Zitat Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi 1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES 12:34 AM · Dec 3, 2022
2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter. 3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer 4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time. 5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” 6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters. 7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly. 12:47 AM · Dec 3, 2022
Zitat Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi 8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” 12:52 AM · Dec 3, 2022
9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:
10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
Zitat Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸@JackPosobiec BREAKING: The Twitter Files show Twitter was Censoring user sbased on Direct Requests from the Biden Team in October 2020
I don’t know how else to put this.
There needs to be an impeachment inquiry immediately 12:59 AM · Dec 3, 2022
Zitat Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi 11. This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. https://opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/s 1:02 AM · Dec 3, 2022
12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi·7m Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let's jump forward
16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story 17. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop: 18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography. 19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.” 20.This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams: 21. Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy: https://web.archive.org/web/2019071714 22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem... 23. The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role. 24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to 25.You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”: 26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err. 27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” 28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”: 29. A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit: 30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern. Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights: 32.Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files: 33.Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.” 34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it's a "tipping point," complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.” 35.Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”: 36.Twitter files continued: "THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE” Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it's "not absolute"
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get "unfucked" (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in. 1:55 AM · Dec 3, 2022
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi The problem with the "hacked materials" ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a "whirlwind" 24-hour, company-wide mess. 2:30 AM · Dec 3, 2022
It's been a whirlwind 96 hours for me, too. There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right. 2:35 AM · Dec 3, 2022
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Warum so viele Linke die Übernahme von Twitter verhindern wollten ... Nicht mal der eigene CEO und Gründer von Twitter, Jack Dorsey, hatte noch Kenntnis davon und Kontrolle darüber, was in seinem Laden da ablief.
Twitter war komplett von Linken durchseucht, die da nach dem Willkür- und Korruptionsprinzip auf dem kleinen Dienstweg zensiert haben, was links nicht in den Kram passt. Twitter war zu einer riesigen Zensurmaschine geworden, die von den Linken kontrolliert und gesteuert wurde, damit auf Twitter alles in den Plan der Linken passte und die Wahlkämpfe so liefen, wie sie sollten.
Man hat die öffentliche Wahrnehmung systematisch zugunsten der Demokraten-Partei/Joe Biden (Demokraten kann man sie nicht nennen, denn das sind sie ja nicht) verbogen und zensiert.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat SPECIAL REPORT: The Stealing of the Presidency, 2020 Rich Noyes November 24th, 2020 1
The left-wing news media didn’t just poison the information environment with their incessantly negative coverage of President Trump going into the 2020 election. They also refused to give airtime to important arguments of the Republican campaign — both pro-Trump and anti-Biden — which meant millions of voters cast their ballots knowing only what the media permitted them to know about the candidates.
To measure the true effect of the media’s censorship on the election, the Media Research Center asked The Polling Company to survey 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), six of which (all but North Carolina) were called for Biden (survey details below). We tested these voters’ knowledge of eight news stories — all important topics that our ongoing analysis had shown the liberal news media had failed to cover properly. We found that a huge majority (82%) of Biden voters were unaware of at least one of these key items, with five percent saying they were unaware of all eight of the issues we tested.
This lack of information proved crucial: One of every six Biden voters we surveyed (17%) said they would have abandoned the Democratic candidate had they known the facts about one or more of these news stories. A shift of this magnitude would have changed the outcome in all six of the swing states won by Joe Biden, and Donald Trump would have comfortably won a second term as president.
Zitat Daily Wire@realDailyWire Official Elizabeth Warren on Elon Musk's changes to Twitter: "One human being should not be able to go into a dark room by himself and decide 'Oh, that person gets heard from, that person doesn’t.' That's not how it should work."
Zitat Twitter hat in die Wahl um die US-Präsidentschaft eingegriffen. Das geht aus Material hervor, das der neue Twitter-Besitzer Elon Musk in der Nacht zum Samstag veröffentlichen ließ. Er hat weitere Beiträge angekündigt.
Als Elon Musk vor gut einem Monat Twitter kaufte, ging eine regelrechte Kampagne gegen den Milliardär los. Jedes Indiz nutzten vorzugsweise linke Medien, um eine Geschichte gegen den neuen Besitzer zu stricken. Etwa sein Umgang mit dem Personal, von dem er nach manchen Berichten die Hälfte, nach anderen sogar drei Viertel entlassen hat. Die EU ging jüngst sogar so weit, mit einer Abschaltung von Twitter zu drohen, wenn Musk sich nicht an ihre Regeln zur Kontrolle von Beiträgen halte.
Nun ist der Selfmade-Millionär kein Mann für die Defensive. Musk geht in die Gegenoffensive. Wobei Europa bisher noch kein Schauplatz ist. Derzeit enthüllt Musk, wie sich Twitter 2020 im Wahlkampf zwischen Donald Trump (Republikaner) und Joe Biden (Demokraten) verhalten hat. Und schon mit dem ersten Teil der Enthüllungen wird deutlich, warum linke Medien und Politiker so gegen Musk schäumen. Linke haben viel zu verlieren, wenn Musk seine Ankündigung wahrmacht, aus Twitter einen so fairen wie neutralen Marktplatz zum Meinungsaustausch machen zu wollen.
Zitat In response to the bombshell evidence, presented by a veteran journalist engaged in journalism, pundits on the left pounced on Taibbi in comments that will bring shame on their houses for generations. "Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world," tweeted NBC reporter Ben Collins, adding that it as "Humiliating shit.
Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali, who's never broken a major story, called Taibbi's journalism a "sad, disgraceful downfall," adding "Should be a cautionary tale for everyone. Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth."
CNN's Elle Reeve tweeted: "It’s true: in 2014, I taught Matt Taibbi keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste," adding "If I had not done that, maybe all this could have been averted. I am deeply sorry."
Gibt's ausser Tichy noch andere Beiträge dazu aus der deutschen Medienlandschaft, oder hat bisher noch keiner eine Idee gehabt, wie man die Nummer Trump in die Schuhe schieben kann? Denn, wäre das andersrum gelaufen, dürfte klar sein was heute mediales Thema Nummer eins wäre...
Die deutschen Hauptstrommedien beziehen ihre Themen bekanntlich aus ihren US-amerikanischen Pendants, und dort ist das heute mit Schweigen bedacht worden. Deswegen läßt sich nicht gut ausmachen, ob unsere Verteiler es überhaupt mitbekommen haben oder abwarten, welcher Spin darauf gesetzt wird. Immerhin können sie sich darauf verlassen, daß ihr Publikum von dem Auslöser des "Laptops aus der Hölle" von Hunter B. bislang gar nichts mitbekommen haben, während das in den Staaten im November & Dezember 2020 als "pöse rechte Propaganda" verbucht worden ist.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald Last night after Taibbi reported these, I went live on Rumble - from our new studio for our soon-to-debut live Rumble program - to analyze and reconstruct the full events. The story deserves way more attention than it will get from media propagandists. 4:57 PM · Dec 3, 2022
Never forget the person they chose to start this lie: the single worst and most dishonest US Security State propagandist in corporate media, @NatashaBertrand, who got promoted and promoted and promoted again the more she lied. Lying is how one advances in liberal corporate media.
To claim it's dubious or even debatable that the Democratic Party uses its political power over Big Tech to force them to censor as Dems demand is wretched propaganda. Dems do exactly this -- explicitly and out in the open: censor or we will punish you.
Last point: reducing NY Post's reporting to Hunter Biden's sex life and drug use is pitiful. I've always said that's irrelevant. The stories were about *Joe Biden's* sleazy business dealings in Ukraine and China. If the archive was trivial, why did they all lie to censor it?
But at this point, the real story long ago ceased being about the contents of the Biden archive itself. The real story is how the CIA, corporate media and Big Tech all united to spread a CIA lie and manipulate the 2020 election by using it to censor reporting about Joe Biden.
Listen to Mark Zuckerberg himself explain who influenced Facebook's decision in Oct. 2020 to announce -- through lifelong Dem Party operative @AndyMStone -- that FB would algorithmically suppress the NY Post's reporting on the Biden family's businesses:
By the way, it was barely a month ago when @lhfang and @kenklippenstein published new blockbuster documents proving Homeland Security plays a direct role in Big Tech's censorship decisions.
The same people attacking @mtaibbi's story attacked this, too:
Neo entering the Matrix is very different from Elon entering Twitter. For example, Neo is only 75% the letters in Elon. Everything else is roughly the same.
Zitat Censorship by surrogate: Why Musk’s document dump could be a game changer
by Jonathan Turley, opinion contributor - 12/03/22 10:30 AM ET
“Handled.” That one word, responding to a 2020 demand to censor a list of Twitter users, speaks volumes about the thousands of documents released by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, on Friday night. As many of us have long suspected, there were back channels between Twitter and the Biden 2020 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to ban critics or remove negative stories. Those seeking to discuss the scandal were simply “handled,” and nothing else had to be said.
Ultimately, the New York Post was suspended from Twitter for reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Twitter even blocked users from sharing the Post’s story by using a tool designed for child pornography. Even Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was suspended for linking to the scandal.
Twitter’s ex-safety chief, Yoel Roth, later said the decision was a “mistake” but the story “set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack and leak campaign alarm bells.” The reference to the APT28 Russian disinformation operation dovetailed with false claims of former U.S. intelligence officers that the laptop was “classic disinformation.”
The Russian disinformation claim was never particularly credible. The Biden campaign never denied the laptop was Hunter Biden’s; it left that to its media allies. Moreover, recipients of key emails could confirm those communications, and U.S. intelligence quickly rejected the Russian disinformation claim. ... Obviously, bias in the media is nothing new to Washington; newspapers and networks have long run interference for favored politicians or parties. However, this was not a case of a media company spiking its own story to protect a pal. It was a social media company that supplies a platform for people to communicate with each other on political, social and personal views. Social media is now more popular as a form of communications than the telephone.
Censoring communications on Twitter is more akin to the telephone company agreeing to cut the connection of any caller using disfavored terms. And at the apparent request of the 2020 Biden campaign and the DNC, Twitter seems to have routinely stopped others from discussing or hearing opposing views.
The internal company documents released by Musk reinforce what we have seen previously in other instances of Twitter censorship. A recent federal filing revealed a 2021 email between Twitter executives and Carol Crawford, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s digital media chief. Crawford’s back-channel communication sought to censor other “unapproved opinions” on social media; Twitter replied that “with our CEO testifying before Congress this week [it] is tricky.” ... The incoming Republican House majority has pledged to investigate — and Musk has made that process far easier by making good on his pledge of full transparency.
Washington has fully mobilized in its all-out war against Musk. Yet, with a record number of users signing up with Twitter, it seems clear the public is not buying censorship. They want more, not less, free speech.
That may be why political figures such as Hillary Clinton have enlisted foreign governments to compel the censoring of fellow citizens: If Twitter can’t be counted on to censor, perhaps the European Union will be the ideal surrogate to rid social media of these meddlesome posters.
The release of these documents has produced a level of exposure rarely seen in Washington, where such matters usually are simply “handled.” The political and media establishments generally are unstoppable forces — but they may have met their first immovable object in Musk.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
So langsam arbeitet es sich in den Hauptstrom vor.
Zitat Twitter-Chef Elon Musk will zeigen, dass US-Politiker angeblich Einfluss auf den Internetdienst genommen haben. Unter dem Hashtag #Twitterfiles teilte er interne Dokumente. Im Mittelpunkt: Ein 2020 gesperrter „New York Post“-Artikel über Präsidentensohn Hunter Biden. Anzeige
Twitter-Chef Elon Musk hat erneut einen Angriff auf die US-Demokraten gestartet. Dieses Mal teilte der Tech-Milliardär Tweets über interne Twitter-Dokumente über die Kontroverse rund um einen „New York Post“-Artikel, der kurz vor der Präsidentenwahl 2020 erschien.
Der Artikel enthielt eine E-Mail des Sohns des heutigen US-Präsidenten, Hunter Biden, zu seinen Auslandsgeschäften. „Was wirklich mit der von Twitter unterdrückten Hunter-Biden-Story passiert ist, wird (...) auf Twitter veröffentlicht!“, kündigte Musk vorher an und schrieb weiter: „Das wird großartig“. Parallel dazu kursierte der Hashtag #Twitterfiles, der die angeblichen Enthüllungen bündelt.
Twitter sperrte damals den Artikel und den Account der Zeitung, weil der Bericht gegen die Regeln verstoßen haben soll, welche die Verbreitung von Informationen, die durch illegale Hacks erlangt wurden, verbieten. In der damals in den USA geführten Debatte wurde auch darauf hingewiesen, dass ein der Berichterstattung zugrundeliegender Laptop voller Material (darunter E-Mails, aber auch Fotos), womöglich eine Fälschung sei. ... Musk kündigte weitere Veröffentlichungen an, ebenso Taibbi selbst. Der schrieb bei Twitter: „Für mich waren (die) 96 Stunden ein Wirbelsturm. Es wird noch viel mehr kommen, einschließlich Antworten auf Fragen zu Themen wie Shadow-Ban, Boosting, Anzahl der Follower, dem Schicksal verschiedener individueller Konten und mehr. Diese Themen sind nicht auf die politische Rechte beschränkt“, so der Journalist. Unter einem Shadow-Ban wird verstanden, dass ein Nutzer nicht offiziell auf der Plattform gesperrt ist, seine Inhalte aber seltener an seine Follower ausgespielt werden als bisher.
Erster Auftritt in den regulären Massenmedien. Die Diskussion in einem Kommentar in der Tagesschau oder im heute der so wäre zwar besser, aber das ist auch cool. Eventuell greift die Bild es ja mal auf?
"Was aus Liebe gethan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse." ~ F. Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse § 153.
Ich weiß wohl, daß solche Meldungen den Nachrichtenwert von umfallenden Reissäcken in China haben, aber dennoch...
Zitat A majority of Americans “support Elon Musk’s ongoing efforts to change Twitter to a more free and transparent platform,” a December Trafalgar Group poll shows.
Out of 1,085 likely general election voters polled between Nov. 30 and Dec. 3, a majority — 52.3 percent — say they support Musk’s Twitter endeavors, 31.3 percent say they do not, and 16. 3 percent are unsure. The margin of error is ±2.9 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
When the “not sure” option is removed, 62.6 percent say they support Musk’s ongoing effort, while 37.4 percent say they do not.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats are much less supportive of free speech and transparency on the social media platform than Republicans. Nearly 60 percent of Democrats polled (59.3 percent) say they do not support Musk’s efforts, and 23.5 percent say they are not sure. A little over 17 percent support Musk.
Republicans overwhelmingly support the change in Twitter, 84.8 percent saying they support Musk’s transparency efforts compared to just 5 percent who do not. Unaffiliated voters are more closely aligned with Republicans on the matter, 54.2 percent saying they support Musk compared to 30.5 percent who say they do not.
Wenn man es nicht besser wüsste, hätte man den Verdacht einer gezielten Aktion gegen Musk, weil er sich mit der Twitter-Übernahme eindeutig gestellt hat. Elon und der blaue Vogel. Coda (6)
Allerdings sehe ich auch keine Gründe, quälende Tierversuche auszuschließen.
"'Es ist nicht so schwer, jemanden zu töten, wenn man es wollte, also hoffe ich, dass sie es nicht tun und dass das Schicksal mir wohlgesonnen ist und es nicht passiert ... Es besteht definitiv ein gewisses Risiko', fügte er [Musk, J.] hinzu.[...]" Quelle: "Tesla‑Chef Elon Musk: Angst um sein Leben" von Markus Bußler, heute. Kommentar: Musk hat in den letzten Tagen bereits ausgeschlossen, dass er in nächster Zeit Selbstmord begeht, und jetzt das. Es klingt wie der Stoff, aus dem später Verschwörungstheorien konstruiert werden. Natürlich, wir hier verfügen nicht über Insiderwissen.
Wovor Musk sich fürchtet, ob er wirklich einen Grund hat oder sich nur bedroht fühlt...
"Was aus Liebe gethan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse." ~ F. Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse § 153.
Nein, Musk fühlt sich nicht bedroht. Er bilanziert das nur nüchtern: wenn jemand eine solche Absicht hätte, dann wäre das bei seinem ziemlich exponierten Lebenswandel jetzt keine Haupt- und Staatsaktion. Die Volte, "hoffen wir also, daß niemand das will & das Schicksal mir hold ist" ist ein ziemlich dickes Ironie-Signal.
Zitat Musk said, “[I] definitely [wouldn’t] be doing any open-air car parades, let me put it that way. Frankly the risk of something bad happening to me, or even literally being shot, is quite significant,” reported US-based tabloid The New York Post.
As per the report, Musk, who is also the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, said, “It’s not that hard to kill somebody if you wanted to, so hopefully they don’t and fate smiles upon the situation with me and it does not happen. There’s definitely some risk there.”
He noted that at the end of the day, all want to have a future where they are not oppressed. “As long as you’re not really causing harm to somebody else, then you should be allowed to say what you want,” Musk said.
"Throughout history, free speech has been highly unusual, not common. So we have to fight really hard to keep that because it's such a rare thing and it's by no means something that's default," said Musk, adding “Controlled speech is the default, not free speech.”
Zitat Michael Tracey@mtracey Turns out, not only was the involvement of Jim Baker in the whole Hunter Biden affair the furthest thing from a "nothingburger," Taibbi has now revealed that Baker was surreptitiously "vetting" the Twitter Files just within the past several days -- unbeknownst to Taibbi and Musk! 12:12 AM · Dec 7, 2022
Zitat Michael Tracey@mtracey The "nothingburger" crowd must've missed this one. Jim Baker had previously been at the heart of Russiagate chicanery as General Counsel of the FBI. Then, serendipitously, he's hired by Twitter -- and is right at the heart of their internal process on Russia-related censorship
Zitat Liam Fennell@LiamFenny Replying to @LiamFenny and @MattBinder „My jaw hit the floor when I found out that highly sensitive documents being handed to me by a massive corporation for public display were first being checked by a known senior legal expert within that corporation.“ Either they‘re dense, or they assume their readership is. 12:12 AM · Dec 7, 2022
Zitat Eric Weinstein@EricRWeinstein I can’t quite believe what I’m reading so let’s go slow.
The FBI’s former attorney was hired by previous Twitter management, and was the one vetting the files to be given to @bariweiss & @mtaibbi that might reveal FBI collusion…and new owner @elonmusk wasn’t told any of this???
Lee Fang@lhfang Twitter's former top attorney James Baker was formerly an FBI attorney who passed on fake dirt from the Hillary campaign’s operatives in 2016, alleging a secret online portal from Russia's Alfa Bank to Trump. Now attempted to shape the “Twitter Files.”
The Hillary campaign, secretly using tech experts, attempted to pass off this fabricated evidence to a number of media outlets. We received the info and published a debunk of the “Alfa Bank” story. Nevertheless, tons of media ran with it.
Zitat Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi 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.
We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.
The process for producing the “Twitter Files” involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated.
Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @BariWeiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim. When she called to ask “Jim’s” last name, the answer came back: “Jim Baker.”
“My jaw hit the floor,” says Weiss.
The first batch of files both reporters received was marked, “Spectra Baker Emails.”
Baker is a controversial figure. He has been something of a Zelig of FBI controversies dating back to 2016, from the Steele Dossier to the Alfa-Server mess. He resigned in 2018 after an investigation into leaks to the press.
The news that Baker was reviewing the “Twitter files” surprised everyone involved, to say the least. New Twitter chief Elon Musk acted quickly to “exit” Baker Tuesday.
Reporters resumed searches through Twitter Files material – a lot of it – today. The next installment of “The Twitter Files” will appear @bariweiss. Stay tuned. 10:40 PM · Dec 6, 2022
Zitat FLASHBACK: Disgraced Twitter counsel James Baker was one of the architects of Russian collusion hoax
Baker, during his time at the FBI, was involved in the discredited Steele Dossier as well as Russiagate.
With Tuesday’s release of the Twitter Files, it was revealed that James Baker, Twitter Deputy General Counsel and former FBI General Counsel, was fired from his role at the social media company.
Baker, during his time at the FBI, was involved in the discredited Steele Dossier as well as Russiagate.
According to the Washington Times, Baker had connected Michael Sussmann, a friend and lawyer, with FBI top investigators in 2016, where Sussmann passed along the claims that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.
Baker’s time at the FBI ended in 2018 after he resigned, with the agency’s former counsel being eyed for potentially disseminating classified information to journalists regarding the Steele Dossier, according to the Washington Examiner.
During his time at Twitter, it was revealed, he was not only involved in the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, but had also vetted without the knowledge of Musk and the company's new management the first release of the Twitter Files on Friday, causing a delay.
Zitat Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi 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... 3. We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies. 4. This first installment covers the period before the election through January 6th. Tomorrow, @Shellenbergermd will detail the chaos inside Twitter on January 7th. On Sunday, @BariWeiss will reveal the secret internal communications from the key date of January 8th. 5. Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech. 6. As soon as they finished banning Trump, Twitter execs started processing new power. They prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses – perhaps even Joe Biden. The “new administration,” says one exec, “will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.” 7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways. 8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots. 10. As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway. 11. After J6, internal Slacks show Twitter executives getting a kick out of intensified relationships with federal agencies. Here’s Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth, lamenting a lack of “generic enough” calendar descriptions to concealing his “very interesting” meeting partners. 12. These initial reports are based on searches for docs linked to prominent executives, whose names are already public. They include Roth, former trust and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, and recently plank-walked Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker. 13. One particular slack channel offers an unique window into the evolving thinking of top officials in late 2020 and early 2021. 14. On October 8th, 2020, executives opened a channel called “us2020_xfn_enforcement.” Through J6, this would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved “high-profile” accounts (often called “VITs” or “Very Important Tweeters”). 15. There was at least some tension between Safety Operations – a larger department whose staffers used a more rules-based process for addressing issues like porn, scams, and threats – and a smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs like Roth and Gadde. 16. The latter group were a high-speed Supreme Court of moderation, issuing content rulings on the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President. 17. During this time, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content. While we’re still at the start of reviewing the #TwitterFiles, we’re finding out more about these interactions every day. 18. Policy Director Nick Pickles is asked if they should say Twitter detects “misinfo” through “ML, human review, and **partnerships with outside experts?*” The employee asks, “I know that’s been a slippery process… not sure if you want our public explanation to hang on that.” 19. Pickles quickly asks if they could “just say “partnerships.” After a pause, he says, “e.g. not sure we’d describe the FBI/DHS as experts.” 20. This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI): 21. Roth’s report to FBI/DHS/DNI is almost farcical in its self-flagellating tone: “We blocked the NYP story, then unblocked it (but said the opposite)… comms is angry, reporters think we’re idiots… in short, FML” (fuck my life). 23. Some of Roth’s later Slacks indicate his weekly confabs with federal law enforcement involved separate meetings. Here, he ghosts the FBI and DHS, respectively, to go first to an “Aspen Institute thing,” then take a call with Apple. 24. Here, the FBI sends reports about a pair of tweets, the second of which involves a former Tippecanoe County, Indiana Councilor and Republican named @JohnBasham claiming “Between 2% and 25% of Ballots by Mail are Being Rejected for Errors.” The FBI's second report concerned this tweet by @JohnBasham: 25. The FBI-flagged tweet then got circulated in the enforcement Slack. Twitter cited Politifact to say the first story was “proven to be false,” then noted the second was already deemed “no vio on numerous occasions.” 26. The group then decides to apply a “Learn how voting is safe and secure” label because one commenter says, “it’s totally normal to have a 2% error rate.” Roth then gives the final go-ahead to the process initiated by the FBI: 27. Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.
31. In one case, former Arizona governor Mike Huckabee joke-tweets about mailing in ballots for his “deceased parents and grandparents.” 32. This inspires a long Slack that reads like an @TitaniaMcGrath parody. “I agree it’s a joke,” concedes a Twitter employee, “but he’s also literally admitting in a tweet a crime.” The group declares Huck’s an “edge case,” and though one notes, “we don’t make exceptions for jokes or satire,” they ultimately decide to leave him be, because “we’ve poked enough bears.” 33. "Could still mislead people... could still mislead people," the humor-averse group declares, before moving on from Huckabee. 34. In the docs, execs often expand criteria to subjective issues like intent (yes, a video is authentic, but why was it shown?), orientation (was a banned tweet shown to condemn, or support?), or reception (did a joke cause “confusion”?). This reflex will become key in J6. 35. In another example, Twitter employees prepare to slap a “mail-in voting is safe” warning label on a Trump tweet about a postal screwup in Ohio, before realizing “the events took place,” which meant the tweet was “factually accurate”: 36. “VERY WELL DONE ON SPEED” Trump was being “visibility filtered” as late as a week before the election. Here, senior execs didn’t appear to have a particular violation, but still worked fast to make sure a fairly anodyne Trump tweet couldn’t be “replied to, shared, or liked”: 37. A seemingly innocuous follow-up involved a tweet from actor @realJamesWoods, whose ubiquitous presence in argued-over Twitter data sets is already a #TwitterFiles in-joke. 38. After Woods angrily quote-tweeted about Trump’s warning label, Twitter staff – in a preview of what ended up happening after J6 – despaired of a reason for action, but resolved to “hit him hard on future vio.” 39. Here a label is applied to Georgia Republican congresswoman Jody Hice for saying, “Say NO to big tech censorship!” and, “Mailed ballots are more prone to fraud than in-person balloting… It’s just common sense.” 40. Twitter teams went easy on Hice, only applying “soft intervention,” with Roth worrying about a “wah wah censorship” optics backlash: 41. Meanwhile, there are multiple instances of involving pro-Biden tweets warning Trump “may try to steal the election” that got surfaced, only to be approved by senior executives. This one, they decide, just “expresses concern that mailed ballots might not make it on time.” 42. “THAT’S UNDERSTANDABLE”: Even the hashtag #StealOurVotes – referencing a theory that a combo of Amy Coney Barrett and Trump will steal the election – is approved by Twitter brass, because it’s “understandable” and a “reference to… a US Supreme Court decision.” 43. In this exchange, again unintentionally humorous, former Attorney General Eric Holder claimed the U.S. Postal Service was “deliberately crippled,”ostensibly by the Trump administration. He was initially hit with a generic warning label, but it was quickly taken off by Roth: 44. Later in November 2020, Roth asked if staff had a “debunk moment” on the “SCYTL/Smartmantic vote-counting” stories, which his DHS contacts told him were a combination of “about 47” conspiracy theories: 45. On December 10th, as Trump was in the middle of firing off 25 tweets saying things like, “A coup is taking place in front of our eyes,” Twitter executives announced a new “L3 deamplification” tool. This step meant a warning label now could also come with deamplification: 46. Some executives wanted to use the new deamplification tool to silently limit Trump’s reach more right away, beginning with the following tweet: 47. However, in the end, the team had to use older, less aggressive labeling tools at least for that day, until the “L3 entities” went live the following morning. 48. The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before J6. The ban will come after other avenues are exhausted. 1:08 AM · Dec 10, 2022
Zitat 49. In Twitter docs execs frequently refer to “bots,” e.g. “let’s put a bot on that.” A bot is just any automated heuristic moderation rule. It can be anything: every time a person in Brazil uses “green” and “blob” in the same sentence, action might be taken. 50. In this instance, it appears moderators added a bot for a Trump claim made on Breitbart. The bot ends up becoming an automated tool invisibly watching both Trump and, apparently, Breitbart (“will add media ID to bot”). Trump by J6 was quickly covered in bots. 51. There is no way to follow the frenzied exchanges among Twitter personnel from between January 6thand 8th without knowing the basics of the company’s vast lexicon of acronyms and Orwellian unwords. 52. To “bounce” an account is to put it in timeout, usually for a 12-hour review/cool-off: 53. “Interstitial,” one of many nouns used as a verb in Twitterspeak (“denylist” is another), means placing a physical label atop a tweet, so it can’t be seen. 54. PII has multiple meanings, one being “Public Interest Interstitial,” i.e. a covering label applied for “public interest” reasons. The post below also references “proactive V,” i.e. proactive visibility filtering. 55. This is all necessary background to J6. Before the riots, the company was engaged in an inherently insane/impossible project, trying to create an ever-expanding, ostensibly rational set of rules to regulate every conceivable speech situation that might arise between humans. This project was preposterous yet its leaders were unable to see this, having become infected with groupthing, coming to believe – sincerely – that it was Twitter's responsibility to control, as much as possible, what people could talk about, how often, and with whom. 56. When panic first breaks out on J6 there’s a fair share of WTF-type posts, mixed in with frantic calls for Twitter to start deploying its full arsenal of moderation tools. “What is the right remediation? Do we interstitial the video?” asks one employee, in despair: 57. The firm’s executives on day 1 of the January 6th crisis at least tried to pay lip service to its dizzying array of rules. By day 2, they began wavering. By day 3, a million rules were reduced to one: what we say, goes. 57. This “Freedom or Death” tweet from #StopTheSteal gadfly Mike Coudrey elicits heated reactions: 58. Roth groans about Coudrey: “THIS asshole,” but still seems determined to stick at least superficially to rules, itching to act “if” this “constitutes incitement.” 59. At 2:39 p.m. PST, a comms official asked Roth to confirm or deny a story that they’d restricted Trump’s ability to tweet. Roth says, “We have not.” 60. Minutes later, Roth executed the historic act of “bouncing” Trump, i.e. putting him in timeout. “I hope you… are appropriately CorpSec’d,” says a colleague. This theme of Policy perhaps being stressed by queries from Communications executives – who themselves have to answer the public’s questions – occasionally appears. Two days later, you see chatter about pulling Comms out of the loop: 61. The first company-wide email from Gadde on January 6th announced that 3 Trump tweets had been bounced, but more importantly signaled a determination to use legit “violations” as a guide for any possible permanent suspension: 62. “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?” Safe to say Trump’s “Go home with love & in peace” tweet mid-riot didn’t go over well at Twitter HQ: 63. A few last notes about January 6th. Roth at one point looked and found Trump had a slew of duplicate bot applications: 64. By the end of the first day, the top execs are still trying to apply rules. By the next day, they will contemplate a major change in approach. Watch @shellenbergerMD this weekend for the play-by-play of how all that went down. 65. By January 8th, which @BariWeiss will describe Sunday, Twitter will be receiving plaudits from “our partners” in Washington, and the sitting U.S. president will no longer be heard on the platform. 66. Lastly, people on the left, right, and in between want to know what else is in the #TwitterFiles, from suppression/shadow-banning of leftists to lab-leak theorists, or amplification of military propaganda or conservative accounts. We know everyone has questions.
Zitat Cernovich@Cernovich Tonight’s “nothing burger” - Trump’s tweets were suppressed weeks before the election by a hidden council of communist sympathizers and Stalin lovers - the FBI had tweets taken down - Democrats spread election disinformation with a clear pass from Yoel 2:09 AM · Dec 10, 2022
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat Name Redacted@NameRedacted247 1. @elonmusk , Your new company @Twitter has many ex FBI/CIA agents in high ranks. Should probably do a little housecleaning. Thread 🧵 3:31 AM · Dec 7, 2022
2. Kevin Michelena - current Twitter Sr. Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI Intelligence Analyst 12 years 3. Doug Hunt - current Twitter Senior Director. Ex FBI Special Agent 20 years. 4. Mark Jaroszewski - current Twitter Director Corporate Security/Risk. Ex FBI 20 years 5. Douglas Turner - current Twitter Senior Manager, Corporate and Executive Security Services. Ex FBI 14 years. Ex Secret Service 7 years. 6. Patrick G. - current Twitter Head of Corporate Security. Ex FBI Special Agent 23 years. 7. Karen Walsh - current Twitter Director - Corporate Resilience. Ex FBI Special Agent 21 years 8. Russell Handorf - current Twitter Senior Staff Technical Program Manager. Ex FBI 10 years. 9. Michael B. - current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI 23 years. 10. Vincent Lucero - current Twitter Senior Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 22 years. 11. Kevin L. - current Twitter Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 25 years. 12. Matthew W. - current Twitter Senior Director of Product Trust, Revenue Policy, and Counsel Systems & Analytics. Ex FBI 15 years. https://linkedin.com/in/matthew-w-613664184/ 13. Claire O. - current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI 8 years. 14. Bruce A. - current Twitter Director, Corporate Security. Ex FBI 23 years. https://linkedin.com/in/bruceapplin324/ 15. Jeff Carlton - current Twitter Senior Manager. Ex FBI & CIA Intelligence Analyst 3 years. 16. What do all of these Twitter employees have in common? They were ALL hired since @realDonaldTrump was elected.
Why, after Trump was elected, did Twitter hire over a dozen ex FBI/CIA agents and place them in Senior Management roles? 17. @elonmusk - how many "Jim Bakers" are imbedded in Twitter, possibly working against you? or....."watching" you. I'd advise you to do some investigating and clean house.
Zitat Elon Musk @elonmusk Replying to @StationCDRKelly I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone.
As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo. 2:29 AM · Dec 12, 2022
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