{"id":7815,"date":"2022-12-12T19:20:32","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T19:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astheworldturns.org\/wdp\/?p=7815"},"modified":"2023-07-31T21:44:12","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T21:44:12","slug":"the-twitter-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astheworldturns.org\/wdp\/2022\/12\/12\/the-twitter-files\/","title":{"rendered":"The Twitter Files"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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THE TWITTER FILES: Part 1<\/a><\/h3>
What you\u2019re about to read are the combined installments of a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.<\/div>
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The \u201cTwitter Files\u201d tell an incredible story from inside one of the world\u2019s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.\u00a0<\/div>
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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.\u00a0<\/div>
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In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people \u201cthe power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.\u201d\u00a0<\/div>
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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.\u00a0<\/div>
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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.\u00a0<\/div>
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By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: \u201cMore to review from the Biden team.\u201d The reply would come back: \u201cHandled.\u201d<\/div>
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Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:<\/div>
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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:\u00a0<\/p>

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.<\/p><\/div>

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Twitter Profile: Summary<\/strong>Twitter organization profile. Contributions in the 2022 cycle: $185,267. Lobbying in 2022: $970,000. Outside Spending in the 2022 cycle: $0.<\/a>https:\/\/www.opensecrets.org\/orgs\/twitter\/summary?id=D000067113<\/small><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you\u2019re about to read. However, it\u2019s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.\u00a0
Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let’s jump forward\u00a0<\/p>

The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story\u00a0<\/p>

On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden\u2019s abandoned laptop:<\/p>

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Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad<\/strong>Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine in\u2026<\/a>https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/10\/14\/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad\/<\/small><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be \u201cunsafe.\u201d They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.\u00a0<\/div>
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White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: \u201cAt least pretend to care for the next 20 days.\u201d<\/div>
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This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms\/policy teams, who had little\/less control over moderation, and the safety\/trust teams:<\/div>
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Strom\u2019s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company\u2019s \u201chacked materials\u201d policy:
https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190717143909\/https:\/\/help.twitter.com\/en\/rules-and-policies\/hacked-materials<\/a><\/p>

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Distribution of hacked material policy<\/strong>We don\u2019t condone attempts to compromise or infiltrate computer systems for malicious purposes.<\/a>https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190717143909\/https:\/\/help.twitter.com\/en\/rules-and-policies\/hacked-materials<\/small><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
Although several sources recalled hearing about a \u201cgeneral\u201d warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there\u2019s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem…\u00a0<\/div>
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The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.\u00a0<\/div>
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\u201cThey just freelanced it,\u201d is how one former employee characterized the decision. \u201cHacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn\u2019t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.\u201d\u00a0<\/div>
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You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, \u201cI’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe\u201d:<\/div>
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By this point \u201ceveryone knew this was fucked,\u201d said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of\u2026 continuing to err.<\/div>
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Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, \u201cCan we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?\u201d<\/div>
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To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because \u201ccaution is warranted\u201d:<\/div>
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A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know\/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:\u00a0<\/div>
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In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the \u201cbacklash re speech.\u201d Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.<\/div>
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Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights:<\/div>
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Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files:<\/div>
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Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter\/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress \u2013 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from \u201cthe House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu\u2019s office.\u201d<\/div>
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NetChoice lets Twitter know a \u201cblood bath\u201d awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it’s a “tipping point,” complaining tech has \u201cgrown so big that they can\u2019t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.\u201d<\/div>
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Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as \u201ctech\u2019s Access Hollywood moment\u201d:35.Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as \u201ctech\u2019s Access Hollywood moment\u201d:<\/div>
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Twitter files continued:
“THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN\u2019T ABSOLUTE\u201d
Szabo\u2019s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers\u2019 attitudes. They want \u201cmore\u201d moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it’s “not absolute”<\/div>
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An amazing subplot of the Twitter\/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.\u00a0
While reviewing Gadde’s emails, I saw a familiar name – my own. Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident<\/div>
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There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum\u00a0
The problem with the “hacked materials” ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official\/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a “whirlwind” 24-hour, company-wide mess.<\/div>
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It’s been a whirlwind 96 hours for me, too. There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right.\u00a0
Good night, everyone. Thanks to all those who picked up the phone in the last few days.\u00a0<\/div><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Twitter Files PART 1 Supplemental<\/a><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Posted by Matt Taibbi<\/a> December 6th<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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On Friday, the first installment of the Twitter files was published here (twitter). We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay.
We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of \u201cTwitter Files\u201d \u2013 without knowledge of new management.
The process for producing the \u201cTwitter Files\u201d involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated.
Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @bariweiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim. When she called to ask \u201cJim\u2019s\u201d last name, the answer came back: \u201cJim Baker.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cMy jaw hit the floor,\u201d says Weiss.<\/p>

The first batch of files both reporters received was marked, \u201cSpectra Baker Emails.\u201d<\/p>

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Baker is a controversial figure. He has been something of a Zelig of FBI controversies dating back to 2016, from the Steele Dossier to the Alfa-Server mess. He resigned in 2018 after an investigation into leaks to the press.<\/p>

The news that Baker was reviewing the \u201cTwitter files\u201d surprised everyone involved, to say the least. New Twitter chief Elon Musk acted quickly to \u201cexit\u201d Baker Tuesday.<\/p>

Reporters resumed searches through Twitter Files material \u2013 a lot of it \u2013 today. The next installment of \u201cThe Twitter Files\u201d will appear .<\/p>

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The Twitter Files Part 2<\/a><\/h3>

TWITTER\u2019S SECRET BLACKLISTS.<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>


<\/span>A new <\/span>#TwitterFiles <\/span>investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics\u2014all in secret, without informing users.
<\/span>Twitter once had a mission \u201cto give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.\u201d Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.<\/span><\/p>

Take, for example, Stanford\u2019s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (<\/span>@DrJBhattacharya<\/span>) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a \u201cTrends Blacklist,\u201d which prevented his tweets from trending.<\/span><\/p>


Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (<\/span>@dbongino<\/span>), who at one point was slapped with a \u201cSearch Blacklist.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

<\/p>

Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (<\/span>@charliekirk11<\/span>) to \u201cDo Not Amplify.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

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Twitter denied that it does such things. In 2018, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: \u201cWe do not shadow ban.\u201d They added: \u201cAnd we certainly don\u2019t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.\u201d
<\/span>What many people call \u201cshadow banning,\u201d Twitter executives and employees call \u201cVisibility Filtering\u201d or \u201cVF.\u201d Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.
<\/span>\u201cThink about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It\u2019s a very powerful tool,\u201d one senior Twitter employee told us.
<\/span>\u201cVF\u201d refers to Twitter\u2019s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet\u2019s discoverability; to block select users\u2019 posts from ever appearing on the \u201ctrending\u201d page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches.<\/span><\/p>

All without users\u2019 knowledge.
<\/span>\u201cWe control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,\u201d one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.
<\/span>The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 “cases” a day.
<\/span>But there existed a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company\u2019s policy on paper. That is the \u201cSite Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,\u201d known as \u201cSIP-PES.\u201d
<\/span>This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.
<\/span>This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. \u201cThink high follower account, controversial,\u201d another Twitter employee told us. For these \u201cthere would be no ticket or anything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was <\/span>@libsoftiktok<\/span>\u2014an account that was on the \u201cTrends Blacklist\u201d and was designated as \u201cDo Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.”<\/span><\/p>

<\/p>

The account\u2014which Chaya Raichik began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers\u2014was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik says. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week.<\/span><\/p>

Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter\u2019s policy against \u201chateful conduct.\u201d
But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that \u201cLTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.” See here:<\/p>

<\/p>

The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of \u201chospitals and medical providers\u201d by insinuating \u201cthat genderaffirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.\u201d
Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes.
When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: “We reviewed the reported content, and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.” No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up.<\/p>

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In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects. Here\u2019s Yoel Roth, Twitter\u2019s then Global Head of Trust & Safety, in a direct message to a colleague in early 2021:<\/p>

<\/p>

Six days later, in a direct message with an employee on the Health, Misinformation, Privacy, and Identity research team, Roth requested more research to support expanding \u201cnon-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification\/visibility filtering.\u201d<\/p>

<\/p>

Roth wrote: \u201cThe hypothesis underlying much of what we\u2019ve implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure, and limiting the spread\/virality of content is a good way to do that.\u201d
He added: \u201cWe got Jack on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near
term, but we\u2019re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations \u2013 especially for other policy domains.\u201d
There is more to come on this story, which was reported by @AbigailShrier @ShellenbergerMD @NellieBowles @IsaacGrafstein and the team The Free Press @TheFP.
Keep up with this unfolding story here and at our brand new website:<\/p>

http:\/\/thefp.com\/<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The authors have broad and expanding access to Twitter\u2019s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.
We’re just getting started on our reporting. Documents cannot tell the whole story here. A big thank you to everyone who has spoken to us so far. If you are a current or former Twitter employee, we’d love to hear from you. Please write to: tips@thefp.com<\/p>

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The Twitter Files part 3:<\/a><\/h3>

THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP<\/strong><\/h4>

Part One: October 2020-January 6th<\/em><\/p>

The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th…
We\u2019ll show you what hasn\u2019t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies.
This first installment covers the period before the election through January 6th. Tomorrow, @ShellenbergerMD will detail the chaos inside Twitter on January 7th. On Sunday, @bariweiss will reveal the secret internal communications from the key date of January 8th. @mentions
Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter\u2019s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech.<\/p>

<\/p>

As soon as they finished banning Trump, Twitter execs started processing new power. They prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses \u2013 perhaps even Joe Biden. The \u201cnew administration,\u201d says one exec, \u201cwill not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.\u201d<\/p>

<\/p>

Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the \u201ccontext surrounding\u201d: actions by Trump and supporters \u201cover the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.\u201d In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways.<\/p>

<\/p>

The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump\u2019s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.
Before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives. As reported, the firm had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6.<\/p>

As the election approached, senior executives \u2013 perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed \u2013 increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of \u201cvios\u201d as pretexts to do what they\u2019d likely have done anyway.
After J6, internal Slacks show Twitter executives getting a kick out of intensified relationships with federal agencies. Here\u2019s Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth, lamenting a lack of \u201cgeneric enough\u201d calendar descriptions to concealing his \u201cvery interesting\u201d meeting partners.<\/p>

<\/p>

These initial reports are based on searches for docs linked to prominent executives, whose names are already public. They include Roth, former trust and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, and recently plank-walked Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker.
One particular slack channel offers an unique window into the evolving thinking of top officials in late 2020 and early 2021. On October 8th, 2020, executives opened a channel called \u201cus2020_xfn_enforcement.\u201d Through J6, this would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved \u201chigh-profile\u201d accounts (often called \u201cVITs\u201d or \u201cVery Important Tweeters\u201d).<\/p>

<\/p>

There was at least some tension between Safety Operations \u2013 a larger department whose staffers used a more rules-based process for addressing issues like porn, scams, and threats \u2013 and a smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs like Roth and Gadde.
The latter group were a high-speed Supreme Court of moderation, issuing content rulings on the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President.<\/p>

<\/p>

During this time, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content. While we\u2019re still at the start of reviewing the #TwitterFiles, we\u2019re finding out more about these interactions every day.<\/p>

Policy Director Nick Pickles is asked if they should say Twitter detects \u201cmisinfo\u201d through \u201cML, human review, and **partnerships with outside experts?*\u201d The employee asks, \u201cI know that\u2019s been a slippery process\u2026 not sure if you want our public explanation to hang on that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Pickles quickly asks if they could \u201cjust say \u201cpartnerships.\u201d After a pause, he says, \u201ce.g. not sure we\u2019d describe the FBI\/DHS as experts.\u201d<\/p>

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This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI):<\/p>

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Roth\u2019s report to FBI\/DHS\/DNI is almost farcical in its self-flagellating tone:
\u201cWe blocked the NYP story, then unblocked it (but said the opposite)\u2026 comms is angry, reporters think we\u2019re idiots\u2026 in short, FML\u201d (fuck my life).<\/p>

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Some of Roth\u2019s later Slacks indicate his weekly confabs with federal law enforcement involved separate meetings. Here, he ghosts the FBI and DHS, respectively, to go first to an \u201cAspen Institute thing,\u201d then take a call with Apple.<\/p>

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Here, the FBI sends reports about a pair of tweets, the second of which involves a former Tippecanoe County, Indiana Councilor and Republican named\u00a0claiming \u201cBetween 2% and 25% of Ballots by Mail are Being Rejected for Errors.\u201d<\/p>

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The FBI’s second report concerned this tweet by\u00a0:<\/p>

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The FBI-flagged tweet then got circulated in the enforcement Slack. Twitter cited Politifact to say the first story was \u201cproven to be false,\u201d then noted the second was already deemed \u201cno vio on numerous occasions.\u201d<\/p>

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The group then decides to apply a \u201cLearn how voting is safe and secure\u201d label because one commenter says, \u201cit\u2019s totally normal to have a 2% error rate.\u201d Roth then gives the final go-ahead to the process initiated by the FBI:<\/p>

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Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn\u2019t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here. In one case, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee joke-tweets about mailing in ballots for his \u201cdeceased parents and grandparents.\u201d<\/p>

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This inspires a long Slack that reads like an @TitaniaMcGrath parody. \u201cI agree it\u2019s a joke,\u201d concedes a Twitter employee, \u201cbut he\u2019s also literally admitting in a tweet a crime.\u201d<\/p>

The group declares Huck\u2019s an \u201cedge case,\u201d and though one notes, \u201cwe don\u2019t make exceptions for jokes or satire,\u201d they ultimately decide to leave him be, because \u201cwe\u2019ve poked enough bears.\u201d<\/p>

“Could still mislead people… could still mislead people,” the humor-averse group declares, before moving on from Huckabee<\/p>

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Roth suggests moderation even in this absurd case could depend on whether or not the joke results in \u201cconfusion.\u201d This seemingly silly case actually foreshadows serious later issues:<\/p>

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In the docs, execs often expand criteria to subjective issues like intent (yes, a video is authentic, but why was it shown?), orientation (was a banned tweet shown to condemn, or support?), or reception (did a joke cause \u201cconfusion\u201d?). This reflex will become key in J6.
In another example, Twitter employees prepare to slap a \u201cmail-in voting is safe\u201d warning label on a Trump tweet about a postal screwup in Ohio, before realizing \u201cthe events took place,\u201d which meant the tweet was \u201cfactually accurate\u201d:<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cVERY WELL DONE ON SPEED\u201d Trump was being \u201cvisibility filtered\u201d as late as a week before the election. Here, senior execs didn\u2019t appear to have a particular violation, but still worked fast to make sure a fairly anodyne Trump tweet couldn\u2019t be \u201creplied to, shared, or liked\u201d:<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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“VERY WELL DONE ON SPEED”: the group is pleased the Trump tweet is dealt with quickly<\/p>

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A seemingly innocuous follow-up involved a tweet from actor @realJamesWoods, whose ubiquitous presence in argued-over Twitter data sets is already a #TwitterFiles in-joke.<\/p>

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After Woods angrily quote-tweeted about Trump\u2019s warning label, Twitter staff \u2013 in a preview of what ended up happening after J6 \u2013 despaired of a reason for action, but resolved to \u201chit him hard on future vio.\u201d<\/p>

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Here a label is applied to Georgia Republican congresswoman Jody Hice for saying, \u201cSay NO to big tech censorship!\u201d and, \u201cMailed ballots are more prone to fraud than in-person balloting\u2026 It\u2019s just common sense.\u201d<\/p>

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Twitter teams went easy on Hice, only applying \u201csoft intervention,\u201d with Roth worrying about a \u201cwah wah censorship\u201d optics backlash:<\/p>

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Meanwhile, there are multiple instances of involving pro-Biden tweets warning Trump \u201cmay try to steal the election\u201d that got surfaced, only to be approved by senior executives. This one, they decide, just \u201cexpresses concern that mailed ballots might not make it on time.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cTHAT\u2019S UNDERSTANDABLE\u201d: Even the hashtag #StealOurVotes \u2013 referencing a theory that a combo of Amy Coney Barrett and Trump will steal the election \u2013 is approved by Twitter brass, because it\u2019s \u201cunderstandable\u201d and a \u201creference to\u2026 a US Supreme Court decision.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In this exchange, again unintentionally humorous, former Attorney General Eric Holder claimed the U.S. Postal Service was \u201cdeliberately crippled,\u201dostensibly by the Trump administration. He was initially hit with a generic warning label, but it was quickly taken off by Roth:<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Later in November 2020, Roth asked if staff had a \u201cdebunk moment\u201d on the \u201cSCYTL\/Smartmantic vote-counting\u201d stories, which his DHS contacts told him were a combination of \u201cabout 47\u201d conspiracy theories:<\/p>

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On December 10th, as Trump was in the middle of firing off 25 tweets saying things like, \u201cA coup is taking place in front of our eyes,\u201d Twitter executives announced a new \u201cL3 deamplification\u201d tool. This step meant a warning label now could also come with deamplification:<\/p>

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Some executives wanted to use the new deamplification tool to silently limit Trump\u2019s reach more right away, beginning with the following tweet:<\/p>

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However, in the end, the team had to use older, less aggressive labeling tools at least for that day, until the \u201cL3 entities\u201d went live the following morning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump\u2019s engagement, long before J6. The ban will come after other avenues are exhausted.<\/p>

In Twitter docs execs frequently refer to \u201cbots,\u201d e.g. \u201clet\u2019s put a bot on that.\u201d A bot is just any automated heuristic moderation rule. It can be anything: every time a person in Brazil uses \u201cgreen\u201d and \u201cblob\u201d in the same sentence, action might be taken.<\/p>

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In this instance, it appears moderators added a bot for a Trump claim made on Breitbart. The bot ends up becoming an automated tool invisibly watching both Trump and, apparently, Breitbart (\u201cwill add media ID to bot\u201d). Trump by J6 was quickly covered in bots.<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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There is no way to follow the frenzied exchanges among Twitter personnel from between January 6thand 8th without knowing the basics of the company\u2019s vast lexicon of acronyms and Orwellian unwords.<\/p>

To \u201cbounce\u201d an account is to put it in timeout, usually for a 12-hour review\/cool-off:<\/p>

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\u201cInterstitial,\u201d one of many nouns used as a verb in Twitterspeak (\u201cdenylist\u201d is another), means placing a physical label atop a tweet, so it can\u2019t be seen.<\/p>

PII has multiple meanings, one being \u201cPublic Interest Interstitial,\u201d i.e. a covering label applied for \u201cpublic interest\u201d reasons. The post below also references \u201cproactive V,\u201d i.e. proactive visibility filtering.<\/p>

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This is all necessary background to J6. Before the riots, the company was engaged in an inherently insane\/impossible project, trying to create an ever-expanding, ostensibly rational set of rules to regulate every conceivable speech situation that might arise between humans.<\/p>

This project was preposterous yet its leaders were unable to see this, having become infected with groupthing, coming to believe \u2013 sincerely \u2013 that it was Twitter’s responsibility to control, as much as possible, what people could talk about, how often, and with whom.<\/p>

The firm\u2019s executives on day 1 of the January 6th crisis at least tried to pay lip service to its dizzying array of rules. By day 2, they began wavering. By day 3, a million rules were reduced to one: what we say, goes..<\/p>

When panic first breaks out on J6 there\u2019s a fair share of WTF-type posts, mixed in with frantic calls for Twitter to start deploying its full arsenal of moderation tools. \u201cWhat is the right remediation? Do we interstitial the video?\u201d asks one employee, in despair:<\/p>

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This \u201cFreedom or Death\u201d tweet from <\/span>#StopTheSteal<\/a><\/span> gadfly Mike Coudrey elicits heated reactions:<\/span><\/p>

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Roth groans about Coudrey: \u201cTHIS asshole,\u201d but still seems determined to stick at least superficially to rules, itching to act \u201cif\u201d this \u201cconstitutes incitement.\u201d<\/p>

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At 2:39 p.m. PST, a comms official asked Roth to confirm or deny a story that they\u2019d restricted Trump\u2019s ability to tweet. Roth says, \u201cWe have not.\u201d<\/p>

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Minutes later, Roth executed the historic act of \u201cbouncing\u201d Trump, i.e. putting him in timeout. \u201cI hope you\u2026 are appropriately CorpSec\u2019d,\u201d says a colleague.<\/p>

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This theme of Policy perhaps being stressed by queries from Communications executives \u2013 who themselves have to answer the public\u2019s questions \u2013 occasionally appears. Two days later, you see chatter about pulling Comms out of the loop:<\/p>

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The first company-wide email from Gadde on January 6th announced that 3 Trump tweets had been bounced, but more importantly signaled a determination to use legit \u201cviolations\u201d as a guide for any possible permanent suspension:<\/p>

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\u201cWHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?\u201d Safe to say Trump\u2019s \u201cGo home with love & in peace\u201d tweet mid-riot didn\u2019t go over well at Twitter HQ:<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A few last notes about January 6th. Roth at one point looked and found Trump had a slew of duplicate bot applications:<\/p>

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By the end of the first day, the top execs are still trying to apply rules. By the next day, they will contemplate a major change in approach. Watch @shellenbergerMD this weekend for the play-by-play of how all that went down.<\/p>

By January 8th, which @BariWeiss will describe Sunday, Twitter will be receiving plaudits from \u201cour partners\u201d in Washington, and the sitting U.S. president will no longer be heard on the platform.<\/p>

Lastly, people on the left, right, and in between want to know what else is in the <\/span>#TwitterFiles<\/a><\/span>, from suppression\/shadow-banning of leftists to lab-leak theorists, or amplification of military propaganda or conservative accounts. We know everyone has questions. <\/span>And while we\u2019ve stumbled on tidbits here and there about topics ranging from COVID to foreign policy, the reality is the data sets are enormous and we\u2019re still working through them.<\/p>

\/END OF PART 3<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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TWITTER FILES, Part 4<\/a><\/h3>

The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7 As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban.<\/h1>

On Jan 7, senior Twitter execs:<\/p>

– create justifications to ban Trump<\/p>

– seek a change of policy for Trump alone, distinct from other political leaders<\/p>

– express no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban<\/p>

This #TwitterFiles is reported with @lwoodhouse<\/p>

For years, Twitter had resisted calls to ban Trump.<\/p>

\u201cBlocking a world leader from Twitter,\u201d it wrote in 2018, \u201cwould hide important info… [and] hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But after the events of Jan 6, the internal and external pressure on Twitter CEO, Jack Dorcy grows.<\/p>

Former First Lady @michelleobama, tech journalist @karaswisher, @ADL, high-tech VC @ChrisSacca, and many others, publicly call on Twitter to permanently ban Trump.<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia the week of January 4-8, 2021. He phoned into meetings but also delegated much of the handling of the situation to senior execs @yoyoel, Twitter\u2019s Global Head of Trust and Safety, and @vijaya, Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust.<\/p>

As context, it’s important to understand that Twitter\u2019s staff & senior execs were overwhelmingly progressive. In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff’s political donations went to Democrats.<\/p>

In 2017, Roth tweeted that there were \u201cACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.\u201d<\/p>

In April 2022, Roth told a colleague that his goal \u201cis to drive change in the world,\u201d which is why he decided not to become an academic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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On January 7, <\/span><\/p>

@Jack<\/a><\/span> emails employees saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension After, Roth reassures an employee that “people who care about this… aren’t happy with where we are”.<\/span><\/div>
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Around 11:30 am PT, Roth DMs his colleagues with news that he is excited to share.<\/p>

\u201cGUESS WHAT,\u201d he writes. \u201cJack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.\u201d<\/p>

The new approach would create a system where five violations (“strikes”) would result in permanent suspension.<\/p>

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\u201cProgress!\u201d exclaims a member of Roth\u2019s Trust and Safety Team. The exchange between Roth and his colleagues makes clear that they had been pushing <\/span>@jack<\/a> for greater restrictions on the speech Twitter allows around elections.<\/span><\/p>

The colleague wants to know if the decision means Trump can finally be banned. The person asks, “does the incitement to violence aspect change that calculus?\u201d Roth says it doesn’t. “Trump continues to just have his one strike” (remaining).<\/p>

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Roth’s colleague’s query about “incitement to violence” heavily foreshadows what will happen the following day.<\/p>

On January 8, Twitter announces a permanent ban on Trump due to the “risk of further incitement of violence.”<\/p>

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On J8, Twitter says its ban is based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted.”<\/p>

But in 2019, Twitter said it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The *only* serious concern we found expressed within Twitter over the implications for free speech and democracy of banning Trump came from a junior person in the organization. It was tucked away in a lower-level Slack channel known as \u201csite-integrity-auto.”<\/p>

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“This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don\u2019t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope… This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world…”<\/p>

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Twitter employees use the term “one off” frequently in their Slack discussions. Its frequent use reveals significant employee discretion over when and whether to apply warning labels on tweets and “strikes” on users. Here are typical examples.<\/span><\/div><\/blockquote><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Recall from <\/span>#TwitterFiles2<\/span> by <\/span><\/a>@bariweiss<\/a><\/p>

that, according to Twitter staff, “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do.”<\/span><\/p>

Twitter employees recognize the difference between their own politics & Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS), but they also engage in complex interpretations of content in order to stamp out prohibited tweets, as a series of exchanges over the “<\/span>#stopthesteal<\/a><\/span>” hashtag reveal.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Roth immediately DMs a colleague to ask that they add “stopthesteal” & [QAnon conspiracy term] “kraken” to a blacklist of terms to be deamplified. Roth’s colleague objects that blacklisting “stopthesteal” risks “deamplifying counterspeech” that validates the election.<\/p>

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Indeed, notes Roth’s colleague, “a quick search of top stop the steal tweets and they\u2019re counterspeech” But they quickly come up with a solution: “deamplify accounts with stopthesteal in the name\/profile” since “those are not affiliated with counterspeech”<\/p>

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But it turns out that even blacklisting “kraken” is less straightforward than they thought. That’s because kraken, in addition to being a QAnon conspiracy theory based on the mythical Norwegian sea monster, is also the name of a cryptocurrency exchange, and was thus “allowlisted”<\/p>

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Employees struggle with whether to punish users who share screenshots of Trump’s deleted J6 tweets “we should bounce these tweets with a strike given the screen shot violates the policy” “they are criticising Trump, so I am bit hesitant with applying strike to this user”<\/p>

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What if a user dislikes Trump *and* objects to Twitter’s censorship? The tweet still gets deleted. But since the *intention* is not to deny the election result, no punishing strike is applied. “if there are instances where the intent is unclear please feel free to raise”<\/p>

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Around noon, a confused senior executive in advertising sales sends a DM to Roth. Sales exec: “jack says: ‘we will permanently suspend [Trump] if our policies are violated after a 12 hour account lock’\u2026 what policies is jack talking about?” Roth: “*ANY* policy violation”<\/p>

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What happens next is essential to understanding how Twitter justified banning Trump. Sales exec: “are we dropping the public interest [policy] now…” Roth, six hours later: “In this specific case, we’re changing our public interest approach for his account…”<\/p>

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The ad exec is referring to Twitter\u2019s policy of \u201cPublic-interest exceptions,” which allows the content of elected officials, even if it violates Twitter rules, \u201cif it directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern\u201d. https:\/\/help.twitter.com\/en\/rules-and-policies\/public-interest<\/a><\/p>

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Roth pushes for a permanent suspension of Rep. Matt Gaetz even though it \u201cdoesn\u2019t quite fit anywhere (duh)\u201d It’s a kind of test case for the rationale for banning Trump. \u201cI\u2019m trying to talk [Twitter\u2019s] safety [team] into… removal as a conspiracy that incites violence.\u201d<\/p>

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Around 2:30, comms execs DM Roth to say they don’t want to make a big deal of the QAnon ban to the media because they fear “if we push this it looks we\u2019re trying to offer up something in place of the thing everyone wants,” meaning a Trump ban.<\/p>

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That evening, a Twitter engineer DMs to Roth to say, “I feel a lot of debates around exceptions stem from the fact that Trump\u2019s account is not technically different from anybody else\u2019 and yet treated differently due to his personal status, without corresponding _Twitter rules_..”<\/p>

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Roth’s response hints at how Twitter would justify deviating from its longstanding policy. “To put a different spin on it: policy is one part of the system of how Twitter works… we ran into the world changing faster than we were able to either adapt the product or the policy.”<\/p>

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The evening of January 7, the same junior employee who expressed an “unpopular opinion” about “ad hoc decisions… that don\u2019t appear rooted in policy,” speaks up one last time before the end of the day.<\/p>

Earlier that day, the employee wrote, “My concern is specifically surrounding the unarticulated logic of the decision by FB. That space fills with the idea (conspiracy theory?) that all… internet moguls… sit around like kings casually deciding what people can and cannot see.”<\/p>

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The employee notes, later in the day, “And Will Oremus noticed the inconsistency too…,” linking to an article for OneZero at Medium called, “Facebook Chucked Its Own Rulebook to Ban Trump.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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“The underlying problem,” writes <\/span>@WillOremus<\/a><\/p>

, is that \u201cthe dominant platforms have always been loath to own up to their subjectivity, because it highlights the extraordinary, unfettered power they wield over the global public square\u00a0and places the responsibility for that power on their own shoulders\u2026 So they hide behind an ever-changing rulebook, alternately pointing to it when it\u2019s convenient and shoving it under the nearest rug when it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cFacebook\u2019s suspension of Trump now puts Twitter in an awkward position. If Trump does indeed return to Twitter, the pressure on Twitter will ramp up to find a pretext on which to ban him as well.\u201d Indeed. And as <\/span>@bariweiss <\/a>will show tomorrow, that\u2019s exactly what happened.<\/p>

\/END OF PART 4<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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THE TWITTER FILES: Part 5<\/a><\/h3>

THE REMOVAL OF TRUMP FROM TWITTER.<\/h1>

On the morning of January 8, President Donald Trump, with one remaining strike before being at risk of permanent suspension from Twitter, tweets twice.<\/p>

6:46 am: \u201cThe 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!\u201d<\/p>

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7:44 am: \u201cTo all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.\u201d<\/p>

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For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate.<\/p>

\u201cOur mission is to provide a forum that enables people to be informed and to engage their leaders directly,\u201d the company wrote in 2019. Twitter\u2019s aim was to \u201cprotect the public\u2019s right to hear from their leaders and to hold them to account.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But after January 6, as <\/span>@mtaibbi <\/a>and @shellenbergermd<\/a> <\/span>have documented, pressure grew, both inside and outside of Twitter, to ban Trump.<\/span><\/p>

There were dissenters inside Twitter. \u201cMaybe because I am from China,\u201d said one employee on January 7, \u201cI deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.\u201d<\/p>

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But voices like that one appear to have been a distinct minority within the company. Across Slack channels, many Twitter employees were upset that Trump hadn\u2019t been banned earlier.<\/p>

After January 6, Twitter employees organized to demand their employer ban Trump. \u201cThere is a lot of employee advocacy happening,\u201d said one Twitter employee.<\/p>

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\u201cWe have to do the right thing and ban this account,\u201d said one staffer. It\u2019s \u201cpretty obvious he\u2019s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,\u201d said another.<\/p>

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In the early afternoon of January 8, The Washington Post published an open letter signed by over 300 Twitter employees to CEO Jack Dorsey demanding Trump\u2019s ban. \u201cWe must examine Twitter\u2019s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.\u201d<\/p>

But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter\u2019s policies.\u201cI think we\u2019d have a hard time saying this is incitement,\u201d wrote one staffer.<\/p>

\u201cIt’s pretty clear he’s saying the \u2018American Patriots\u2019 are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.\u201d<\/p>

Another staffer agreed: \u201cDon\u2019t see the incitement angle here.\u201d<\/p>

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\u201cI also am not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet,\u201d wrote Anika Navaroli, a Twitter policy official. \u201cI\u2019ll respond in the elections channel and say that our team has assessed and found no vios\u201d\u2014or violations\u2014\u201cfor the DJT one.\u201d<\/p>

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She does just that: \u201cas an fyi, Safety has assessed the DJT Tweet above and determined that there is no violation of our policies at this time.\u201d<\/p>

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(Later, Navaroli would testify to the House Jan. 6 committee:\u201cFor months I had been begging and anticipating and attempting to raise the reality that if nothing\u2014if we made no intervention into what I saw occuring, people were going to die.\u201d)<\/p>

Next, Twitter\u2019s safety team decides that Trump\u2019s 7:44 am ET tweet is also not in violation. They are unequivocal: \u201cit\u2019s a clear no vio. It\u2019s just to say he\u2019s not attending the inauguration\u201d<\/p>

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To understand Twitter\u2019s decision to ban Trump, we must consider how Twitter deals with other heads of state and political leaders, including in Iran, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.<\/p>

In June 2018, Iran\u2019s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted, \u201c<\/span>#Israel<\/a><\/span> is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.\u201d Twitter neither deleted the tweet nor banned the Ayatollah.<\/span><\/p>

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In October 2020, the former Malaysian Prime Minister said it was \u201ca right\u201d for Muslims to \u201ckill millions of French people.\u201d Twitter deleted his tweet for \u201cglorifying violence,\u201d but he remains on the platform. The tweet below was taken from the Wayback Machine:<\/p>

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Muhammadu Buhari, the President of Nigeria, incited violence against pro-Biafra groups.\u201cThose of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwill treat them in the language they understand.\u201d Twitter deleted the tweet but didn’t ban Buhari.<\/p>

In October 2021, Twitter allowed Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to call on citizens to take up arms against the Tigray region. Twitter allowed the tweet to remain up, and did not ban the prime minister.<\/p>

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In early February 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s government threatened to arrest Twitter employees in India, and to incarcerate them for up to seven years after they restored hundreds of accounts that had been critical of him. Twitter did not ban Modi.<\/p>

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But Twitter executives did ban Trump, even though key staffers said that Trump had not incited violence\u2014not even in a \u201ccoded\u201d way.<\/p>

Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump\u2019s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde\u2014Twitter\u2019s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust\u2014asked whether it could, in fact, be \u201ccoded incitement to further violence.\u201d<\/p>

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A few minutes later, Twitter employees on the \u201cscaled enforcement team\u201d suggest that Trump\u2019s tweet may have violated Twitter\u2019s Glorification of Violence policy\u2014if you interpreted the phrase \u201cAmerican Patriots\u201d to refer to the rioters.<\/p>

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Things escalate from there. Members of that team came to \u201cview him as the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence\/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.\u201d<\/p>

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Two hours later, Twitter executives host a 30-minute all-staff meeting. Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde answer staff questions as to why Trump wasn\u2019t banned yet. But they make some employees angrier.<\/p>

\u201cMultiple tweeps [Twitter employees] have quoted the Banality of Evil suggesting that people implementing our policies are like Nazis following orders,\u201d relays Yoel Roth to a colleague.<\/p>

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Dorsey requested simpler language to explain Trump\u2019s suspension. Roth wrote, \u201cgod help us [this] makes me think he wants to share it publicly\u201d<\/p>

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One hour later, Twitter announces Trump\u2019s permanent suspension \u201cdue to the risk of further incitement of violence.\u201d<\/p>

Many at Twitter were ecstatic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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And congratulatory: \u201cbig props to whoever in trust and safety is sitting there whack-a-mole-ing these trump accounts\u201d<\/p>

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By the next day, employees expressed eagerness to tackle \u201cmedical misinformation\u201d as soon as possible:<\/p>

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\u201cFor the longest time, Twitter\u2019s stance was that we aren\u2019t the arbiter of truth,\u201d wrote another employee, \u201cwhich I respected but never gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.\u201d<\/p>

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But Twitter\u2019s COO Parag Agrawal\u2014who would later succeed Dorsey as CEO\u2014told Head of Security Mudge Zatko: \u201cI think a few of us should brainstorm the ripple effects\u201d of Trump’s ban. Agrawal added: \u201ccentralized content moderation IMO has reached a breaking point now.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Outside the United States, Twitter\u2019s decision to ban Trump raised alarms, including with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, and Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.<\/p>

Macron told an audience he didn\u2019t \u201cwant to live in a democracy where the key decisions\u201d were made by private players. \u201cI want it to be decided by a law voted by your representative, or by regulation, governance, democratically discussed and approved by democratic leaders.\u201d<\/p>

Merkel\u2019s spokesperson called Twitter\u2019s decision to ban Trump from its platform \u201cproblematic\u201d and added that the freedom of opinion is of \u201celementary significance.\u201d<\/p>

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny criticized the ban as \u201can unacceptable act of censorship.\u201d<\/p>

Whether you agree with Navalny and Macron or the executives at Twitter, we hope this latest installment of <\/span>#TheTwitterFiles<\/a><\/span> gave you insight into that unprecedented decision.<\/span><\/p>

From the outset, our goal in investigating this story was to discover and document the steps leading up to the banning of Trump and to put that choice into context.<\/p>

Ultimately, the concerns about Twitter\u2019s efforts to censor news about Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, blacklist disfavored views, and ban a president aren\u2019t about the past choices of executives in a social media company.<\/p>

They\u2019re about the power of a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy.<\/p>

This was reported by <\/span><\/p>

@ShellenbergerMD<\/a><\/span>,<\/span>@IsaacGrafstein<\/a><\/span>, <\/span>@SnoozyWeiss<\/a><\/span>, <\/span>@Olivia_Reingold<\/a><\/span>, <\/span>@petersavodnik<\/a><\/span>, <\/span>@NellieBowles<\/a><\/span>. Follow all of our work at The Free Press: <\/span>@TheFP<\/a><\/div><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Twitter Files: Part 6<\/a><\/h3>

TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY<\/h2>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The <\/span>#TwitterFiles<\/a><\/span> are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.<\/span><\/p>

Twitter\u2019s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.<\/p>

Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.<\/p>

Some are mundane, like San Francisco agent Elvis Chan wishing Roth a Happy New Year along with a reminder to attend \u201cour quarterly call next week.\u201d Others are requests for information into Twitter users related to active investigations.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

The FBI\u2019s 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.<\/p>

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.
It\u2019s no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts.<\/p>

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.
What stands out is the sheer quantity of reports from the government. Some are aggregated from public hotlines:<\/p>

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An unanswered question: do agencies like FBI and DHS do in-house flagging work themselves, or farm it out? \u201cYou have to prove to me that inside the fucking government you can do any kind of massive data or AI search,\u201d says one former intelligence officer.
\u201cHELLO TWITTER CONTACTS\u201d: The master-canine quality of the FBI\u2019s relationship to Twitter comes through in this November 2022 email, in which \u201cFBI San Francisco is notifying you\u201d it wants action on four accounts:<\/p>

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Twitter personnel in that case went on to look for reasons to suspend all four accounts, including <\/span>@fromma<\/a>, whose tweets are almost all jokes (see sample below), including his \u201ccivic misinformation\u201d of Nov. 8:<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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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 <\/span>@clairefosterPHD<\/a>, who kids a lot, was kidding:<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cAnyone who cannot discern obvious satire from reality has no place making decisions for others or working for the feds,\u201d said @ClaireFosterPHD, when told about the flagging.
Of the six accounts mentioned in the previous two emails, all but two \u2013 @ClaireFosterPHD and @FromMa \u2013 were suspended.
In an internal email from November 5, 2022, the FBI\u2019s National Election Command Post, which compiles and sends on complaints, sent the SF field office a long list of accounts that \u201cmay warrant additional action\u201d:<\/p>

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Agent Chan passed the list on to his “Twitter folks”:<\/p>

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Twitter then replied with its list of actions taken. Note mercy shown to actor Billy Baldwin:<\/p>

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Many of the above accounts were satirical in nature, nearly all (with the exceptions of Baldwin and <\/span>@RSBNetwork<\/a>) were relatively low engagement, and some were suspended, most with a generic, \u201cThanks, Twitter\u201d letter:<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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When told of the FBI flagging, @Lexitollah replied: \u201cMy 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?\u201d
\u201cI can’t believe the FBI is policing jokes on Twitter. That’s crazy,\u201d said @Tiberius444.<\/p>

In 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 \u201csoon to be weekly\u201d meeting with DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:<\/p>

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The Twitter exec writes she explicitly asked if there were \u201cimpediments\u201d to the sharing of classified information \u201cwith industry.\u201d The answer? \u201cFBI was adamant no impediments to sharing exist.\u201d
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 \u201cno impediments\u201d to classified information?
At the bottom of that letter, she lists a series of \u201cescalations\u201d apparently raised at the meeting, which were already \u201chandled.\u201d https:\/\/okre.com\/buy-domain\/27-at\/<\/p>

About one, she writes: \u201cFlagged 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).\u201d<\/p>

Another internal letter from January, 2021 shows Twitter execs processing an FBI list of \u201cpossible violative content\u201d tweets:<\/p>

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Here, too, most tweets contained the same, \u201cGet out there and vote Wednesday!\u201d trope and had low engagement. This is what the FBI spends its time on:<\/p>

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In this March, 2021 email, an FBI liaison thanks a senior Twitter exec for the chance to speak to \u201cyou and the team,\u201d then delivers a packet of \u201cproducts\u201d:<\/p>

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The executive circulates the \u201cproducts,\u201d which are really DHS bulletins stressing the need for greater collaboration between law enforcement and \u201cprivate sector partners.\u201d<\/p>

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The ubiquity of the 2016 Russian interference story as stated pretext for building out the censorship machine can\u2019t be overstated. It\u2019s analogous to how 9\/11 inspired the expansion of the security state.<\/p>

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While the DHS in its \u201cproducts\u201d pans \u201cpermissive\u201d social media for offering \u201coperational advantages\u201d to Russians, it also explains that the \u201cDomestic Violent Extremist Threat\u201d requires addressing \u201cinformation gaps\u201d:<\/p>

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FBI in one case sent over so many \u201cpossible violative content\u201d reports, Twitter personnel congratulated each other in Slack for the \u201cmonumental undertaking\u201d of reviewing them:<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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There were multiple points of entry into Twitter for government-flagged reports. This letter from Agent Chan to Roth references Teleporter, a platform through which Twitter could receive reports from the FBI:<\/p>

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Reports also came from different agencies. Here, an employee recommends \u201cbouncing\u201d content based on evidence from \u201cDHS etc\u201d:<\/p>

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State governments also flagged content.<\/p>

Twitter for instance received reports via the Partner Support Portal, an outlet created by the Center for Internet Security, a partner organization to the DHS.<\/p>

\u201cWHY WAS NO ACTION TAKEN?\u201d Below, Twitter execs \u2013 receiving an alert from California officials, by way of \u201cour partner support portal\u201d \u2013 debate whether to act on a Trump tweet:<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Here, a video was reported by the Election Integrity Project (EIP) at Stanford, apparently on the strength of information from the Center for Internet Security (CIS):<\/p>

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If that\u2019s confusing, it\u2019s because the CIS is a DHS contractor, describes itself as \u201cpartners\u201d with the Cyber and Internet Security Agency (CISA) at the DHS:<\/p>

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The EIP is one of a series of government-affiliated think tanks that mass-review content, a list that also includes the Atlantic Council\u2019s Digital Forensics Research Laboratory, and the University of Washington\u2019s Center for Informed Policy.<\/p>

The takeaway: what most people think of as the \u201cdeep state\u201d is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors, and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless.<\/p>

Twitter Files researchers are moving into a variety of new areas now.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Supplemental<\/span><\/a><\/h2>

In July of 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan tells Twitter executive Yoel Roth to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), the inter-agency group that deals with cyber threats.<\/p>

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The questionnaire authors seem displeased with Twitter for implying, in a July 20th \u201cDHS\/ODNI\/FBI\/Industry briefing,\u201d that \u201cyou indicated you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors on your platform.\u201d<\/p>

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One would think that would be good news. The agencies seemed to feel otherwise.
Chan underscored this: \u201cThere was quite a bit of discussion within the USIC to get clarifications from your company,\u201d he wrote, referring to the United States Intelligence Community.
The task force demanded to know how Twitter came to its unpopular conclusion. Oddly, it included a bibliography of public sources – including a Wall Street Journal article – attesting to the prevalence of foreign threats, as if to show Twitter they got it wrong.
Roth, receiving the questions, circulated them with other company executives, and complained that he was \u201cfrankly perplexed by the requests here, which seem more like something we’d get from a congressional committee than the Bureau.\u201d<\/p>

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He added he was not \u201ccomfortable with the Bureau (and by extension the IC) demanding written answers.\u201d The idea of the FBI acting as conduit for the Intelligence Community is interesting, given that many agencies are barred from domestic operations.<\/p>

He then sent another note internally, saying the premise of the questions was \u201cflawed,\u201d because \u201cwe’ve been clear that official state propaganda is definitely a thing on Twitter.\u201d Note the italics for emphasis.<\/p>

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Roth suggested they \u201cget on the phone with Elvis ASAP and try to straighten this out,\u201d to disabuse the agencies of any notion that state propaganda is not a \u201cthing\u201d on Twitter.<\/p>

This exchange is odd among other things because some of the \u201cbibliography\u201d materials cited by the FITF are sourced to intelligence officials, who in turn cited the public sources.<\/p>

The FBI responded to Friday\u2019s report by saying it \u201cregularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors\u2019 subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities.\u201d<\/p>

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That may be true, but we haven\u2019t seen that in the documents to date. Instead, we\u2019ve mostly seen requests for moderation involving low-follower accounts belonging to ordinary Americans \u2013 and Billy Baldwin.<\/p>

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The Twitter Files Part 7<\/a><\/h3>

The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop<\/h2>

How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden\u2019s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020.<\/p>

In Twitter Files #6, we saw the FBI relentlessly seek to exercise influence over Twitter, including over its content, its users, and its data.<\/p>

In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.<\/p>

The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden’s laptop.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Aug 2020, Mac Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had discovered evidence of criminal activity. And so he emails Rudy Giuliani, who was under FBI surveillance at the time. In early Oct, Giuliani gives it to <\/span>@nypost<\/a><\/p>

https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/10\/14\/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad\/<\/a><\/p>

Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden\u2019s lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac. Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day.<\/p>

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At 9:22 pm ET (6:22 PT), FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sends 10 documents to Twitter\u2019s then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter.<\/p>

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The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden\u2019s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate.<\/p>

And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans. Why is that? What, exactly, happened?<\/p>

On Dec 2, <\/span>@mtaibbi<\/a> described the debate inside Twitter over its decision to censor a wholly accurate article. Since then, we have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms.<\/span><\/p>

First, it’s important to understand that Hunter Biden earned *tens of millions* of dollars in contracts with foreign businesses, including ones linked to China’s government, for which Hunter offered no real work.
Here’s an overview by investigative journalist @peterschweizer<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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And yet, during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop as a Russian \u201chack and leak\u201d operation.<\/p>

This is from a sworn declaration by Roth given in December 2020.<\/p>


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They did the same to Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. \u201cThe FBI basically came to us [and] was like, \u2018Hey… you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016 election. There’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that.'”<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel? No, they weren’t \u201cThrough our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,\u201d admitted FBI agent Elvis Chan in November.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Indeed, Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity. E.g., on Sept 24, 2020, Twitter told FBI it had removed 345 \u201clargely inactive\u201d accounts \u201clinked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts.\u201d They \u201chad little reach & low follower accounts.”<\/p>

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In fact, Twitter debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform “We haven\u2019t seen any evidence to support that claim\u201d by <\/span>@oneunderscore__<\/a> @NBC<\/a><\/span><\/p>

News of foreign-controlled bots. \u201cOur review thus far shows a small-scale domestic troll effort\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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After FBI asks about a WaPo story on alleged foreign influence in a pro-Trump tweet, Twitter’s Roth says, “The article makes a lot of insinuations… but we saw no evidence that that was the case here (and in fact, a lot of strong evidence pointing in the other direction).\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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It’s not the first time that Twitter’s Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Pressure had been growing: \u201cWe have seen a sustained (If uncoordinated) effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more info & change our API policies. They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff).\u201d<\/p>

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Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren\u2019t finding anything worth reporting. \u201c[W]e haven\u2019t yet identified activity that we\u2019d typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context).\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Despite Twitter\u2019s pushback, the FBI repeatedly requests information from Twitter that Twitter has already made clear it will not share outside of normal legal channels.<\/p>

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Then, in July 2020, the FBI\u2019s Elvis Chan arranges for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections.<\/p>

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On August 11, 2020, the FBI’s Chan shares information with Twitter’s Roth relating to the Russian hacking organization, APT28, through the FBI’s secure, one-way communications channel, Teleporter.<\/p>

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Recently, Yoel Roth told @karaswisher that he had been primed to think about the Russian hacking group APT28 before news of the Hunter Biden laptop came out. When it did, Roth said, “It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells.”<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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