All That Twitters Was Not Told
A couple of weeks ago an acquaintance of mine sat down next to me at the VFW bar. We hadn’t seen each other for a while and chatted about what was going on in our worlds. “Bob” (not his real name) is retired from the Federal government and has some rather liberal views. He’s no radical for sure, but his politics differ from mine.
Now my approach to folks who have a different view of the political world is to have a polite discussion of the facts. I know that I probably won’t change their mind and they’re probably not going to change mine. So, there’s nothing to be gained by yelling, name calling, browbeating, etc. Those actions just turn friends into enemies.
So, our chat on this January afternoon mostly centered on the price of food and gas, and a few other pain points we all have. Then I brought up a subject that I was truly interested in his point of view: “The Twitter Files.”
Bob looked at me like I had two heads. “What’s that, when Elon Musk bought Twitter?” I was dumbfounded - he didn’t know. What I thought was a national story with serious implications for several agencies of the Federal government just hadn’t been reported in much of the national press. The newspapers that Bob read and the TV networks he watched never devoted any time to the subject.
So, in the interest of informing my readers, here are some of the revelations. Perhaps when you read these, you’ll see why they may not have been reported in the mainstream press.
And, at this point I’d like to emphasize that most of the censorship and malfeasance was directed at conservative individuals and publications.
If you are left-of-center politically, you may cheer these actions by the government. But I’d like to caution you from that line of thinking. If bad actors can censor conservatives, there’s nothing to stop them from censoring liberals if one day the censors don’t like what liberals are saying.
Be careful what you wish for.
Over several weeks in November and December 2022, Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk granted several journalists access to internal Twitter documents and communications. These documents revealed a shocking pattern of censorship and collusion between Twitter employees, politicians, and career bureaucrats at federal government agencies like the FBI, DOJ and DHS. Known collectively as the “Twitter Files,” the series of bombshells confirmed long-held suspicions about the extent to which Twitter – and likely other social media companies as well – work to silence critics and censor stories that may be damaging to the government and politicians.
Asked about his motivation behind the decision to release these communications, Mr. Musk said it was necessary to maintain trust. “I think it’s important – If we’re going to be trusted in the future – to clear the decks for stuff that’s happened in the past,” he said.
On the contents of the reporting, Mr. Musk was damning. “Almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true,” he said. “Is there a conspiracy theory about twitter that didn’t turn out to be true? So far, they’ve all turned out to be true, and if not, then more true than people thought.”
According to Elon Musk, revelations about the FBI’s involvement in encouraging censorship were most alarming. As the Twitter Files have revealed, the FBI had a Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), with as many as 80 members responsible for flagging content and requesting it be taken down.
“The FBI stuff is pretty intense,” Mr. Musk said. “[They flagged] content that’s got nothing to do with terrorism, or anything. They literally flagged satire – maybe they didn’t get the joke, I don’t know.”
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Twitter Files Part 1: Twitter employees questioned justifications for censoring Hunter Biden laptop story
Background: The laptop was dropped off on April 12, 2019 at a Wilmington, Delaware repair shop. The laptop and an external hard drive were never picked up and, after observing its contents, the shop owner contacted the FBI. The FBI took possession of the laptop and hard drive in October 2019. After the New York Post ran an expose about the laptop in October 2020, USA Today reported: A tabloid got a trove of data on Hunter Biden from Rudy Giuliani. Now, the FBI is probing a possible disinformation campaign. This occurred a year after the FBI had the laptop in its possession and being able to thoroughly analyze its content.
But later in October 2020, The Daily Wire reported: DOJ, FBI Confirm Hunter Biden Laptop Is NOT Part Of ‘Russian Disinformation Campaign,’ Reports Say.
Regardless of the evidence, Twitter blocked the NY Post story and locked White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany out of her Twitter account, citing “hacked materials” policy, which Twitter management knew was unjustifiable.
On February 1, 2023, Hunter Biden admits that the laptop is his.
Part 2: Twitter had secret blacklists
Twitter staff created “blacklists” that not only caused conservative opinions to be filtered out, but also tweets by eminent physicians that questioned or were critical of Covid-19 policies.
It’s been revealed that Twitter secretly added high-profile conservative users to a “Trends Blacklist” which limited the visibility of certain accounts and topics. https://t.co/i2JlxuSTCf
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) December 9, 2022
Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton says there should be further inquiries after the ˜Twitter Files” showed evidence that Twitter perverted their platform for political gain during the 2020 presidential election. https://t.co/tPl9orKhMu
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) December 9, 2022
Some Twitter users who didn’t violate Twitter rules were blocked anyway.
The Twitter Files Part Six – FBI Collusion
In Part Six of the Twitter Files, released on December 16, journalist Matt Taibbi recounts how “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.”
“Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth,” Taibbi writes. “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.” In a clear sign of just how closely the FBI worked with Twitter’s censorship team, one communication from an FBI source to a Twitter executive explicitly said that Twitter employees should be allowed to view classified information.
At the behest of bureaucrats at the FBI, DHS, and other government agencies, Twitter “content moderators” often scoured “flagged” accounts to look for any reason to ban them. In many cases, obscure users with almost no followers were banned for spreading supposed “election misinformation,” mainly accounts that were clearly satirical in nature and were posting what were obviously jokes.
There’s so much more. If you want to get angrier, here are links to more of the “Twitter Files.”
The Twitter Files Parts Three and Four – Censoring “Election Denial”
The Twitter Files Part Five – Deplatforming a Sitting President
The Twitter Files Part Seven – Memory-Holing the Hunter Biden Laptop
The Twitter Files Part Eight – The Pentagon’s Secret PsyOp Campaign
The Twitter Files Part Nine – More Federal Agencies Caught in Collusion Scandal
The Twitter Files Part Ten – How Twitter Rigged the COVID Debate
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“Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.”
- Randy Pausch, “The Last Lecture”
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Spring Has Sprung, The Grass Is Riz, I Wonder Where The Birdies Is
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Good one, again not short winded,