Matt Taibbi Profile picture
Dec 18, 2022 14 tweets 4 min read Read on X
1.THREAD: Twitter Files Supplemental
2.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. Image
3.The questionnaire authors seem displeased with Twitter for implying, in a July 20th “DHS/ODNI/FBI/Industry briefing,” that “you indicated you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors on your platform.” Image
4.One would think that would be good news. The agencies seemed to feel otherwise.
5.Chan underscored this: “There was quite a bit of discussion within the USIC to get clarifications from your company,” he wrote, referring to the United States Intelligence Community.
6.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.
7.Roth, receiving the questions, circulated them with other company executives, and complained that he was “frankly perplexed by the requests here, which seem more like something we'd get from a congressional committee than the Bureau.” Image
8.He added he was not “comfortable with the Bureau (and by extension the IC) demanding written answers.” The idea of the FBI acting as conduit for the Intelligence Community is interesting, given that many agencies are barred from domestic operations.
9.He then sent another note internally, saying the premise of the questions was “flawed,” because “we've been clear that official state propaganda is definitely a thing on Twitter.” Note the italics for emphasis. Image
10.Roth suggested they “get on the phone with Elvis ASAP and try to straighten this out,” to disabuse the agencies of any notion that state propaganda is not a “thing” on Twitter.
11.This exchange is odd among other things because some of the “bibliography” materials cited by the FITF are sourced to intelligence officials, who in turn cited the public sources.
12.The FBI responded to Friday’s report by saying it “regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities.” Image
13.That may be true, but we haven’t seen that in the documents to date. Instead, we’ve mostly seen requests for moderation involving low-follower accounts belonging to ordinary Americans – and Billy Baldwin.
14.Watch @bariweiss and @ShellenbergerMD for more from the Twitter Files.

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More from @mtaibbi

Sep 5
THE STEELE DOSSIER IS BULLSHIT BECAUSE:

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, a Barack Obama appointee, conducted an extensive investigation of the issuance of four FISA warrants that required an in-depth review of the Steele dossier:
justice.gov/storage/120919…

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"CORROBORATED LIMITED INFORMATION... MUCH OF THAT WAS PUBLICLY AVAILABLE."

There is NOT ONE piece of original reporting in the Steele dossier that turned out to be true. The only "confirmed" details were from prior public news reports, and even got some of those wrong... Image
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PEE TAPE: "JUST TALK" OVER "BEERS" AND IN "JEST"

Horowitz noted the sources of Steele's spiciest revelations, like the "pee tape," were tracked down and stunned they'd been taken seriously. They laughed the story off as "just talk" told over "beers" in "jest": Image
Read 21 tweets
Sep 4
On the new piece about Jeffrey Sachs and “Shock Therapy”:

I see people already suggesting this story is propaganda that paints Putin’s Russia as a victim. That’s not what this account says at all (cont’d)
The victims here are the Russian and American people, not the governments. After the Cold War we had a historic opportunity. Instead of making Russia a quasi-partner like Japan or Germany, we went the other way:
The result was economic disaster in Russia (which Westerners bailed out btw), which thanks to help from U.S. ended up ruled by rapacious oligarchs. Anti-US sentiment exploded during my time there.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 2
In this article I’m trying to express something that’s been bothering me since I wrote “The Divide” and “I Can’t Breathe”:

racket.news/p/liberalism-r…
When I first started covering policing I was taken aback by the complexity. Post-Broken Windows, big cities essentially gave up on high-end enforcement and used tactics closer to commercial fishing: sweep up everyone on small offenses, throw back some innocents.
The infamous 2015 Mike Bloomberg address to the Aspen Institute confirmed that NY busted young black men on drug offenses with the aim of pre-empting a statistical probability of them committing more serious crimes like murder - Minority Report stuff
Read 12 tweets
Aug 12
The American speech system is a simple premise. A free press delivers the information, voters make the political decisions. We’re supposed to trust audiences to know what’s best for them. (1/4)
The new digital censorship movement is based on two fallacies. The first is that voters are too stupid to sort out information on their own, so they need institutional vanguards to weigh information, “help” them choose. (2/4)
The second is that the state has special responsibility to “protect” us from bad speech. The opposite is true. The constitution specifically enjoins the government from restricting citizen-to-citizen discussion. (3/4)
Read 4 tweets
Jun 13
Not only is the @nytimes is totally wrong implying @mirandadevine’s reporting hasn’t held up, the paper ignored its own multi-level failure on that same story in 2020, which included ignoring their own reporting. It’s almost actionable — they owe a huge apology (1/6):
First of all the Times in 2020 tried to use the unprecedented censorship of the story by Facebook and Twitter to call Miranda’s story “dubious,” without saying what was dubious. (The censorship angle they of course ignore entirely.) It got worse (2/6):
Image
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Just a few paragraphs down, the Times contradicted itself, saying Twitter didn’t block the story because it was “dubious,” but because it was supposedly “hacked materials.”

The laptop contents were not even “hacked materials,” as Twitter quickly determined. But also (3/6): Image
Read 6 tweets
Jun 6
1. TWITTER FILES Extra: The Defaming of Brandon Straka and #Walkaway

Smeared as a Russian proxy after founding a movement to "#Walkaway" from the Democratic Party, Twitter documents suggest @BrandonStraka and his followers were set up Image
2. In Atlanta Monday, I testified before Georgia state Representative @MeshaMainor, in a free speech hearing centered around the censorship of members of the “#WalkAway” Facebook Group, whose 500,000-plus accounts were deleted by Facebook on January 8th, 2021.
washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/…Image
3. The #TwitterFiles contained material about federal interest in #WalkAway, including exculpatory Twitter analyses that contrasted with coverage describing #WalkAway as a “Kremlin operation.” These documents should have been published earlier. I apologize to @BrandonStraka.
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Read 41 tweets

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