Thread by @thackerpd

1. TWITTER FILES: Internal documents from @Twitter find Brown University's @cward1e provides research that helps censor.

2. After years of working with disinformation researchers, reporters ignore that these "academics" aid in censoring. How do we know these campus employees censor?

They sometimes admit it.

3. Before the 2020 election, Stanford's Alex Stamos said at the Commonwealth Fund, "Our goal is to operationalise our work."

Seriously, he said this out loud.

4. Like University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, Stamos serves on the advisory committee of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA--a DHS agency

5. In fact, Stanford's Stamos formed the Krebs Stamos Group with the former head of CISA, Chris Krebs.

I'm not joking. It's right there on the website.

5. The Chair of CISA's advisory committee is Tom Fanning, the CEO of Southern Company. @SenWhitehouse called out Southern Company for funding climate change disinformation.

So why is he ignoring this today?

6. A central figure in Big Disinformation is researcher Claire Wardle. With Google money in 2015, Wardle formed First Draft which claimed to be “the world’s foremost non-profit organisation focused on research and practice to tackle misinformation and disinformation.”

7. Guess who came calling? I tripped over this document marked “for official use only” that finds Wardle had also been chosen to brief CISA’s advisory committee.

CISA says they will get back to explain how often Wardle briefed them.

8. Wardle was also involved in this Ted event on vaccines. The invite to Twitter was sent by Alexios Mantzarlis. A former fact checker, Mantzarlis has since joined Google where he focuses on misinformation.

9. “This is too important a topic to not share lessons,” Mantzarlis emailed, stating that goals were to create a list of relevant information on vaccines that could be converted into advice for social media platforms.

QUESTION: What is Big Disinformation's obsession w/ vaccines?

10. But when a Twitter official asked for more information, Wardle responded, “Sorry you weren’t able to attend the event on the 30th. It ended up being a really great conversation, with real emphasis on quality information around vaccines.”

11. Shortly after Trump lost in 2020, Pfizer released initial, preliminary findings for their COVID vaccine.

This was November 9, 2020.

12. Days later, Wardle rushes out a report on vaccine misinformation. She sends Twitter a looky-look the day before she releases the report.

13. “Hello my lovely friends,” Wardle emailed. “I had hoped this week would be full of relaxing massages and cupcakes. Instead it’s more election nonsense and a Pfizer announcement that forced us to push up our planned release of new research on online vaccine narratives.”

14. “Hello my lovely friends,” Wardle emailed. “I had hoped this week would be full of relaxing massages and cupcakes. Instead it’s more election nonsense and a Pfizer announcement that forced us to push up our planned release of new research on online vaccine narratives.”

15. QUESTION: How often do academics put out white papers like this to promote a corporate product?

Does this seem scholarly? But wait, the report on "misinformation" contains misinformation, of course.

16. Wardle claimed in her report that vaccine mandates are “one of the prominent anti-vaccination narratives”—a narrative which, oddly enough, proved to be accurate when US companies as well as state and federal agencies began mandating COVID vaccines.

17. Did Wardle's First Draft correct their report. Nope.

They just lurched forward in support of vaccine mandates, by publishing blog posts with headlines that described discussions around mandated vaccinations as “disinformation” as well.

18. Since Wardle released her report, one authors joined the global PR firm M&C Saatchi as an analyst.

Surprise! M&C Saatchi has a contract w/ the Australian government to censor its citizens.

19. M&C Saatchi's contract came out in an Australian Senate hearing weeks back.

20. Meanwhile, one of Wardle's researchers joined the British government in 2021 as a “counter-disinformation product lead.”

Have you been reading the British press?

Surprise! More censorship.

21. BTW, as people investigate these campus employees for censorship, guess who's stepping in to stop FOIA disclosure of documents?

Surprise! @lhfang found it's CISA.

22. Read more here and please subscribe disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/twitter-file…