1. TWITTER FILES EXTRA: Special "Eight Years of Smears" Edition

The Ugly Subtext to the Gabbard, Patel, and Kennedy Confirmation Hearings 2. Last week's hearings involving Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Kash Patel were linked.
The nominees were denounced as proxies for Russia by the same source, exposed as a fraud in the Twitter Files.

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…

https://twitter.com/helloimdansmith/status/1831772817404391646

"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...

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:

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 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)

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):

https://twitter.com/mirandadevine/status/1800923453186269632

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):

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 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/…

You obviously didn't read the reports (@lhfang is a right-wing ideologue?). We went out of our way to show censorship/manipulation taking place across the spectrum, mentioning everyone from the Green Party to the Yellow Vests to Truthout and Consortium News. (1/5)

https://twitter.com/acmonks/status/1787441196605829400

If you read the reports there was very little about which "side" was suppressed more. There was some chatter within the company about it, and some current and former executives talked about it with us, but mainly we focused on the who/how of censorship (2/5)

1. TWITTER FILES (DEAMPLIFIED)
How the Censorship Industrial Complex Case Was Built





2. I made a deal with the owner of this platform to publish new #TwitterFiles material only on this site. However, since this account is denylisted, I don't feel obligated to add the context, since no one will see it. Full explanations for images on Racket.News

1. UK FILES EXTRA:
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, the IRS, and 501 (c)(3) status 2. The Center for Countering Digital Hate, or CCDH, is one of the most powerful players in the global "anti-disinformation" space, with a reputation for successfully pressuring Internet platforms to remove disfavored speech:

1. FOIA FILES EXTRA:
STATE DEPARTMENT "TARGETING AMERICANS"?





2. In late May and early June, 2019, a story hit the news: Donald Trump's State Department had been caught trolling people, including a Washington Post reporter, deemed insufficiently tough on Iran. Outrage was universal:

1. #CTIFiles3
SOCKPUPPETS AND SPIES
In the #CTIFiles written about today by @shellenberger and @galexybrane, anti-disinformation warriors and officials offer instruction on COINTELPRO-style spy tactics, against a target they knew was forbidden – the American public 2. WHAT WE NEED: “SOCKPUPPETS ON TWITTER AND FACEBOOK”
While #TwitterFiles confirmed use of defensive tactics like censorship/deamplification, the #CTIFiles show “anti-disinformation” operatives planning to go on offense to disrupt speech, using fake personas and spy tactics

1. #CTIFIles2
INTRODUCING THE #CTIFiles
The Deep State, With Its Pants Down 2. Tuesday, @Shellenberger, @galexybrane and I began releasing the CTI League (CTIL) Files. Provided by a whistleblower, they detail activities of a group ostensibly formed for the narrow purpose of fighting Covid misinfo. We quickly found they had wider interests:

1. THE “UK FILES” SPECIAL REPORT
PART ONE: Internal Labour Party Documents Link “Center For Countering Digital Hate” to key Labour faction, fake news episodes



2. On July 31, X/Twitter filed suit against the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) for “a series of unlawful acts” it claimed were part of “a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform.”
pacermonitor.com/view/NV3GMHQ/X…

1. TWITTER FILES EXTRA:
BIG BROTHER IS FLAGGING YOU
New House report and previously unpublished Twitter Files show: Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership was a front for government censorship 2. On Monday, @Jim_Jordan's Weaponization of Government Subcommittee released a damning report on the “Weaponization of Disinformation.” Packed with subpoenaed documents, it focused on Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership: judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subs…

The new Twitter Files stories show:
1) The CEO of the Senate’s top expert on Russian bots, New Knowledge, helped create the Hamilton 68 dashboard; 2) New Knowledge also worked with the Democracy Integrity Project on another “dashboard” project, Disinfo 2018, used as a source to smear @TulsiGabbard;

1. TWITTER FILES EXTRA
The Senate, New Knowledge, and Manufacturing Russian Bot Hysteria
Reporting by @SchmidtSue1



2. On December 17, 2018, a new report to the Senate Intelligence Committee describing pervasive Russian bot activity generated scare headlines by the dozen:

1. TWITTER FILES: Missouri v. Biden edition
"Thank you for your ongoing collaboration!"

2. After a controversial decision in the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, here are a few docs from the Twitter Files, illustrating what the Attorneys General meant when they claimed a “Censorship Enterprise” exists.

I really want to be gracious and thank whoever at the ⁦@washingtonpost⁩ insisted on a review of their Hamilton 68 reports, but they needed to make more than “minor” changes and seem to have compounded the problem (1/2): washingtonpost.com/pr/2023/05/18/… The “fixes” somehow preserve language like, “Any According to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks Russian-linked Twitter accounts…” At the very least, that should read something like, “…which tracks mostly American and non-Russian accounts, along with a few Russians.”

1.TWITTER FILES #19
The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine
Stanford, the Virality Project, and the Censorship of “True Stories” 2.“The release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Spring 2020 emails… has been used to exacerbate distrust in Dr. Fauci.”
“Increased distrust in Fauci’s expert guidance.”

1. TWITTER FILES:
Statement to Congress
THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX 2. “MONITOR ALL TWEETS COMING FROM TRUMP’S PERSONAL ACCOUNT/BIDEN’S PERSONAL ACCOUNT”

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.