by Substack writer Matt Taibbi added a “supplemental” thread Sunday to his latest “Twitter Files” post about the FBI’s connections to the social networking site.
After revealing on Friday in the sixth iteration of the “Twitter Files” that Twitter employees had nearly constant communication with FBI agents from 2020 to 2022, Taibbi detailed an additional conflict between the federal agency and the network company. social media when the FBI seemed upset with Twitter. answers
“In July 2020, San Francisco FBI Agent Elvis Chan tells Twitter executive Yoel Roth to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), the interagency group that deals with threats. cyber,” Taibbi tweeted.
He continued: “The authors of the questionnaire seem disgusted with Twitter for implying, in a ‘DHS/ODNI/FBI/Industry briefing’ on July 20, that ‘you indicated that you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors. on your platform.'”
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Although Taibbi noted that “you’d think” the Twitter report would be “good news,” FBI agents seemed to “think otherwise.” She emphasized that Chan commented that discussions within the US Intelligence Community pushed for “clarification” within Twitter about its monitoring of propaganda, often using mainstream media articles as sources.
The Twitter Files revealed communications between Twitter employees and FBI agents.
(Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“The task force demanded to know how Twitter reached this unpopular conclusion. Interestingly, 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 were wrong.” Taibbi explained. “Roth, upon 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 from the Bureau.'”
Taibbi revealed that Roth was “not comfortable with the Bureau (and by extension, the IC) requiring written answers” and sent an internal memo adding that he believed the FBI’s questions on the subject were “wrong.”
An accompanying image showed the questions including: “In what ways and by what measures do you view official propaganda actors as less active than other groups on your platform?”; “Which groups are you comparing to the official propaganda actors?” and “What quantitative metrics do you use to judge the volume of activity on your platform? At what scale? Can you provide these metrics?”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has authorized the release of “Twitter Files” that revealed controversial actions within the social media giant.
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Despite disagreeing with the line of questioning, Roth later suggested that they “get on the phone with Elvis as soon as possible and try to clear this up” in order to disabuse the agencies of any notion that state propaganda is not a ” ‘thing’ on Twitter”.
The most recent “Twitter Files” revealed that up to 80 FBI agents were assigned to monitor foreign interference on social media after the 2016 presidential election. Taibbi’s new thread also responded to FBI comments on the revelations of the Friday.
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“The FBI responded to Friday’s report by saying it ‘regularly engages with private sector entities to provide specific information about the subversive, unreported, covert, or criminal activities of identified foreign malign influence actors,'” Taibbi wrote. “That may be true, but we haven’t seen it in the documents to date. Instead, we’ve mostly seen moderation requests involving small-follower accounts belonging to ordinary Americans, and Billy Baldwin.”
Taibbi highlighted in particular the FBI’s reliance on mainstream media sources on Twitter’s own resources to target “foreign influence” on social media.
“If one knew no better, one would conclude from this passage that the claim of foreign influence, at least in this case, was being chained: public sources cite anonymous official sources, then official sources cite public sources in their communications. with platforms like Twitter. An information loop, disregarding any implication that foreign influence is not a threat, or at least a recent threat,” Taibbi wrote in a subsequent Substack post about the Twitter thread.
He further surmised: “Seeing Roth act so quickly in response to the possibility of an ‘eddy’ forming in the ‘IC’ should set aside any questions about who is subservient to whom in this relationship.”
Major media networks largely skipped coverage of the Twitter archives from December 9-12, 2022.
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The Substack writer concluded his Twitter thread by hyping more Twitter Files releases from himself, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger in the near future.
