Matt Taibbi
1. TWITTER FILES:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
Statement to Congress
THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX pic.twitter.com/JLryjnINXS
2. “MONITOR ALL TWEETS COMING FROM TRUMP’S PERSONAL ACCOUNT/BIDEN’S PERSONAL ACCOUNT”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
When #TwitterFiles reporters were given access to Twitter internal documents last year, we first focused on the company, which at times acted like a power above government. pic.twitter.com/IK1VWewVoW
3. But Twitter was more like a partner to government.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
With other tech firms it held a regular “industry meeting” with FBI and DHS, and developed a formal system for receiving thousands of content reports from every corner of government: HHS, Treasury, NSA, even local police: pic.twitter.com/DgI954lge7
4. Emails from the FBI, DHS and other agencies often came with spreadsheets of hundreds or thousands of account names for review. Often, these would be deleted soon after. pic.twitter.com/dwVKCNuPrk
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
5. Many were obvious “misinformation,” like accounts urging people to vote the day after an election.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
But other official "disinfo" reports had shakier reasoning. The highlighted Twitter analysis here disagrees with the FBI about accounts deemed a “proxy of Russian actors": pic.twitter.com/9AZ7jZFfWi
6. Then we saw "disinfo" lists where evidence was even less clear. This list of 378 “Iranian State Linked Accounts” includes an Iraq vet once arrested for blogging about the war, a former Chicago Sun-Times reporter and Truthout, a site that publishes Noam Chomsky. pic.twitter.com/eaGRruJNUk
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
7. In some cases, state reports didn’t even assert misinformation. Here, a list of YouTube videos is flagged for “anti-Ukraine narratives”: pic.twitter.com/dAWYp8Ht5j
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
8. But the bulk of censorship requests didn’t come from government directly.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
9. Asked if Twitter’s marketing department could say the company detects “misinfo” with help of “outside experts,” a Twitter executive replied: pic.twitter.com/oYjKUqE96I
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
10. We came to think of this grouping – state agencies like DHS, FBI, or the Global Engagement Center (GEC), along with “NGOs that aren’t academic” and an unexpectedly aggressive partner, commercial news media – as the Censorship-Industrial Complex.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
11. Who’s in the Censorship-Industrial Complex? Twitter in 2020 helpfully compiled a list for a working group set up in 2020.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
The National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, and Hamilton 68’s creator, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, are key: pic.twitter.com/7lLlL2tcjN
12. Twitter execs weren’t sure about Clemson’s Media Forensics Lab (“too chummy with HPSCI”), and weren’t keen on the Rand Corporation (“too close to USDOD”), but others were deemed just right. pic.twitter.com/tnoLMFeEkD
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
13. NGOs ideally serve as a check on corporations and the government. Not long ago, most of these institutions viewed themselves that way. Now, intel officials, “researchers,” and executives at firms like Twitter are effectively one team – or Signal group, as it were: pic.twitter.com/AIQsdavacQ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
14. The Woodstock of the Censorship-Industrial Complex came when the Aspen Institute – which receives millions a year from both the State Department and USAID – held a star-studded confab in Aspen in August 2021 to release its final report on “Information Disorder.” pic.twitter.com/F1NOIlzC45
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
15. The report was co-authored by Katie Couric and Chris Krebs, the founder of the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Yoel Roth of Twitter and Nathaniel Gleicher of Facebook were technical advisors. Prince Harry joined Couric as a Commissioner. pic.twitter.com/lV8coy43Hn
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
16. Their taxpayer-backed conclusions: the state should have total access to data to make searching speech easier, speech offenders should be put in a “holding area," and government should probably restrict disinformation, “even if it means losing some freedom.” pic.twitter.com/YTVu98FPLV
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
17. Note Aspen recommended the power to mandate data disclosure be given to the FTC, which this committee just caught in a clear abuse of office, demanding information from Twitter about communications with (and identities of) #TwitterFiles reporters. https://t.co/IfbfYmj0ev pic.twitter.com/M9vO024AQI
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
18. Naturally Twitter’s main concern regarding the Aspen report was making sure Facebook got hit harder by any resulting regulatory changes: pic.twitter.com/KHfSCBbzAy
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
19. The same agencies (FBI, DHS/CISA, GEC) invite the same “experts” (Thomas Rid, Alex Stamos), funded by the same foundations (Newmark, Omidyar, Knight) trailed by the same reporters (Margaret Sullivan, Molly McKew, Brandy Zadrozny) seemingly to every conference, every panel. pic.twitter.com/6rS6L7Lxds
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
20. The #TwitterFiles show the principals of this incestuous self-appointed truth squad moving from law enforcement/intelligence to the private sector and back, claiming a special right to do what they say is bad practice for everyone else: be fact-checked only by themselves.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
21.While Twitter sometimes pushed back on technical analyses from NGOs about who is and isn't a “bot,” on subject matter questions like vaccines or elections they instantly defer to sites like Politifact, funded by the same names that fund the NGOs: Koch, Newmark, Knight. pic.twitter.com/8zaTndVOJ3
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
22. #TwitterFiles repeatedly show media acting as proxy for NGOs, with Twitter bracing for bad headlines if they don't nix accounts. Here, the Financial Times gives Twitter until end of day to provide a “steer” on whether RFK, Jr. and other vax offenders will be zapped. pic.twitter.com/Cd3C78Gv2P
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
23. Well, you say, so what? Why shouldn’t civil society organizations and reporters work together to boycott “misinformation”? Isn’t that not just an exercise of free speech, but a particularly enlightened form of it?
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
24. The difference is, these campaigns are taxpayer-funded. Though the state is supposed to stay out domestic propaganda, the Aspen Institute, Graphika, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, New America, and other “anti-disinformation” labs are receiving huge public awards. pic.twitter.com/lj6VNXgX0o
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
25. Some NGOs, like the GEC-funded Global Disinformation Index or the DOD-funded Newsguard, not only seek content moderation but apply subjective “risk” or “reliability” scores to media outlets, which can result in reduction in revenue. Do we want government in this role? pic.twitter.com/s9tobM9rf8
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
26. Perhaps the ultimate example of the absolute fusion of state, corporate, and civil society organizations is the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), whose “Election Integrity Partnership” is among the most voluminous “flaggers” in the #TwitterFiles: pic.twitter.com/wiSN9tl5Bl
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
27. After public uproar “paused” the Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board” of the DHS in early 2020, Stanford created the EIP to “fill the gaps” legally, as director Alex Stamos explains here (h/t Foundation for Freedom Online). https://t.co/G7xLxecbMk
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
28. EIP research manager Renee DiResta boasted that while filling “gaps," the EIP succeeded in getting “tech partners” Google, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter to take action on “35% of the URLS flagged” under “remove, reduce, or inform” policies.https://t.co/4hqdH49UD5
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
29. According to the EIP’s own data, it succeeded in getting nearly 22 million tweets labeled in the runup to the 2020 vote. pic.twitter.com/kuA7crjD80
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
30. It’s crucial to reiterate: EIP was partnered with state entities like CISA and GEC while seeking elimination of millions of tweets. In the #TwitterFiles, Twitter execs did not distinguish between organizations, using phrases like “According to CIS[A], escalated via EIP.” pic.twitter.com/qmmpWr2aZX
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
31. After the 2020 election, when EIP was renamed the Virality Project, the Stanford lab was on-boarded to Twitter’s JIRA ticketing system, absorbing this government proxy into Twitter infrastructure – with a capability of taking in an incredible 50 million tweets a day. pic.twitter.com/iPxtRT0QSR
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
32. In one remarkable email, the Virality Project recommends that multiple platforms take action even against “stories of true vaccine side effects” and “true posts which could fuel hesitancy.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
None of the leaders of this effort to police Covid speech had health expertise. pic.twitter.com/UUd50ZaghG
33. This is the Censorship-Industrial Complex at its essence: a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives. It’s the opposite of what a free press does.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
34. Profiles portray DiResta as a warrior against Russian bots and misinformation, but reporters never inquire about work with DARPA, GEC, and other agencies. In the video below from @MikeBenzCyber, Stamos introduces her as having "worked for the CIA":https://t.co/gJWFyVY7m2
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
35. DiResta has become the public face of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, a name promoted everywhere as an unquestioned authority on truth, fact, and Internet hygiene, even though her former firm, New Knowledge, has been embroiled in two major disinformation scandals. pic.twitter.com/nFg5JS2vkH
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
36. This, ultimately, is the most serious problem with the Censorship-Industrial Complex.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
Packaged as a bulwark against lies and falsehood, it is itself often a major source of disinformation, with American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality.
37. DiResta’s New Knowledge helped design the Hamilton 68 project exposed in the #TwitterFiles.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
Although it claimed to track “Russian influence,” Hamilton really followed Americans like “Ultra Maga Dog Mom,” “Right2Liberty,” even a British rugby player named Rod Bishop: pic.twitter.com/yXoC3YTDGM
38. Told he was put on the Hamilton list of suspected “Russian influence” accounts, Bishop was puzzled.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
“Nonsense. I’m supporting Ukraine,” he said.
39. As a result of Hamilton’s efforts, all sorts of people were falsely tied in press stories to “Russian bots”: former House Intel chief Devin Nunes, #WalkAway founder @BrandonStraka, supporters of the #FireMcMaster hashtag, even people who used the term “deep state”: pic.twitter.com/YJe5TV4emq
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
40. Hamilton 68 was funded by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which in turn was funded by the German Marshall Fund, which in turn is funded in part by – the Department of State. pic.twitter.com/sHiYOzT3bZ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
41. The far worse scandal was “Project Birmingham,” in which thousands of fake Russian Twitter accounts were created to follow Alabama Republican Roy Moore in his 2017 race for US Senate.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
Newspapers reported Russia seemed to take an interest in the race, favoring Moore. pic.twitter.com/n46IDLlNFN
42. Though at least one reporter for a major American paper was at a meeting in September, 2018 when New Knowledge planned the bizarre bot-and-smear campaign, the story didn’t break until December, two days after DiResta gave a report on Russian interference to the Senate.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
43. Internally, Twitter correctly assessed the Moore story as far back as fall of 2017, saying it had no way if knowing if the Moore campaign purchased the bots, or if “an adversary purchased them… in an attempt to discredit them.” pic.twitter.com/o7hvAAssmd
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
44. Twitter told this to reporters who asked about the story contemporaneously. Moreover, after the story broke, Twitter's Roth wrote:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
“There have been other instances in which domestic actors created fake accounts… some are fairly prominent in progressive circles.” pic.twitter.com/qMnjpKVLZl
45. Roth added, “We shouldn’t comment.” Repeatedly in the #TwitterFiles, when Twitter learned the truth about scandals like Project Birmingham, they said nothing, like banks that were silent about mortgage fraud.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
Reporters also kept quiet, protecting fellow “stakeholders.”
46. Twitter stayed silent out of political caution. DiResta, who ludicrously claimed she thought Project Birmingham was just an experiment to “investigate to what extent they could grow audiences… using sensational news,” hinted at a broader reason. pic.twitter.com/FFcFpMK0Nd
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
47. “I know there were people who believed the Democrats needed to fight fire with fire,” she told the New York Times.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
“It was absolutely chatter going around the party.” pic.twitter.com/QMxNUX5wNC
48. The incident underscored the extreme danger of the Censorship-Industrial Complex. Without real oversight mechanisms, there is nothing to prevent these super-empowered information vanguards from bending the truth for their own ends.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
49. By way of proof, no major press organization has re-examined the bold claims DiResta/New Knowledge made to the Senate – e.g. that Russian ads “reached 126 million people” in 2016 – while covering up the Hamilton and Alabama frauds. If the CIC deems it, lies stay hidden.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
50. In the digital age, this sprawling new information-control bureaucracy is an eerie sequel to the dangers Dwight Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address, when he said:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists.”https://t.co/pj1kX4YfH9
51. Thanks to @ShellenbergerMD and reporters/researchers @Techno_Fog, @neffects, @bergerbell, @SchmidtSue1, @tw6384, and others for help in preparing this testimony. The Twitter Files searches are performed by a third party, so material may have been left out.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023
