THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART THREE

[mystery-ak]

Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
1.     THREAD: The Twitter Files
THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP
Part One: October 2020-January 6th
5:04 PM · Dec 9, 2022


Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
44m
Replying to
@mtaibbi
2. 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...


Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
43m
3.     We’ll show you what hasn’t 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.



Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
40m
4.     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.


Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
36m
5. 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’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech.

[mystery-ak]

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601355779474620416

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601357147178082305


Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
27m
8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.


Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
23m
9. Before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives. As @BariWeiss
 reported, the firm had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6.


Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
21m
10.  As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.

[mystery-ak]

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601359872528101376

Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
15m
Replying to
@mtaibbi
 
@ShellenbergerMD



Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
15m
13.  One particular slack channel offers an unique window into the evolving thinking of top officials in late 2020 and early 2021.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601361141611270144



Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
13m
Replying to
@mtaibbi
 
@ShellenbergerMD
 and
@bariweiss
15.  There was at least some tension between Safety Operations – a larger department whose staffers used a more rules-based process for addressing issues like porn, scams, and threats – and a smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs like Roth and Gadde.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601362658560995328
 and
@bariweiss
12.  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.

[mystery-ak]

Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
7m
Replying to
@mtaibbi
 
@ShellenbergerMD
 and
@bariweiss
17.  During this time, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content. While we’re still at the start of reviewing the #TwitterFiles, we’re finding out more about these interactions every day.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601363841417297921

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601364081864495104

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601364807831425025

[mystery-ak]

Harrison
@HarrisonKrank
·
1m
Replying to
@mtaibbi
 
@ShellenbergerMD
 and
@bariweiss
Yoel and the FBI committed treason

[mystery-ak]

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601365295763193856

[mystery-ak]

Lavern Spicer 🇺🇸
@lavern_spicer
·
56s
Replying to
@mtaibbi
 
@ShellenbergerMD
 and
@bariweiss
This is beyond a bombshell.

This is the proof of everything.

Even liberals should be outraged.

Our First Amendment was entirely violated.

[mystery-ak]

Matthew H
@MattH_4America
·
38s
It wasn't just communists at Twitter censoring you, it was your government.

[mystery-ak]

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601365711959441409

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601366094584823808

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601366678042218496

[Free Vulcan]

Revelations From Twitter Files Part II Raises Some Critical Questions

But there were other revelations that have elicited questions about the inner workings of the company. As journalist Bari Weiss released the slow drip of information in a thread, it became known that Twitter employees had the ability to view direct messages sent between the platform’s users, which wasn’t exactly public information in the past.

This raised questions about what employees saw in people’s conversations. Social media influencer Malcolm Flex chimed in on this issue in a short video on the platform, asking about the possibility that child sexual abuse material (CSAM) was being shared via direct messages:

Does this mean that Twitter employees had access to DMs which shared sexually explicit material depicting minors? And if so, did they not use the tools that we found out that they had that they used to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, which would prevent the sharing of this, as well as the posting of this information? So they did not use this tool at all, despite being able to see who was sharing what. And I’m talking about links to sites, whole videos, or links to other tweets.

...

...Flex then brought up the potential involvement of the FBI, noting that James Baker, a former agent, had a critical role as Twitter’s general counsel. “If we found out that the FBI not only had assets in Jim Baker, but also had a backdoor, and not just the FBI, but other intelligence communities, they had backdoors into Twitter and these control panels and these special tools that these employees had, did they also see the sexually explicit material and do nothing about it?” he asked.

Flex added: “Were they using it for blackmail purposes?”...

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2022/12/09/revelations-from-twitter-files-part-ii-raises-some-critical-questions-n671565

[mystery-ak]

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601366882938126336

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601367192033189889

Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
27.  Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t 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.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601367925050732544



Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
17m
Replying to
@mtaibbi
 
@ShellenbergerMD
 and 2 others
32.  This inspires a long Slack that reads like an
@TitaniaMcGrath
 parody. “I agree it’s a joke,” concedes a Twitter employee, “but he’s also literally admitting in a tweet a crime.”



Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
15m
The group declares Huck’s an “edge case,” and though one notes, “we don’t make exceptions for jokes or satire,” they ultimately decide to leave him be, because “we’ve poked enough bears.”

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601369093764177920

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601369793466368001

[mystery-ak]

Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
·
10m
Replying to
@mtaibbi
 
@ShellenbergerMD
 and 3 others
34. 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 “confusion”?). This reflex will become key in J6.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601370784022564865

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601371334503968768

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601371959023267840

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601372346413363201

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601372989341069312

[mystery-ak]

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601373236532371457

[Sighlass]

Bookmark.... thank you Myst for your work.

[240B]

240B
147 Editorial/Opinion/Blogs / Re: Elon Musk Confirms Twitter’s Corrupted Censorship Program that He Inherited Targeted Conservativ
« on: November 23, 2022, 12:59:15 »
Since we now know that Twitter was in close contact with the White House and the FBI, it is interesting to imagine what kind of information Elon has on corruption of various government agencies and what he will do with it. Twitter was "in the loop" or possibly was the loop linking government to CNN/MSNBC and dozens of media outlets all taking orders from their controllers in D.C. Now Elon has access to all their marching orders, at least as much as the employees did not delete before they were locked out and fired. Now we know why Elon kicked everyone out and locked the doors.[/size]
ReplyQuoteNotify