state-run propaganda networks, Twitter docs show that the social media giant directly assisted the U.S. military’s influence operation. […]

Twitter Files 9 — Twitter and “Other Government Agencies”
Matt Taibbi, December 24, 2022

Also published as “Twitter Files Thread: The Spies Who Loved Twitter” at his Substack site.

The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.

2. The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors - from local cops to media to state governments.

3. Twitter had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track. Is today the DOD, and tomorrow the FBI? Is it the weekly call, or the monthly meeting? It was dizzying. […]

Twitter Files 10 — How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate
David Zwieg, December 26, 2022

2. So far the Twitter Files have focused on evidence of Twitter’s secret blacklists; how the company functioned as a kind of subsidiary of the FBI; and how execs rewrote the platform’s rules to accommodate their own political desires.

3. What we have yet to cover is Covid. […]

5. Internal files at Twitter that I viewed while on assignment for @TheFP showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes. […]

As I’ve said many times about these reports, if you build a gun, anyone can use it. Especially if its use is widely cheered. This is how we repealed the Fourth Amendment — by both parties approving and participating in its violation.

The next Republican president will use every power bequeathed by the last two Democrats. And when out-of-power Democrats complain, as they rightly should, much of the public will say “So the shoe’s on the other foot.”

The public will be wrong in that. But only because no party should have these powers, not because one of them should.

Why Do The Twitter Files Matter?

gizmodo  |  There is genuine news value to a story along the lines of “These Are the Emails That Led to Twitter Suppressing the Hunter Biden Laptop Story.” It is rare for a company as large and valuable as Twitter to account so thoroughly for wrongdoing, perceived or actual. The emails resemble the documents received in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. They detail internal drama at a company whose power is on the order of a government agency, maybe greater. BuzzFeed’s Katie Notopoulos tweeted, “Any news outlet would’ve loved to have this scoop! It’s just not a ‘scandal’ as teased.”

Twitter’s new owner considers it “the de facto public town square,” suggesting he believes in a level of public accountability. Again, not unlike a government agency. Though it is thrilling to receive once-hidden documents in response to a FOIA, it is also possible that those documents are boring, that they tell you what you already know. Such is the case with the Twitter files. We learned how Twitter came to its decision to block the Post’s story, but we did not learn a shocking new reason why. We knew Twitter suppressed the story before the release of these documents, and, for the most part, we knew who was involved.

Those people have since suffered professional punishment and left Twitter. Vijaya Gadde, the former chief legal officer who played a “key role” in the decision, according to Taibbi, was fired by Musk. Roth quit over Musk’s “dictatorial edict.” Borrman left before Musk arrived. Jack Dorsey, CEO at the time, is gone. When deciding to digitally quarantine the Post’s story, did those people act out of fealty to Joe Biden and the Democratic Party? Out of opposition to the Republican Party and hatred for Donald Trump? Out of distaste for the New York Post? Judging by the documents we have, we can’t say they did. Was it drastic interference in the political process and the press? It was. We already knew that.

Taibbi interviewed several anonymous ex-Twitter employees on the decision, all of whom expressed shock and outrage at the company’s actions: “Everyone knew this was f–ked,” he quotes one source. But since Taibbi doesn’t quote that expletive from the leaked emails, we can reason they included few or no quotes as sensational for his purpose. Ergo, we can deduce that those executives said little to support claims of nefarious purposes.

Outlets far more vested in the Hunter Biden story than Gizmodo also seem vexed by the release, and delivered the news below muted headlines. If the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop belongs to any one outlet, it belongs to the New York Post, which has never shied away from a blaring headline in its 221-year life. Yet the Post’s two Friday-night notifications about Musk’s actions were restrained. The first was a simple curtain-raiser about Musk’s promise: “Elon Musk to drop Twitter files on NY Post-Hunter Biden laptop censorship today.” The other was a “Read these documents”-style headline: “Hunter Biden laptop bombshell: Elon Musk’s Twitter drops Post censorship details.” Fox News’ push alert, delivered via Apple News, read “Elon Musk drops bombshell docs on Twitter censorship.”

Bombshell, bombshell, bombshell… what, exactly, is the bombshell? We’ve yet to hear it explode. Maybe we’ve heard too much about this story, and we’re missing the forest for the trees. Or maybe these documents detail a decision where the outcome was already well-documented.

On its website, the Post argues why you should care. Twitter is censoring things willy-nilly and concocting reasons to do as it goes along, its headline implies: “Hunter Biden laptop bombshell: Twitter invented reason to censor Post’s reporting.”

And yet, it is not shocking that Twitter used an ad hoc decision to moderate a piece of content from one of America’s most infamous tabloids. The social network had done that exact thing for years as it struggled with toxic users—violent white nationalists, virulent transphobes, harassers and bullies of all political stripes, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum et ad nauseam. The company never had a handle on content moderation, and it certainly doesn’t now, no matter how much Musk crows. Back in 2016, a lengthy investigative story published by Buzzfeed showed how Twitter had been struggling with abusive posters since its 2006 founding. Jack Dorsey and all his executives made things up as they went along, just like Musk.

Lastly, did the United States government run interference on a social media company for the former vice president? That would be shocking indeed, a bonafide bombshell. Musk himself said as much Friday: “Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is.” That is true! And Taibbi once believed that is what happened. In August 2022, he tweeted: “The laptop is by the far the secondary issue. The real problem is the FBI stepping in to cut distribution of true story [sic],” as pointed out by Columbia professor and New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufecki. But on Friday night, Taibbi rescinded the assertion: “There’s no evidence—that I’ve seen—of any government involvement in the laptop story.”

TIL That Compiling The Fuckery That Wokestan Puts On Public Display Is Extremist Hate Speech

Slate |  On Thursday night, the latest installment of what CEO Elon Musk has dubbed the “Twitter Files” was published on the social media platform, this time with a bombshell-promising thread from former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss, who now runs an online magazine called the Free Press. Weiss, like fellow Twitter Files author Matt Taibbi, was given access to internal documents of the company by its new owner in order to interrogate the content-moderation actions of Twitter’s leadership before Musk bought the company. Many extremely online right-wingers have long accused Twitter of being biased against conservatives. Weiss’ thread, like Taibbi’s from a week earlier, tells them just what they want to hear.

Weiss’ focus is on Twitter’s ability to deamplify accounts so that, for example, they are boosted less by the platform’s news-feed algorithm or are barred from trending topics or search (a policy Twitter has been open about, publicly describing it in a blog post in 2018). Among several examples, Weiss cites the platform’s treatment of Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account that remains active despite its connection to multiple acts of terror and intimidation from far-right extremists, including multiple bomb threats against a children’s hospital. This portrayal of Libs of TikTok as representative of accounts posting conservative views is alarming. The implication seems to be that platforms that seek to protect users from harassment and violence—which is what Libs of TikTok has repeatedly inspired—are engaging in anti-conservative bias when they do so. Weiss contrasted the treatment of Libs of TikTok by Twitter with a post harassing Libs of TikTok using personally identifying information that was not taken down by Twitter staff, which seems to have been an error on Twitter’s part. (All content moderation involves human error, and thus far Weiss has not demonstrated any sort of consistent pattern on any side.)

Weiss may be best known for a column introducing “the intellectual dark web,” a group of anti-progressive types fixated on the concept of cancel culture and the idea that liberals routinely censor conservative ideas. With the Twitter Files, she describes herself leading a team that has been given “broad and expanding access” to Twitter’s internal documents and communications. This group includes opinion writer Abigail Shrier, who is best known for writing Irreversible Damage, a book opposing transition for female-assigned people on the grounds that an unproven social contagion is the root cause of transmasculine identities.

It is unsurprising that this team highlighted the treatment of an account notorious for its anti-trans activity. But Libs of TikTok goes far beyond expressing political opinions about transgender issues. That would certainly be allowed under Twitter’s policies, which exist to curb harassment, violence, and hate speech, not opinions. In fact, Libs of TikTok has repeatedly highlighted specific individuals, events, and institutions with inflammatory language, often falsely suggesting they are guilty of heinous acts against young children. The account’s spotlight has repeatedly resulted in harassment and violent threats toward the individuals involved, in a process typically referred to as stochastic terrorism. Those targeted include doctors and hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for youth, teachers and schools with inclusive policies, and all-ages or youth-focused drag events.

Contrary to the extremist rhetoric, gender-affirming care is supported by all mainstream medical organizations as potentially lifesaving for young people with gender dysphoria. It is also perfectly possible to speak with children about the existence of transgender people and about families headed by same-sex parents in an age-appropriate, nonsexual way. All-ages drag events are places where kids can see members of the drag community in elaborate full-body costumes providing innocent entertainment in the name of inclusivity and fun, and even adult drag shows are raunchy rather than sexual in nature. However, the issues with Libs of TikTok and the Twitter Files are fundamentally not about anyone’s opinion on gender-affirming care, diversity in schools, or drag. They’re about the conflation of stochastic terrorism with conservative opinions, and the refusal of many conservatives to recognize or respect any line drawn between the two.

Armed white supremacist gangs seem to closely monitor Libs of TikTok’s posts to find new targets, based on the multiple incidents associated with those named on its Twitter feed. Account owner Chaya Raichik, meanwhile, has done nothing to attempt to calm, dissuade, change how she communicates, or otherwise bring an end to the pattern of violence and near-violence driven by her posts. These often include misinformation as well as a conflation of healthy, age-appropriate discussions of diversity with child abuse. Instead of seeking to end the violence directed at the targets she chooses, Raichik and Libs of TikTok are constantly toeing the line, attempting to stop short of what is officially considered either harassment or hate speech, and occasionally catching a ban when Twitter decides that line was crossed.

Huntergate: The Twitter Files

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES

2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.

3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.

4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.

5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”

6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.

7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.

8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”

9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:

10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:

11. This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/s…

The FBI Responds To The Twitter Files

dailycaller |  The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a new statement Wednesday following the latest “Twitter Files” dump.

The FBI accused the “Twitter Files” release as an attempt “to discredit” the agency by disclosing information on the FBI’s correspondence with Twitter in October 2020. Journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that the agency warned the previous executives at Twitter of a “hack-and-leak” by “state actors” surrounding the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop to influence the 2020 presidential election.

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public,” the statement began.

“It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency,” the agency concluded.

The “Twitter Files” revealed that the FBI and Twitter worked closely in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. Internal documents published Monday found that the FBI paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million between October 2019 and February 2021 for managing its financial burdens caused while complying with the agency’s requests. (RELATED: Twitter Gave ‘Special Protection’ To Pentagon Propaganda Accounts, Docs Show)

Taibbi reported he found no evidence that the FBI had involvement in Twitter’s suppression of the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden’s laptop, though new reports released by author Michael Shellenberger indicated they may have, in fact, been involved.

Former FBI Deputy General Counsel James Baker argued Twitter’s then-head of trust and safety Yoel Roth’s claim that the Post’s report did not violate the social media site’s policies on October 14, according to Shellenberger. The agency had already been in possession of Biden’s laptop since December 2019, indicating that the agency knew the Post reported the story accurately.

Musk announced Dec. 6 that he fired Baker for allegedly withholding the release of documents related to the suppression of Biden’s laptop.

The agency also flagged certain tweets for Twitter to remove from the platform, the files found. Some agents were even employed at the social media company.

Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the incoming House Oversight Chair, said Tuesday that Congress should block funding of the FBI until it disclosed the alleged involvement in Big Tech censorship.

“In the beginning, I thought that there were probably two or three rogue employees who were orchestrating this cover up of the Hunter Biden laptop story, but now we know the FBI had a division of at least 80 agents,” Comer said. “We also know that the FBI paid Twitter over $3 million for their time, all the time they took over the past couple of years in telling them who to suppress, who to ban. You know, it’s just things that the government has no role in.”

“The FBI was never granted the authority to create any type of disinformation task force that policed the social media sites. Now this we know with Twitter,” he continued. “We’ve heard similar stories from Zuckerberg. Who knows what went on at YouTube and Google. This is an agency that’s out of control.”

 

I'm Not Leaving Twitter

WaPo  |  If there’s a group that should be fleeing Twitter, one would think it would be Black women. An analysis by Amnesty International and Element AI found that Black women were 84 percent more likely than White women to receive abusive and hateful tweets. At this point in my career, I’ve been threatened with rape and called the n-word more times than I can count. I’ve had authoritarian and supposedly liberal governments attack me online. And that doesn’t include the tweets from professional, blue-check-marked figures who have condescended to me and belittled my work or expertise.

Twitter has always been a snake pit catering to the worst of human impulses. It rewards the most extreme viewpoints. And it has reinforced our society’s race and gender caste divides, making the space safest for White people at the top (especially men) and more brutal for Black, Brown and LGBTQ people at the bottom.

Yet lately, it is mostly White Twitter migrants who have flocked to places such as Mastodon to escape Musk.

Here’s the thing: In real life, Black women have not had the privilege of retreating every time things get tough or our spaces get taken over by rich, obnoxious White men. For years, via Twitter, Black women have been sounding the alarm about having targets on our backs. We’ve protested, we’ve resisted. Yet it took Musk, the rise of blatant antisemitism and elite men feeling uncomfortable to finally prompt more widespread protests and, now, an exodus.

I agree that staying on Twitter to engage in battles with trolls isn’t “resistance.” But building community and mobilizing resources are.

Twitter is probably the only global digital platform where elite institutions and powerful individuals share space with marginalized people, including the working and lower classes. It has the power to quickly focus enormous amounts of attention on crucial issues.

I’ve seen people use Twitter to raise funds for mutual aid groups and disaster recovery. Disabled people have called Twitter a lifeline of networking and support. And just recently, the case of Shanquella Robinson, who was killed in Mexico while on a trip with friends, would not have gotten mainstream attention if it weren’t for Black Twitter.

Twitter hashtags have been used to help organize, mobilize and amplify the biggest peaceful resistance movements on the planet — movements that, by the numbers, have dwarfed white supremacist rallies and the raging crowd at the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Twitter has also been a powerful tool for accountability, especially for Black voices challenging harmful narratives out of major media institutions. And on a small, personal scale, it can be revolutionary, allowing individuals to form life-giving relationships with people they otherwise never would have met.

I know Twitter is no substitute for on-the-ground activism and deep engagement with weighty problems. And it’s always risky to become dependent on a platform one doesn’t own. But as the times ahead get more challenging, the last thing liberals should do is abandon the potent tools at their disposal — even if those tools aren’t perfect.

People on the right know well how to exploit every instrument of social and cultural power. Sadly, the left seems not to have figured this out. Liberal inaction and retreat do not bode well for anti-racist allyship or “resistance.”

So yes, I will go down with the Twitter ship. I’m not interested in hyperfocusing on the antics of one rich man. Instead, I’ll train my attention on the energy, creativity and beauty of the communities that have made Twitter my digital home for the past decade. The racists, fascists and trolls haven’t stopped me before. We shouldn’t let them stop us now.

Is Twitter Actually An Intelligence Gathering And Propaganda Tool?

CTH  |  Once you change your reference point and review the Twitter File release from a different perspective, things make sense.  DHS doesn’t operate on the backbone of Twitter, in this scenario Twitter is operating on the backbone of DHS.  The information and content on Twitter exist, or not, by the permission and authority of the national security state, DHS.

Influencing public opinion take on the priority dimension.  Created narratives, established by media partners, can be enhanced or throttled (think Russiagate). Public perceptions can be uplifted or deemphasized.  Political candidates can be boosted or dismissed.

Control over the public conversation is not simply in the hands of the Twitter ‘safety council’ executives, the platform content is shaped by the guiding hand of the controlling interest – the government.  Under this scenario the defining of disinformation, misinformation or malinformation by DHS/CISA takes on a new level of influence.

So why did they permit it to be sold?  Again, control.

Every non-Twitter, non-DHS controlled, information and discussion site is a watering down of the influence of Twitter.  The inability to influence a platform like Truth Social would be particularly troublesome.  So, launder the handling of the DHS platform to Elon Musk and create the illusion of a refresh.

Twitter 2.0 now rebrands with a renewed ability to influence.  Not accidentally, a pro DeSantis shaping is part of the objective.  In the eyes of the control state, Rumble and Truth Social represent the threat of Donald Trump. Meanwhile Twitter and YouTube represent the controlled alternative, Ron DeSantis.

There are trillions at stake.

The ‘magic’ inside Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop is the intelligence community ability to shape, mold and create the illusion of choice.  Remember, shaping opinion is the goal and within that dynamic some voices must be removed, throttled and controlled, while other voices must be amplified.

♦ Elevator Speech: Twitter is to the U.S. government as TikTok is to China. The overarching dynamic is the need to control public perceptions and opinions. DHS has been in ever increasing control of Twitter since the public-private partnership was formed in 2011/2012.  Jack Dorsey lost control and became owner emeritus; arguably, Elon Musk has no idea, well, at least no more of an idea than he does about the financial underwriting of the purchase itself.

The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, influencing public opinion, and then ultimately controlling the outcomes.

Tens of millions of Brazilians are on the streets in protest of their fraudulent election.  Do you see those voices on Twitter?

The Twitter social media company residing on the backbone of DHS would help explain why.

The Twitter Drop Was An Orchestrated Subjective Disclosure

NYTimes |  It was, on the surface, a typical example of reporting the news: a journalist obtains internal documents from a major corporation, shedding light on a political dispute that flared in the waning days of the 2020 presidential race.

But when it comes to Elon Musk and Twitter, nothing is typical.

The so-called Twitter Files, released Friday evening by the independent journalist Matt Taibbi, set off a firestorm among pundits, media ethicists and lawmakers in both parties. It also offered a window into the fractured modern landscape of news, where a story’s reception is often shaped by readers’ assumptions about the motivations of both reporters and subjects.

The tempest began when Mr. Musk teased the release of internal documents that he said would reveal the story behind Twitter’s 2020 decision to restrict posts linking to a report in the New York Post about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, Hunter.

Mr. Musk, who has accused tech companies of censorship, then pointed readers to the account of Mr. Taibbi, an iconoclast journalist who shares some of Mr. Musk’s disdain for the mainstream news media. Published in the form of a lengthy Twitter thread, Mr. Taibbi’s report included images of email exchanges among Twitter officials deliberating how to handle dissemination of the Post story on their platform.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi framed the exchanges as evidence of rank censorship and pernicious influence by liberals. Many others — even some ardent Twitter critics — were less impressed, saying the exchanges merely showed a group of executives earnestly debating how to deal with an unconfirmed news report that was based on information from a stolen laptop.

And as with many modern news stories, the Twitter Files were quickly weaponized in service of a dizzying number of pre-existing arguments.

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who often accuses liberals of stifling speech, made the claim that the “documents show a systemic violation of the First Amendment, the largest example of that in modern history.” House Republicans, who have called for an investigation into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, asserted with no evidence that the report showed systemic collusion between Twitter and aides to Joe Biden, who was then the Democratic nominee. (Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive at the time, later reversed the decision to block the Post story and told Congress it had been a mistake.)

Former Twitter executives, who have lamented Mr. Musk’s chaotic stewardship of the company, cited the documents’ release as yet another sign of recklessness. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, said that publicizing unredacted documents — some of which included the names and email addresses of Twitter officials — was “a fundamentally unacceptable thing to do” and placed people “in harm’s way.”

 

Will Khazarian Mafiosi Pimp-Slap Elon The Way They Pimp-Slapped Kanye?

mediamatters |  Considering that ads reportedly accounted for 90% of Twitter’s revenue, it is clear that the power to hold Musk accountable if he rolls back the platform’s protections against harassment, abuse, and disinformation lies in the hands of Twitter’s top advertisers. 

According to Pathmatics, a firm that tracks digital spending, the 20 companies that spent the most on Twitter advertising since January 1 paid the platform an estimated $358 million combined. These companies include:

• Home Box Office Inc. (HBO)
• Mondelez International
• Amazon
• IBM
• PepsiCo Inc.
• Best Buy Co. Inc.
• Apple Inc.
• The Coca-Cola Company
• Capital One Financial Corporation
• Procter & Gamble
• Unilever
• Merck & Co. (Merck Sharp & Dohme MSD)
• Disney
• CenturyLink (Lumen Technologies Inc.)
• Comcast Corporation
• Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook Inc.)
• Google
• Verizon
• Anheuser-Busch
• CBS (CBS.com)

In the potential scenario that Musk wields Twitter to promote his red-pilled ideological agenda, these 20 companies will be funding and lending support to a platform that fuels right-wing hatred and extremism. 

Under Musk, Twitter is set to restore Trump to the platform and become a cesspool of right-wing misinformation

In May, Musk said that the decision to permanently ban Trump from the platform was “morally bad,” and that he would reverse the decision, even though Twitter and other platforms saw decreases in misinformation after banning him. If Musk reinstates Trump’s account, Trump could return to the platform and spread self-serving misinformation and hateful rhetoric to more mainstream audiences. Numerous other extremists could also rejoin the platform under Musk’s leadership.

When news first broke that Musk had plans to purchase Twitter, banned users including former Trump aide Steve Bannon, Christian nationalist Rep. Marjorie Tayor Greene (R-GA), white nationalist political commentator Nick Fuentes, and numerous QAnon-supporting users celebrated the move. Election denier and “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, who is also currently banned from Twitter, called Musk’s prospective ownership of the platform “the most consequential thing I’ve seen since the election of Trump.” Extreme anti-trans figures also celebrated by begging the billionaire to bring back accounts suspended for spreading hatred and bigotry.

It is no mistake that extremists see Musk as their ally: the Tesla CEO has historically used his own Twitter account to amplify right-wing conspiracy theories, misinformation, and discriminatory rhetoric. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk has praised Musk for “dispensing red pills on every corner.” 

Additionally, right-wing media have celebrated the pending deal and suggested that once Musk owns Twitter, he will exact revenge on their behalf for nonexistent bias against conservatives on the platform. Fox News host Sean Hannity advised Musk to fire “most, if not all” Twitter employees and Fox’s Tucker Carlson absurdly compared Musk's Twitter takeover to the fall of the Berlin Wall, while One America News host Addison Smith reveled that “Elon Musk has literally bought the libs. He owns them now.”

When Law And Governance Are Used To Suffocate And Suppress The Truth

alexberenson  |  The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter. But if the companies are acting on behalf of the federal government they can become “state actors” that must allow free speech and debate, just as the government does.

Previous efforts to file state action lawsuits against the government and social media companies for working together to ban users have failed. Courts have universally held that people who have been banned have not shown the specific demands from government officials that are necessary to support state action claims.

In my case, though, federal officials appear to have gone far beyond generically encouraging Twitter to support Covid vaccines or discourage “misinformation” (i.e. information that the government does not like).

Instead, top officials targeted me personally.

Andrew Slavitt, senior advisor to President Biden’s Covid response team, complained specifically about me, according to a Twitter employee in another Slack conversation discussing the White House meeting.

“They really wanted to know about Alex Berenson,” the employee wrote. “Andy Slavitt suggested they had seen data viz [visualization] that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”

According to an interview he gave to the Washington Post in June 2021, Slavitt worked directly with the most powerful officials in the federal government, including Ron Klain, President Biden’s chief of staff, and Biden himself.

The Slack conversations also show the pressure Twitter employees felt internally to respond to the government’s questions about whether the company was doing enough to suppress “misinformation” about Covid and the vaccines. An employee writes that the questions at the meeting were “pointed” but “mercifully, we had answers.”

At the time, employees said internally they did not believe I had broken the company’s rules. “I’ve taken a pretty close look at his account and I don’t think any of it’s violative,” an employee wrote on the Slack conversation a few minutes after the "really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off.”

But the pressure on Twitter to take action against me and other mRNA vaccine skeptics steadily increased after that April meeting, and especially in July and August, as the government began to consider the unprecedented step of mandating Covid vaccines for adults.

On July 16, 2021, President Biden complained publicly that social media companies were “killing people” by encouraging vaccine hesitancy. A few hours after Biden’s comment, Twitter suspended my account for the first time.

On August 28, 2021, barely four months after the meeting, Twitter banned me - for a tweet that it has now acknowledged “should not have led to my suspension.”

I obtained the message and other documents related to Twitter’s censorship of me as part of my lawsuit against Twitter over my August 2021 ban. I filed the suit in federal court in San Francisco in December 2021. Twitter and I settled it last month, when Twitter restored my account and acknowledged it had erred in banning me.