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.

7. DFRLab is funded by the U.S. Government, specifically the Global Engagement Center (GEC).

Director Graham Brookie denies DFRLab it uses tax money to track Americans, saying its GEC grants have "an exclusively international focus.” 8. But Americans on DFR’s list, like Marysel Urbanik, are unconvinced its focus is “exclusively international.”

“This is un-American,” says Urbanik, who immigrated from Castro’s Cuba. “They do this in places that don’t believe in free speech.”

1. TWITTER FILES #17
New Knowledge, the Global Engagement Center, and State-Sponsored Blacklists 2. On June 8, 2021, an analyst at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab wrote to Twitter:

“Hi guys. Attached you will find… around 40k twitter accounts that our researchers suspect are engaging in inauthentic behavior… and Hindu nationalism more broadly.”

Here’s a story from the New York Times in February, 2017, sourced to “four current and former American officials”:

nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/… No one asked if the reporters on that story were “doing the bidding” of those sources. No one accused them of doing PR for… well, we can talk about who those sources were later.

(2/2) The Post should have gone scrambling back to re-examine all the stories, like this one, that they’d printed using that firm (or people who worked there) as a key source: washingtonpost.com/technology/201…

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1628113427578122240

The Twitter Files help clarify what went wrong here, but we’d learn a lot more faster if outlets like the Post were as interested as they should be in following basic leads. Same with the New York Times, which needs to look back at stories like this: nytimes.com/2017/10/30/tec…

How journalism works when the press is real:
One reporter does a story. It may not be the whole story, but it’s newsworthy. The next reporter finds the next piece of the puzzle. A third adds more. We compete, but all push the story forward.
The TF response exposes a fake press: Instead of taking as leads stories like Hamilton 68 or CENTCOM’s fake social media accounts abroad or the FBI, DOS and DHS cranking out thousands of moderation requests, “reputable” journalists are spending all their time attacking me and throwing stupid partisan tantrums. Why?

There is zero evidence that Trump had any influence on Twitter policies. On the other hand there are massive amounts of evidence that other politicians (including the Republican-Democrat duo of Richard Burr and Mark Warner) did have such influence... (1/2)

https://twitter.com/jeffreyasachs/status/1627654771262869504

(2/2) So why would I waste my time looking for a dumb, rejected Trump complaint when I know for a fact, from reading the correspondence of the company’s top lawyers, that they’re up at night worrying about the SSCI, (Warner/Burr), HPSCI (Schiff), the FBI/DHS, etc?

TWITTER FILES #16
Comic Interlude: A Media Experiment 2. The #TwitterFiles have revealed a lot: thousands of moderation requests from every corner of government, Feds mistaking both conservatives and leftists for fictional Russians, even Twitter deciding on paper to cede moderation authority to the “U.S. intelligence community”:

1.THREAD: Twitter Files #15
MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD 2.“I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is.”

1.TWITTER FILES: Supplemental
More Adam Schiff Ban Requests,
and "Deamplification" 2.Staff of House Democrat @AdamSchiff wrote to Twitter quite often, asking that tweets be taken down. This important use of taxpayer resources involved an ask about a “Peter Douche” parody photo of Joe Biden. The DNC made the same request:

https://twitter.com/silerabbit/status/1254551597465518082?s=21

1.THREAD: Twitter Files #14
THE RUSSIAGATE LIES
One: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots and the #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag 2.At a crucial moment in a years-long furor, Democrats denounced a report about flaws in the Trump-Russia investigation, saying it was boosted by Russian “bots” and “trolls.”

1.THREAD: The Twitter Files
Twitter and the FBI “Belly Button” 2.By 2020, Twitter was struggling with the problem of public and private agencies bypassing them and going straight to the media with lists of suspect accounts.

1.THREAD: The Twitter Files
How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In 2.In August 2017, when Facebook decided to suspend 300 accounts with “suspected Russian origin,” Twitter wasn’t worried. Its leaders were sure they didn’t have a Russia problem.

Note on Left and Right in the Twitter Files… Mainstream outlets try to grind every news story into grade D partisan hamburger and Twitter Files coverage is no exception. The Washington Post even called me a “conservative journalist” for a few minutes.

1.THREAD: The Twitter Files
TWITTER AND "OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES" After weeks of “Twitter Files” reports detailing close coordination between the FBI and Twitter in moderating social media content, the Bureau issued a statement Wednesday.

Good morning, and happy holidays to all! As I wrote last night on Substack, I'm in San Francisco, working on the Twitter story. In an effort to be a fully-present Dad on the holiday tomorrow, I'm going to empty some #TwitterFiles notes throughout the morning.

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.

1. THREAD: The Twitter Files, Part Six
TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY 2. The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.

1. THREAD: The Twitter Files
THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP
Part One: October 2020-January 6th 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...

THREAD: Twitter Files Supplemental On Friday, the first installment of the Twitter files was published here. We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay.