Twitter Files 6 Details Relationship With FBI
The sixth installment of Twitter files revealed details about the social media service’s integrated relationship with the FBI.
On Thursday, journalist Matt Taibbi released a series of tweets that proved the agency treated Twitter as a “subsidiary.” #TwitterFiles6 further confirms our July column that described Twitter as an agent of the government.
The documents also confirm that in January 2020, law enforcement organizations began flagging numerous accounts for alleged harmful “misinformation.” As expected, Twitter dutifully responded.
Specifically, Twitter Files 6 notes that a “surprisingly large number” of the FBI’s requests asked the social media service to act on what it considers “election disinformation.” This request included accounts that engaged in satire.
“Every day, the #TwitterFiles reveal more about how the government collects, analyzes and flags your social media content. Twitter’s contact with the FBI has been constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” Taibbi tweeted.
“Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were more than 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Security Chief Yoel Roth … a surprisingly high number were requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action against election misinformation , who even joke tweets from low-follower accounts.”
Screenshot via New York Post.Simply put, the FBI infiltrated Twitter before the 2020 presidential election. Another conspiracy changed reality. One of just many.
Like Facebook
The FBI also began a relationship with Facebook. Twitter was not alone.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan in July that Facebook suppressed the spread of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 after an in-person visit from the FBI.
Here, Zuckerberg explained why Meta applied “reduced distribution,” the practice of placing a particular story lower in news feeds, to the Hunter Biden laptop exposé:
“The background here is basically the FBI, I think basically came to us — some people on our team and were like, ‘Hey, um, just so you know, like, you need to be on high alert. There was the – we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We’re aware that there’s basically going to be some sort of dump – it’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’”
“We just kind of thought, Hey look, if the FBI, which, you know, I still consider a legitimate institution in this country, it’s a very professional law enforcement. They come to us and tell us that we should be on our guard about something. Then I want to take it seriously,” Zuckerberg said on the “Joe Rogan Experience.”
The FBI interfered in the election based on Facebook. And it empowered Twitter to limit the spread of information it didn’t want public.
We are waiting to find out how the FBI affected Google in 2022.
Power Dynamic
Our column last week detailed how Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform breaks down the unconstitutional relationship between Twitter and the government. Finally, Twitter provided the government with a First Amendment solution.
In short:
“This describes a clear violation of the First Amendment. Defenders of censorship have long rebutted such claims with the rebuttal that Twitter is a private company, and thus the First Amendment need not apply to its rulings. While this was previously correct, the relationship between Big Tech and Washington undermines this defense.
“The published communications prove that Biden officials have strong-armed a communications service to carry out the authoritarian measures that the First Amendment prohibits the government from exercising. Suppressing critics at the behest of the White House makes a private company a “state actor,” whose targets can sue for limiting First Amendment rights.
You can read the full column below:
Twitter files to six
Through six installments, Twitter files provided definitive proof that previous ownership engaged in politically motivated censorship, colluded with the government, banned conservative accounts and ruled on behalf of the FBI.
But at least the FBI didn’t ask Twitter to suspend leftist accounts for doxing the location of a private jet.
That would have posed a threat to “the future of the free press” and “democracy,” say CNN’s Oliver Darcy and Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint.
An FB representative tried to defend the agency in a response to Fox News Digital Friday:
“The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malicious influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert or criminal activities. Private sector entities make independent decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after being notified by the FBI.”
Twitter 1.0 was by definition a private company. Yet such a description hardly does justice to a service that has worked as an arm for the DNC, Biden administration and the FBI — all of which Twitter files have proven.
